Saturday August 26, 2006 Weblog
Saturday August 26, 2006 In a front page story yeserday in the China Daily, it was claimed that an drop in temperature was the cause of large numbers of fish dieing due to less oxygen in the water.
This didn't match with my recollection of water's capacity to hold oxygen so I went in search of information about oxygen disolved in water...
I found a web page that lets me calculate the amount of dissolved oxygen in water. This page contains a nice graph that shows the level of dissolved oxygen decreases with an increase in water temperature.
Another prsentation of information about oxygen in water looks more like song lyrics but contains the same basic message - colder water holds more oxygen.
If one were to associate a weather change with a change in oxygen levels in water and these fish dieing, the possible conclusions are:
- air pressure change was significant enough that the level of oxygen present dropped
- rather than the drop from 40 to 20 being the cause of fish dieing, it was the long period of high temperature that caused the drop in oxygen levels
Of course, the usual is also possible: the water has been poisoned by some external source. But whatever the cause, the simple story being put forward in this paper is incorrect.
References:
- http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-08/26/content_674899.htm
- http://www.fivecreeks.org/monitor/do.html
- http://www.arkansasstripers.com/oxygen-and-shad.htm
- http://www.fmfmtp.net/~d-vcj/pair/dissolvedoxygen.html
Wednesday August 09, 2006 Well a lot has happened in the Israel/Lebanon conflict since I last made a blog entry about it. There's been the somewhat ridiculous first attempt at a UN Security council resolution on this (I say ridiculous because allowing Israel to remain inside Lebonese territory would be just that), followed by the denouncement of it by Lebanon. In followup, there's been an ammendment to this proposal by Lebanon to follow up with deployment of their own troops. If an Israeli Justice Minister can go on the radio and make statements about how it is good to hit every Hezbollah person they can, as soon as they can, what picture does that paint of the Israeli Government's respect for human life? And how can he be so stupid to believe that as they pursue this course of action that their deiplomatic standing will improve? What kind of rose coloured glasses does he wear? If you ask me, it is now a battle of terrorist group A (Hezbollah) vs terrorist group B (IDF.)
On the violence side of things, Israel managed to bomb a building in Qana and kill a load of civilians, an incident which the UN security council is asking the Secretary General to investigate for potential breach of a Geneva convention that covers the accepted code of conduct in war. Israel has also followed up with more bombing of Lebanon, destroying bridges to the north, bridges over rivers, just about anything it can. There has also been a recent announcement from Israel that anyone driving a car should consider themselves a military target. Sounds like a week excuse to be indiscriminate in your actions, to me. Of course, once they have flattened southern Lebanon and still find themselves being targetted by missiles, what will they do next? Drop a nuclear bomb there? Watching CNN, they had a short clip on how the Hezbollah are managing to continue on, despite bridges being destroyed and roads being bombed - the countryside is full of sympathisers/supporters. It is hard to see how Israel can ever achieve what it is hoping to achieve with that kind of support.
The most important point in attempted set of negoitiations is to understand that anyone who is asking for a complete disarming of Hezbollah is asking you to believe that the moon is made of cheese. I'm not naieve enough to believe that can ever happen and anyone who expects me to believe it will is insulting my intelligence - and probably yours too.
References
- Israeli air strike 'may be unlawful'
- Israeli military admits it can't stop rockets
- Security Council considers U.S., French truce plan
- Hezbollah's Other War
- Lebanon urges UN to demand Israeli pullout in truce resolution
- Lebanon/Israel: IDF Fails to Explain Qana Bombing
- In quotes: Reaction to Qana incident
