Sighting: Comet Machholz

At the convenient local observatory, located just outside the back door, I just spotted a comet I read about on an email list a couple days ago. It’s Comet Machholz, discovered by an amateur astronomer of that name in the Sierra Nevada last August. If you’ve got very sharp eyes or a very dark sky, you can see it (a little bit to the south and west of the Pleiades tonight and moving toward the north night by night) unaided. The sky is just a little too bright here and my eyes too fuzzy to make it a naked-eye event for me, though Tom managed to pick it out once he’d seen it through the binoculars.

I think it’s the fifth comet I’ve seen: West (1973), Halley (1986), Hyakutake (1996), Hale-Bopp (1997), and Machholz. Get out there. Be prepared to say “wow!” Or “what is that thing?” Or “I think I see something.”

10,000 Wounded

The newest casualty figures from the Department of Defense (it updates the number of killed daily or as needed and generally gives a revised total for wounded in action every Tuesday) shows the number of wounded in battle since we went into Iraq has now surpassed 10,000 (that’s in addition to 1,340 dead, 1.049 of those killed in action as of today).

Of the 10,252 wounded to date, 4,856 were “WIA RTD” — wounded in action and returned to duty within 72 hours. The report that said 5,396 of the wounded did not return to duty within 72 hours. The Pentagon’s stats also show that about 95 percent of the wounded have been injured since Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” event on May 1, 2003. The Defense Department describes action in the period from that date to the present as “post-combat ops.” Doesn’t “post” mean “after”?

All Pentagon and media bashing aside, I’d say that TV and print outlets have done a generally awful job reporting on the wounded. You rarely come across even a simple weekly summary of how many troops have been wounded. And getting into the reality of the kinds of injuries the troops are suffering, what kind of care they’re getting, and how the services treat those who are disabled. It’s part of the real face of the war that most people just don’t get to see (though we do get to see lots of images of happy troops watching sporting events; there was another example last night with troops in Baghdad rooting for Virginia Tech during ABC’s telecast of the Sugar Bowl. I’ll bet anything we get a repeat during the USC-Oklahoma game, complete with rah-rah commentary from the political dimwits in the broadcast booth).

Of course, you can’t talk about our 10,000 wounded without considering the carefully unreported details of Iraqi casualties since the war began. Ideologically driven efforts like Iraq Body Count aside — which at this point appears to attribute all Iraqi deaths, even Iraqi police officers and soldiers killed by insurgents, to the United States — there’s really no authoritative source for these numbers or for details that might show important trends in the actions (for instance, the bloodbath among Iraqis that has unfolded in Mosul over the past couple of months).

Tsunami Aid: Norway Number 1

Based on the stats in my earlier-posted list, here’s the per capita ranking for selected nations and their government contributions to the tsunami relief effort (it would be interesting to do the nation-by-nation stats on private contributions, too, but I need to get off my butt and so something resembling real work at some point today). And yes, that number for Norway is correct. The government in Oslo raised its initial pledge of 100 million Norwegian kroner (about $16.3 million) to 1.1 billion kroner ($180 million) (as reported in the English edition of Aftenposten). Norway’s population is just 4.6 million, so the per capita figure exceeds that of even the sparsely populated Number 1 donor in total aid, Australia). If the United States made a commitment at a similar rate to Norway’s, its aid figure would come to a little more than $11.5 billion.

(Just for fun, I’ve thrown in each country’s world ranking in per capita GDP from the CIA World Factbook; the rankings are in parentheses after each country’s per capita aid figure in U.S. dollars).

–Updated on 1/5/04 to reflect new aid commitments from Australia and Germany.

–Updated on 1/8/04
to reflect new aid commitments and add Kuwait, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland.

–Updated on 1/8/04 to add Finland and the Netherlands and update French aid total.

–Updated on 1/9/04 to reflect increased aid commitment from Finland.

–Updated on 1/11/04 to reflect increased aid commitment from Canada.



1. Norway:
$39.13 (Per capita GDP rank: 2)

2. Australia: $37.82 (14)

3. Qatar: $29.76 (36)

4. Denmark:
$14.11 (8)

5. Canada: $13.24 (11)

6. Switzerland: $13.00 (7)

7. Finland: $12.56 (22)

8. Sweden: $8.33 (24)

9. Germany: $8.17 (21)

10. United Arab Emirates: $8.00 (32)

11. Kuwait: $4.35 (47)

12. Japan: $3.91 (17)

13. Taiwan: $2.21 (31)

14. Netherlands: $2.09 (16)

15. Spain: $1.69 (34)

16. New Zealand: $1.68 (35)

17. United Kingdom: $1.61 (19)

18. European Union: $1.36 (26)

19. United States: $1.19 (3)

20. Saudi Arabia:$1.17 (69)

21. France: $1.05 (20)

22. China: $0.05 (120)

Tsunami Bucks (Per Capita Edition)

Just because it appears to be a subject of interest based on searches reaching the information-laden Infospigot site, here’s a quick listing of some of the notable government tsunami aid pledges and how they break down into per capita amounts. I don’t have time to write a table, so the numbers are presented in a sort of unattractive (but still useful, I hope) fashion: The country name (with a link to a news source) is followed by the current announced aid commitment stated in U.S. dollars (I calculated exchanges using an online calculator at XE.com). The number in parentheses is the initial aid pledge, if known. The rest is self-explanatory: national populations are stated in millions and are linked to national government statistics sources where possible.

One conclusion I’m inclined to draw from the numbers is that most governments around the world, including ours, simply underestimated the magnitude of the disaster the region was dealing with. I’d say Japan and Norway were the early exceptions to that: Japan, perhaps, because of its familiarity with tsunamis and their effects and Norway because it was mindful of how many of its citizens were in the region. The sense that the event wasn’t initially seen as the catastrophe it was is reinforced by reading the transcript of Colin Powell’s State Department press briefing on Monday morning, more than 36 hours after the tsunamis struck. He actually led off with the head of USAID talking about the $15 million the United States was contemplating committing to the relief effort. But the reporters on hand were more interested in talking about Iraq and other subjects and never, as far as the record shows, asked any questions critical of the amount suggested.

–Updated 1/5/05 with increased aid commitments from Australia and Germany.

–Updated 1/8/05 to add statistics for the European Union, Kuwait, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates.

–Updated 1/8/05 to add statistics for Finland and the Netherlands and update France’s aid total.

–Updated 1/9/05 to update Finland’s aid total (thanks, Tuomas).

–Updated 1/11/05 to reflect new Canadian aid (thanks, Jordon).

Australia: $764M ($15.6M). Population: 20.2. Per capita: $37.82

Canada: $425M ($3.3M). Population 32.1. Per capita: $13.24

China: $63M ($2.6M). Population: 1,300. Per capita: $0.05

Denmark: $76.2M ($1.8M). Population: 5.4. Per capita: $14.11

European Union: $618M ($30M). Population: 456.3. Per capita: $1.36

Finland: $65.3M ($4M). Population: 5.2. Per capita: $12.56

France: $64.6M ($0.135M). Population: 61.7. Per capita: $1.05

Germany: $674M ($1.35M). Population: 82.5. Per capita: $8.17

Japan: $500M ($30M). Population: 128. Per capita: $3.91

Kuwait: $10M. Population: 2.3. Per capita: $4.35

Netherlands: $34M ($2.6M). Population: 16.3. Per capita: $2.09

New Zealand: $6.9M. Population: 4.1. Per capita: $1.68.

Norway: $180M ($16.4M). Population: 4.6. Per capita: $39.13

Qatar:$25M. Population: .84. Per capita: $29.76

Saudi Arabia: $30M ($10M). Population: 25.6. Per capita: $1.17

Spain: $68M ($1.35M). Population: 40.3. Per capita: $1.69

Sweden: $75M ($0.75M). Population: 9. Per capita: $8.33

Switzerland: $96.2M. Population: 7.4. Per capita: $13.00

Taiwan: $50M ($5). Population: 22.6. Per capita: $2.21

United Arab Emirates: $20M. Population: 2.5. Per capita: $8.00

United Kingdom: $95.1M ($1.3M). Population: 59.6. Per capita: $1.61.

United States: $350M ($15M). Population: 295.2. Per capita: $1.19

(Source for statistics on earlier/initial aid offers are mostly from “Reuters Factbox: Nations pledge aid after Asia tsunami disaster” (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/110433536336.htm). Most press sources are now giving the initial United States commitment as $35 million, but they’re incorrect. The initial total offered by the State Department was $15 million and is detailed in a transcript of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s press briefing, along with the head of USAID, on December 27.)

Sunday Satire

Pancakes

It’s another rainy day in Infospigot’s neighborhood. What better way to pass the time than with the Sunday papers, an occasional glance at TV football, and a plate full of pancakes (Kate was inspired by watching Alton Brown explain the history and science of flapjacks on the Food Network; you think I’m kidding, but the picture above is included to show I’m not). I struggled through The New York Times crossword. I read the obits in the Chronicle. And I happened across an awful opinion piece in the Chronicle’s Sunday “Insight” section.

The column, by former Wall Street Journal reporter G. Pascal (Greg) Zachary, is titled “India, Indonesia didn’t prepare for the worst.” It ventures to lecture India for spending money on developing nuclear weapons and Indonesia for diverting profits from its oil industry away from one of the provinces stricken by the December tsunami. That’s all fine. I guess governments everywhere could have more enlightened priorities. But gee, Mr. Zachary, where do you or any other American get off giving someone else a hard time for their weapons obsessions or economic greed or for ignoring their people’s vital needs? Naturally we’re the smartest, best (and best-looking!) people on Earth. But I’d think the Iraq fiasco, the national missile defense folly, the Enron scandal, health-care and pension crises and the incipient collapse of public education for the poor would lend us a sense of humility.

I was bugged enough that I wound up writing a letter to the section’s editors:

Editor:

G. Pascal Zachary’s piece (“India, Indonesia didn’t prepare for worst,” Jan. 2, 2005) almost fooled me. What I took at first to be hypocritical carping about the irresponsibility of Asian nations hit by the December tsunami turns out to be satire almost too subtle to contemplate. Zachary scolds India for, among other things, diverting precious resources into an arms race. He wags his finger at Indonesia for its greed in dividing the spoils from its oil industry. He indicts both governments for failing to adequately care for their citizens. Wow. Really hard-hitting stuff. For good measure, he throws in a swipe about India stealing U.S. jobs. As a contrast to such short-sighted selfishness, he offers us Americans, who “naturally … can see past their narrow self-interest.”

Of course, you have to look past a literal interpretation of Zachary’s words to glimpse their Swiftian brilliance. What Zachary’s really getting at is how India and Indonesia are merely aping the example of the United States (and other powers of South and Southeast Asia’s glorious imperial past) when they waste treasure on weaponry, put profits for the wealthy ahead of citizens’ welfare and pursue policies that say to their own people and the rest of the world “we couldn’t care less what you think.”

Congratulations on a masterpiece.

We’ll see if it runs. I’m sure my note is just one among many.

It’s Here

It’s taken me 23 hours and 49 minutes (and counting) to take official notice of the seemingly inevitable development that unfolded time zone to time zone across the world in the last x number of hours: 2005 has arrived. I spent a good deal of the first day of the year outside, walking along the Emeryville shoreline (that’s Emeryville, California, if you’re not a San Francisco Bay Area local) with Kate and our neighbors Piero and Jill and Marie. Later, Kate enticed me to go to a New Year’s party that some friends were throwing up in the hills by offering to walk there. It was a great hike, under clearing early evening skies, but the surprising feature of the foray was seeing several acquaintances from my earliest days in Berkeley whom I hadn’t seen or talked to in 20 years or more. How is that possible?

That’s it really. Maybe I’ll talk resolutions for 2005 and reflections on 2004 later. Maybe.

Meantime, it’s started raining again as the clock ticks toward January 2. More later.