The Poor Mouth

12 July 2010

11 July 2010

Today is the 15th Anniversary of the start of the Srebrenica Massacre in which over 7000 Bosniaks (Muslim Bosnians) were slaughtered by Serbs swapite being in a so called UN safe area.

Today hundreds of victims of the Srebrenica massacre were buried at a ceremony to mark the 15th anniversary of the atrocity/ 775 coffins with the remains of newly identified victims from mass graves are being laid to rest at the Potocari cemetery, outside Srebrenica.

In a significant development Serbian President Boris Tadic is attending the ceremony. In March, Serbia's parliament passed a landmark resolution apologising for the massacre, saying Belgrade should have done more to prevent the tragedy.

Bosnian Security Minister Sadik Ahmetovic told the crowd the international community should help bring fugitive Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Radko Mladic - "the man who brought us our suffering" - to justice.

Mr Tadic, whose attendance brought a mixed response from mourners, said: "With the arrest of General Mladic I would know that part of my job is finished. We need this for the future, for building confidence, for our forthcoming generations."

Hasan and Suhra Mahic, both in their 80s, were finally burying their sons Fuad and Suad. "I would have preferred that all of us have been killed together, then we would not have had to live through this," Hasan told the AFP news agency.

Ramiza Gurdic was burying her son Mehrudin, alongside her husband and another son already in the cemetery. "How can you forget, how can you forgive? I think about them every day. I go to bed with the pain and I wake up with the sadness."

What more could I add to tis?

When bacterial infection is a form of protection

Last week the Guardian reported on a relationship evolving between a bacterium and a fruit fly in the US. The relationship is highly beneficial as it protects against a parasitic nematode.

Parasitic nematode worms Howardula aoronymphium infect female larvae of the fruit fly Drosophila neotestacea, where they prevent the eggs from developing. The worms also reduce mating success and survival in male flies.

"The mother worm gives birth to literally thousands of live young in the abdominal cavity of the fly," said John Jaenike of the University of Rochester in New York, who led the research. "From there they work their way into the ovaries. The female fly thinks she's laying eggs, but she's actually laying nematodes," he said.

But the flies have a trick up their sleeve. For years researchers have suspected that Spiroplasma, a bacterium that is passed directly from mother to larva through the egg, is protecting the flies.

They found that parasitised females became more fertile after exposure to Spiroplasma. The nematode-carrying flies that had not been infected with bacteria became sterile.

Spiroplasma seems to protect the flies from the ill effects of worm infection in a textbook example of symbiosis. Both the fly and the bacterium benefit from the situation: the fly gets protection from worms, and the bacterium gets somewhere to live.

The symbiotic relationship between fly and bacterium seems to have been spreading across the US over the past three decades. "The effect in the wild is absolutely whopping," said Jaenike. "Back in the 1980s every nematode-infected fly was completely sterile ... The situation is different today. They were getting clobbered in the 1980s but now they have quasi-normal nematode infection levels."

In the 1980s, only 10% of wild flies were infected with Spiroplasma in the eastern US. That figure had jumped to 80% when a survey was conducted in 2008. Wild females infected with the bacterium had more than 10 times as many eggs in their ovaries as uninfected females.

The bacterium appears to be spreading from east to west across the country, so Jaenike wants to repeat the survey this year to find out if Spiroplasma has reached the west coast.

"The speed of the spread is interesting, but what I personally find astounding is that we can see it," said Jaenike. "Something happening in 20 years is a split second on an evolutionary timescale."

He compared the way the bacterium is passed from generation to generation of flies to how mitochondria are passed from parent to child in humans. "What we are seeing are the early stages of a beneficial relationship. Who knows where it will lead?"

Well there you have it I could go into a rant about the heresy of evolution but it wouldn’t really be that convincing now!

McGonagall in praise of thespians

LINES IN DEFENCE OF THE STAGE
by William McGonagall

Good people of high and low degree,
I pray ye all be advised by me,
And don't believe what the clergy doth say,
That by going to the theatre you will be led astray.

No, in the theatre we see vice punished and virtue rewarded,
The villain either hanged or shot, and his career retarded;
Therefore the theatre is useful in every way,
And has no inducement to lead the people astray.

Because therein we see the end of the bad men,
Which must appall the audience - deny it who can
Which will help to retard them from going astray,
While witnessing in a theatre a moral play.

The theatre ought to be encouraged in every respect,
Because example is better than precept,
And is bound to have a greater effect
On the minds of theatre-goers in every respect.

Sometimes in theatres, guilty creatures there have been
Struck to the soul by the cunning of the scene;
By witnessing a play wherein murder is enacted,
They were proven to be murderers, they felt so distracted,

And left the theatre, they felt so much fear,
Such has been the case, so says Shakespeare.
And such is my opinion, I will venture to say,
That murderers will quake with fear on seeing murder in a play.

Hamlet discovered his father's murderer by a play
That he composed for the purpose, without dismay,
And the king, his uncle, couldn't endure to see that play,
And he withdrew from the scene without delay.

And by that play the murder was found out,
And clearly proven, without any doubt;
Therefore, stage representation has a greater effect
On the minds of the people than religious precept.

We see in Shakespeare's tragedy of Othello, which is sublime,
Cassio losing his lieutenancy through drinking wine;
And, in delirium and grief, he exclaims -
"Oh, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!"

A young man in London went to the theatre one night
To see the play of George Barnwell, and he got a great fright;
He saw George Barnwell murder his uncle in the play,
And he had resolved to murder his uncle, but was stricken with dismay.

But when he saw George Barnwell was to be hung
The dread of murdering his uncle tenaciously to him clung,
That he couldn't murder and rob his uncle dear,
Because the play he saw enacted filled his heart with fear.

And, in conclusion, I will say without dismay,
Visit the theatre without delay,
Because the theatre is a school of morality,
And hasn't the least tendency to lead to prodigality.

Don't forget McGonagall Online for all your Tayside Tragedian needs