Finger length may predict financial success
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer 1 hr 11 mins ago
WASHINGTON – The length of a man's ring finger may predict his success as a financial trader. Researchers at the University of Cambridge in England report that men with longer ring fingers, compared to their index fingers, tended to be more successful in the frantic high-frequency trading in the London financial district.
Indeed, the impact of biology on success was about equal to years of experience at the job, the team led by physiologist John M. Coates reports in Monday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The same ring-to-index finger ratio has previously been associated with success in competitive sports such as soccer and basketball, the researchers noted.
The length ratio between those two fingers is determined during the development of the fetus and the relatively longer ring finger indicates greater exposure to the male hormone androgen, the researchers noted.
Previous studies have found that such exposure can lead to increased confidence, risk preferences, search persistence, heightened vigilance and quickened reaction times.
In a separate study last year, Coates and colleagues reported that the hormone that drives male aggression and sexual interest also seemed able to boost short term success at finance.
They studied male financial traders in London, taking saliva samples in the morning and evening. They found that those with higher levels of testosterone in the morning were more likely to make an unusually big profit that day. Testosterone, best known as the male sex hormone, affects aggression, confidence and risk-taking.
In the new study, the researchers measured the right hands of 44 male stock traders who were engaged in a type of trade that involved rapid decision-making and quick physical reactions.
Over 20 months those with longer ring fingers compared to their index fingers made 11 times more money than those with the shortest ring fingers. Over the same time the most experienced traders made about 9 times more than the least experienced ones.
Looking only at experienced traders, the long-ring-finger folks earned 5 times more than those with short ring fingers.
While the finger ratio, showing fetal exposure to male hormones, appears to signal likely success in high-actively trading that calls for risk-taking and quick reactions, it may not indicate people who would do well at other sorts of financial activities, the researchers said.
Some traders require additional skills on dealing with clients and sales workers.
And the advantage may even reverse for some, Coates team said, such as traders taking a more analytical and long-term approach to the markets.
One study, which looked at average finger ratios in university departments found that faculty from math, science and engineering exhibited longer index finger ratio, rather than ring finger, they noted.
___http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090113/ap_on_sc/sci_financial_finger
Monday, January 12, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Sociology in Action
Teens divulge risky behavior on social networking sites
By Serena Gordon, HealthDay Reporter - Tue Jan 6, 8:48 PM PST
MONDAY, Jan. 5 (HealthDay News) -- More than half of teens who use the social networking site MySpace have posted information about sexual behavior, substance abuse or violence, new research shows.
The good news, according to a second study from the same research group, is that a simple intervention -- in this case, an-e-mail from a physician -- made some of the teens change their risky behaviors.
"I was surprised, at least to some extent, at how clearly teens were discussing behaviors that we struggle to get out of them," said Dr. Megan Moreno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Once we started getting the findings, we wondered, why are they doing this?" Moreno said. "Do they not get it? And, if they don't understand that this is public, can we send them a cautionary message to let them know just how public their information really is?" Moreno was working at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Research Institute at the time the studies were done.
"We need to devise ways to teach teens and their parents to use the Internet responsibly," study senior author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute, said in a statement.
Results from the two studies appear in the January issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
More than 90 percent of teens in the United States have access to the Internet, according to background information from the studies. About half of all teens who use the Internet also use social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook. MySpace boasts more than 200 million profiles, according to the studies, and about one-quarter of those belong to teens under 18.
Moreno and her colleagues randomly selected 500 MySpace profiles from people who reported their age as 18. They collected the information during the summer of 2007.
They found that 54 percent of the profiles contained information on risky behaviors, with 24 percent referencing sexual behaviors, 41 percent referring to substance abuse and 14 percent posting violent information.
Factors associated with a decreased risk of posting risky behaviors included displaying religious involvement or involvement with sports or hobbies.
For the second study, the researchers randomly selected 190 profiles of people between 18 and 20 who displayed risky behaviors, such as sexual information. Half were sent an e-mail from a physician that pointed out that the physician had noticed risky behavior on their profile and suggested changing the displayed information. The e-mail message also provided information on where to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
Almost 14 percent of those who got the e-mail deleted references to sexual behavior, compared with 5 percent of the others.
"This was a creative and unique way to reach kids," said Kimberly Mitchell, the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal and a research professor at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
Mitchell advised parents not to try to forbid their children from using these sites altogether. "It's important for parents to understand how important these social networking sites are to kids," she said. "They're here to stay, and they're not all evil. There can be some really positive aspects to these sites. But adolescents aren't necessarily thinking 10 years ahead, when employers or college administrators may look at these sites. Teens live in the here and now, so parents need to talk to kids about the longer-term impacts and help them think through some of the repercussions."
Moreno suggested that parents ask teens to show them their MySpace or Facebook pages. "Teens will definitely balk, but they balk at lots of things, like curfews," she said. "Some parents feel it's a violation of privacy, like reading a diary, but it's out there, it's public."
Parents should use this information as a conversation starter, Moreno suggested.
The good news, according to a second study from the same research group, is that a simple intervention -- in this case, an-e-mail from a physician -- made some of the teens change their risky behaviors.
"I was surprised, at least to some extent, at how clearly teens were discussing behaviors that we struggle to get out of them," said Dr. Megan Moreno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"Once we started getting the findings, we wondered, why are they doing this?" Moreno said. "Do they not get it? And, if they don't understand that this is public, can we send them a cautionary message to let them know just how public their information really is?" Moreno was working at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Research Institute at the time the studies were done.
"We need to devise ways to teach teens and their parents to use the Internet responsibly," study senior author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute, said in a statement.
Results from the two studies appear in the January issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
More than 90 percent of teens in the United States have access to the Internet, according to background information from the studies. About half of all teens who use the Internet also use social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook. MySpace boasts more than 200 million profiles, according to the studies, and about one-quarter of those belong to teens under 18.
Moreno and her colleagues randomly selected 500 MySpace profiles from people who reported their age as 18. They collected the information during the summer of 2007.
They found that 54 percent of the profiles contained information on risky behaviors, with 24 percent referencing sexual behaviors, 41 percent referring to substance abuse and 14 percent posting violent information.
Factors associated with a decreased risk of posting risky behaviors included displaying religious involvement or involvement with sports or hobbies.
For the second study, the researchers randomly selected 190 profiles of people between 18 and 20 who displayed risky behaviors, such as sexual information. Half were sent an e-mail from a physician that pointed out that the physician had noticed risky behavior on their profile and suggested changing the displayed information. The e-mail message also provided information on where to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
Almost 14 percent of those who got the e-mail deleted references to sexual behavior, compared with 5 percent of the others.
"This was a creative and unique way to reach kids," said Kimberly Mitchell, the author of an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal and a research professor at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.
Mitchell advised parents not to try to forbid their children from using these sites altogether. "It's important for parents to understand how important these social networking sites are to kids," she said. "They're here to stay, and they're not all evil. There can be some really positive aspects to these sites. But adolescents aren't necessarily thinking 10 years ahead, when employers or college administrators may look at these sites. Teens live in the here and now, so parents need to talk to kids about the longer-term impacts and help them think through some of the repercussions."
Moreno suggested that parents ask teens to show them their MySpace or Facebook pages. "Teens will definitely balk, but they balk at lots of things, like curfews," she said. "Some parents feel it's a violation of privacy, like reading a diary, but it's out there, it's public."
Parents should use this information as a conversation starter, Moreno suggested.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
How far is too far? Whose safety preempts?
240,000 dollars awarded to man forced to cover Arab T-shirt
NEW YORK (AFP) – An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday.
Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York's JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.
"The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling," said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU.
Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: "We will not be silent."
He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like "wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,'" the ACLU said.
Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.
Last week, nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after passengers heard what they believed were suspicious remarks about security.
Although the passengers, eight of them US citizens, were cleared by the FBI, they were reportedly still barred from the AirTran flight.
Security has been at a high level in US airports since the September 11, 2001 hijacked airliner attacks against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
However, rights groups and representatives of the Muslim community say the security measures have led to frequent discrimination and harassment.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090106/ts_alt_afp/ustransportairsecuritymuslimsrights_090106002219/print
Monday, January 5, 2009
KC Native, Gulf War Pilot, MIA or KIA
Posted on Sun, Jan. 04, 2009
Navy board to review status of missing pilot, a KC native
By BEN EVANSThe Associated Press
WASHINGTON The family of a Navy pilot missing since his plane was shot down in the Persian Gulf War isn’t ready to give up hope that he is alive.
Capt. Michael Scott Speicher’s family says they will oppose any decision to declare him killed in action.
The Navy has scheduled a review board hearing for today on the status of Speicher, who has been missing since January 1991, when his FA-18 Hornet was shot down in Iraq on the first night of the war.
The hearing comes several months after the Navy received a fresh intelligence report on Speicher from Iraq.
Speicher was born in Kansas City and attended Winnetonka High School before his family moved to Jacksonville, Fla., when he was 15.
Speicher’s family, which has seen the latest intelligence report, thinks Navy Secretary Donald Winter is moving toward changing Speicher’s status from missing/captured to killed, said Cindy Laquidara, the family’s lawyer and spokeswoman.
The family — including two college-age children who were toddlers when Speicher went missing — thinks the Pentagon should do more to determine definitively what happened, Laquidara said. They see the outcome as setting a standard for future missing-in-action investigations, she said.
“This really is a precedent for every other captive serviceman or woman, and it needs to be done right,” Laquidara said. “We’ve looked at the information that’s going to be presented to the board, and we feel pretty confident that it’s not time under the standards that they’ve set to change the status. There are things that need to be done before one can be certain.”
Speicher was the first American lost in the Gulf War.
Some think Speicher ejected from the plane and was captured by Iraqi forces, and potential clues later emerged that he might have survived: The initials “MSS” were found scrawled on a prison wall in Baghdad, for example, and there were reports of sightings.
The Pentagon has changed Speicher’s status several times. He was publicly declared killed in action hours after his plane went down. Ten years later, the Navy changed Speicher’s status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that he had died.
In October 2002, the Navy switched Speicher’s status to “missing/captured,” although it has never said what evidence it had that he was ever in captivity.
Another review was done in 2005 with information gleaned after Baghdad fell in the U.S.-led invasion, which allowed American officials to search inside Iraq. The review board recommended then that the Pentagon work with the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the
Iraqi government to “increase the level of attention and effort inside Iraq” to resolve the question of Speicher’s fate.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, which tracks the cases of missing military personnel and works with other intelligence agencies, submitted its latest report last fall.
“Captain Speicher’s status remains a top priority for the Navy and the U.S. government,” Cmdr. Cappy Surette, a Navy spokesman, said recently. “The recent intelligence community assessment reflects exhaustive analysis of information related to Captain Speicher’s case.”
The final decision on changing Speicher’s status must come from the secretary of the Navy; the review board’s decision is only a recommendation, said Lt. Sean Robertson, another Navy spokesman.
Robertson said that once the board meets, it has up to 30 days to complete its report. The family then would have up to 30 days to comment on the board’s recommendation before it is forwarded to the secretary for a decision.
The board will be composed of three officers, including one who is experienced in F/A-18 aircraft. The board has a legal adviser assigned and a legal counsel also will represent Speicher to look after the interests of him and his family, Robertson said.
Laquidara said family members would attend the hearing.
“It’s really easy to put out a yellow ribbon but not so easy to allocate resources to find a missing serviceman or woman,” she said. “If Scott’s not alive now, he was for a very long time, and that could happen to somebody else.”
Navy board to review status of missing pilot, a KC native
By BEN EVANSThe Associated Press
WASHINGTON The family of a Navy pilot missing since his plane was shot down in the Persian Gulf War isn’t ready to give up hope that he is alive.
Capt. Michael Scott Speicher’s family says they will oppose any decision to declare him killed in action.
The Navy has scheduled a review board hearing for today on the status of Speicher, who has been missing since January 1991, when his FA-18 Hornet was shot down in Iraq on the first night of the war.
The hearing comes several months after the Navy received a fresh intelligence report on Speicher from Iraq.
Speicher was born in Kansas City and attended Winnetonka High School before his family moved to Jacksonville, Fla., when he was 15.
Speicher’s family, which has seen the latest intelligence report, thinks Navy Secretary Donald Winter is moving toward changing Speicher’s status from missing/captured to killed, said Cindy Laquidara, the family’s lawyer and spokeswoman.
The family — including two college-age children who were toddlers when Speicher went missing — thinks the Pentagon should do more to determine definitively what happened, Laquidara said. They see the outcome as setting a standard for future missing-in-action investigations, she said.
“This really is a precedent for every other captive serviceman or woman, and it needs to be done right,” Laquidara said. “We’ve looked at the information that’s going to be presented to the board, and we feel pretty confident that it’s not time under the standards that they’ve set to change the status. There are things that need to be done before one can be certain.”
Speicher was the first American lost in the Gulf War.
Some think Speicher ejected from the plane and was captured by Iraqi forces, and potential clues later emerged that he might have survived: The initials “MSS” were found scrawled on a prison wall in Baghdad, for example, and there were reports of sightings.
The Pentagon has changed Speicher’s status several times. He was publicly declared killed in action hours after his plane went down. Ten years later, the Navy changed Speicher’s status to missing in action, citing an absence of evidence that he had died.
In October 2002, the Navy switched Speicher’s status to “missing/captured,” although it has never said what evidence it had that he was ever in captivity.
Another review was done in 2005 with information gleaned after Baghdad fell in the U.S.-led invasion, which allowed American officials to search inside Iraq. The review board recommended then that the Pentagon work with the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the
Iraqi government to “increase the level of attention and effort inside Iraq” to resolve the question of Speicher’s fate.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, which tracks the cases of missing military personnel and works with other intelligence agencies, submitted its latest report last fall.
“Captain Speicher’s status remains a top priority for the Navy and the U.S. government,” Cmdr. Cappy Surette, a Navy spokesman, said recently. “The recent intelligence community assessment reflects exhaustive analysis of information related to Captain Speicher’s case.”
The final decision on changing Speicher’s status must come from the secretary of the Navy; the review board’s decision is only a recommendation, said Lt. Sean Robertson, another Navy spokesman.
Robertson said that once the board meets, it has up to 30 days to complete its report. The family then would have up to 30 days to comment on the board’s recommendation before it is forwarded to the secretary for a decision.
The board will be composed of three officers, including one who is experienced in F/A-18 aircraft. The board has a legal adviser assigned and a legal counsel also will represent Speicher to look after the interests of him and his family, Robertson said.
Laquidara said family members would attend the hearing.
“It’s really easy to put out a yellow ribbon but not so easy to allocate resources to find a missing serviceman or woman,” she said. “If Scott’s not alive now, he was for a very long time, and that could happen to somebody else.”
Civil War Submarine Investigations
Posted on Mon, Jan. 05, 2009
CSI Hunley: Fate of historic sub a cold case file
By BRUCE SMITHAssociated Press Writer
It could be one of the nation's oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.
Its fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since the Hunley was raised back in 2000. But the submarine has been agonizingly slow surrendering her secrets.
"She was a mystery when she was built. She was a mystery as to how she looked and how she was constructed for many years and she is still a mystery as to why she didn't come home," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston and chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, which raised the sub and is charged with conserving and displaying it.
Scientists hope the next phase of the conservation, removing the hardened sediment coating the outside of the hull, will provide clues to the mystery.
McConnell, who watched the sub being raised more than eight years ago, thought at the time the mystery would be easily solved.
"We thought it would be very simple ... something must have happened at the time of the attack," he said. "We would just put those pieces together and know everything about it."
But what seemed so clear then seems as murky now as the sandy bottom where the Hunley rested for 136 years. When the Hunley was raised, the design was different from what scientists expected and there were only eight, not nine, crewmen, as originally thought.
The first phase of work on the Hunley consisted of photographing and studying the outside of the hull. Then several iron hull plates were removed allowing scientists to enter the crew compartment to remove sediment, human remains and a cache of artifacts.
Thousands of people, many re-enactors in period dress, turned out in April 2004 when the crew was buried in what has been called the last Confederate funeral.
With the inside excavated, the outside of the hull will now be cleaned before the sub is put in a chemical bath to remove salts left by years on the ocean floor. The Hunley will eventually be displayed in a new museum in North Charleston.
Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen said the Hunley is like a crime scene except that, unlike on television shows, there is no smoking gun.
"If we compare this crime site investigation with, say, a tragic plane crash in the mountains, that investigation would be a lot easier," she said. "You can go to the crash you can see the metal pieces and they have the fingerprints of the crash site."
In the case of the Hunley, some of those fingerprints may be covered with the encrusted sediment on the hull that scientists refer to as concretion.
When the sub was found there was no window in the front conning tower, suggesting it had been shot out, perhaps by Union sharpshooters.
But no glass was found inside the sub and the remains of the captain, Lt. George Dixon, showed no injuries to his skull or body consistent with being shot while looking through the window, McConnell said.
The crew's bodies were found at their duty stations, suggesting there was no emergency resulting in a scramble to get out of the sub. And the controls on the bilge pump were not set to pump water from the crew compartment, suggesting there was no water flooding in.
After the attack both Confederates on shore and Union ships reported seeing a blue light, believed to be the Hunley signaling it had completed its mission.
A lantern with a thick lens that would have shifted the light spectrum and appeared blue from a distance was found in the wreck.
But after the attack, the USS Canandaigua rushed to the aide of the Housatonic and there is speculation that the light could have come from that ship instead.
Could the Canandaigua have grazed the Hunley, disabling her so the sub couldn't surface? A good look at the hull in the coming months may provide the answer.
Historians also know the Hunley needed to wait for the incoming tide to return to shore.
"Were they waiting down there and miscalculated their oxygen and blacked out?" said McConnell.
He said a grappling hook, believed to serve as an anchor of the Hunley, was found near the wreck. Cleaning the hull may produce evidence of a rope showing the sub was anchored, perhaps waiting for the tide to change.
Then there is the mystery of Dixon's watch, which stopped at 8:23 p.m. Although times were far from uniform in the Civil War era, the Housatonic was attacked about 20 minutes later, according to federal time, McConnell said.
One theory is the concussion of the attack stopped the watch and knocked out the sailors on the sub. Or the watch simply might have run down and was not noticed in the excitement of the attack. That could have led to a miscalculation of the time they were under water.
Union troops reported seeing the Hunley approaching and the light through the tower window "like dinosaur eyes or a giant porpoise in the water," McConnell said.
If the Hunley crew miscalculated and surfaced too close to the Housatonic on their final approach they would not have had enough time to replenish their oxygen before the attack, he said.
The clues now seem to indicate the crew died of anoxia, a lack of oxygen, and didn't drown. "Whatever happened, happened unexpectedly, with no warning," McConnell said.
Running out of oxygen can quickly cause unconsciousness.
"One you reach that critical stage, it's like you flick a switch," he said. "It's that fast, like on an
airplane."
CSI Hunley: Fate of historic sub a cold case file
By BRUCE SMITHAssociated Press Writer
It could be one of the nation's oldest cold case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.
Its fate has been the subject of almost 150 years of conjecture and almost a decade of scientific research since the Hunley was raised back in 2000. But the submarine has been agonizingly slow surrendering her secrets.
"She was a mystery when she was built. She was a mystery as to how she looked and how she was constructed for many years and she is still a mystery as to why she didn't come home," said state Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston and chairman of the South Carolina Hunley Commission, which raised the sub and is charged with conserving and displaying it.
Scientists hope the next phase of the conservation, removing the hardened sediment coating the outside of the hull, will provide clues to the mystery.
McConnell, who watched the sub being raised more than eight years ago, thought at the time the mystery would be easily solved.
"We thought it would be very simple ... something must have happened at the time of the attack," he said. "We would just put those pieces together and know everything about it."
But what seemed so clear then seems as murky now as the sandy bottom where the Hunley rested for 136 years. When the Hunley was raised, the design was different from what scientists expected and there were only eight, not nine, crewmen, as originally thought.
The first phase of work on the Hunley consisted of photographing and studying the outside of the hull. Then several iron hull plates were removed allowing scientists to enter the crew compartment to remove sediment, human remains and a cache of artifacts.
Thousands of people, many re-enactors in period dress, turned out in April 2004 when the crew was buried in what has been called the last Confederate funeral.
With the inside excavated, the outside of the hull will now be cleaned before the sub is put in a chemical bath to remove salts left by years on the ocean floor. The Hunley will eventually be displayed in a new museum in North Charleston.
Archaeologist Maria Jacobsen said the Hunley is like a crime scene except that, unlike on television shows, there is no smoking gun.
"If we compare this crime site investigation with, say, a tragic plane crash in the mountains, that investigation would be a lot easier," she said. "You can go to the crash you can see the metal pieces and they have the fingerprints of the crash site."
In the case of the Hunley, some of those fingerprints may be covered with the encrusted sediment on the hull that scientists refer to as concretion.
When the sub was found there was no window in the front conning tower, suggesting it had been shot out, perhaps by Union sharpshooters.
But no glass was found inside the sub and the remains of the captain, Lt. George Dixon, showed no injuries to his skull or body consistent with being shot while looking through the window, McConnell said.
The crew's bodies were found at their duty stations, suggesting there was no emergency resulting in a scramble to get out of the sub. And the controls on the bilge pump were not set to pump water from the crew compartment, suggesting there was no water flooding in.
After the attack both Confederates on shore and Union ships reported seeing a blue light, believed to be the Hunley signaling it had completed its mission.
A lantern with a thick lens that would have shifted the light spectrum and appeared blue from a distance was found in the wreck.
But after the attack, the USS Canandaigua rushed to the aide of the Housatonic and there is speculation that the light could have come from that ship instead.
Could the Canandaigua have grazed the Hunley, disabling her so the sub couldn't surface? A good look at the hull in the coming months may provide the answer.
Historians also know the Hunley needed to wait for the incoming tide to return to shore.
"Were they waiting down there and miscalculated their oxygen and blacked out?" said McConnell.
He said a grappling hook, believed to serve as an anchor of the Hunley, was found near the wreck. Cleaning the hull may produce evidence of a rope showing the sub was anchored, perhaps waiting for the tide to change.
Then there is the mystery of Dixon's watch, which stopped at 8:23 p.m. Although times were far from uniform in the Civil War era, the Housatonic was attacked about 20 minutes later, according to federal time, McConnell said.
One theory is the concussion of the attack stopped the watch and knocked out the sailors on the sub. Or the watch simply might have run down and was not noticed in the excitement of the attack. That could have led to a miscalculation of the time they were under water.
Union troops reported seeing the Hunley approaching and the light through the tower window "like dinosaur eyes or a giant porpoise in the water," McConnell said.
If the Hunley crew miscalculated and surfaced too close to the Housatonic on their final approach they would not have had enough time to replenish their oxygen before the attack, he said.
The clues now seem to indicate the crew died of anoxia, a lack of oxygen, and didn't drown. "Whatever happened, happened unexpectedly, with no warning," McConnell said.
Running out of oxygen can quickly cause unconsciousness.
"One you reach that critical stage, it's like you flick a switch," he said. "It's that fast, like on an
airplane."
Saturday, January 3, 2009
"Prickly City" takes on the Constitution and the Takings Clause
This is from the paper. All credit given, it is from December 31st, KC Star. Prickly City is one of the few comic strips that leans right. The storyline included here is originally from 2005, and deals with a fight for Walmart to build. Walmart has brought on controversy in Virginia, proposing to build within a mile of the entrance to the historic battle site of the Wilderness (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gJpplE9BdF5uEHq4nJg1n5D9o45AD95F6OGG0).
Is Walmart what the founding fathers had in mind when they put in the Takings Clause? Where can we see its use today, in our area? Should Kansas City invoke it to build a light rail system? Where should the trail run? Who should be forced to give up their properties?
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