Like a Noah's Ark wreck in Zanesville

Jack Dikian

October 2011

We all heard about how Sheriffs in, Zanesville Ohio had to hunt down and shoot 48 animals - including 18 rare Bengal tigers and 17 lions 6 black bears, 3 mountain lions, 2 grizzlies, one wolf and one baboon. This was after Terry Thompson, owner of a private Muskingum County Animal Farm threw their cages open and then committed suicide.

Officers were ordered to kill the animals instead of trying to bring them down with tranquilizers for fear that those hit with darts would escape in the darkness before they dropped and would later regain consciousness.

Jack Hanna, a TV personality and former director of the Columbus Zoo defended the sheriff's decision to kill the animals, calling deaths of the endangered Bengal tigers especially tragic. He went on to saying “It's like Noah's Ark wrecking right here in Zanesville, Ohio,"

And he’s not wrong. In the year 1900 there were approximately 50,000 tigers on the earth, but now there is only 4,000 left in the world. The population has decreased because due to poachers and other cruel or selfish acts. The Bengal tiger is protected in many places such as the Nagarahole National Park and the Ranthambhore National Park. It is estimated that there is less than 4000 Bengal tigers today.

Interestingly, as the hunt winded down on Wednesday, a photo showing the remains of tigers, bears and lions lined up and scattered in an open field went viral provoking visceral reactions among viewers, some of whom expressed their anger and sadness on social networking sites.

Antimony is incompatible with life

Jack Dikian

October 2011

Recently we learned of a toxic pollution from an old Antimony mine which appears to have killed fish for dozens of kilometres along the Macleay River in northern NSW. The state government said there was no increased health risk because the contamination, east of Armidale, was diluted, but nevertheless alerted residents along the river as a precaution.

Antimony is a semi-metallic chemical that can exist in the metallic form as a bright, silvery, hard and brittle element; and the non-metallic form as a grey powder making up about 0.00002% of the earth's crust.

Humans have made use of antimony compounds for millennia. The mineral stibnite (Sb₂S₃) was used in Egyptian cosmetics four or five thousand years ago as an eyeliner. In more recent times, it’s used to make certain types of semiconductor devices, such as diodes and infrared detectors.

Antimony alloys are also used in batteries, low friction metals, type metal and cable sheathing, among other products. Antimony compounds are used to make flame-proofing materials, paints, ceramic enamels, glass and pottery.

However, Antimony and many of its compounds are very toxic, and the effects of antimony poisoning are similar to arsenic poisoning. Inhalation of antimony dust is harmful and in certain cases may be fatal; in small doses, antimony causes headaches, dizziness, and possibly depression. Larger doses such as prolonged skin contact may cause dermatitis; otherwise it can damage the kidneys and the liver, causing violent and frequent vomiting, and will lead to death in a few days.

An identity crisis

Jack Dikian

October 2011

These days people don’t necessarily have to embarrassing monikers to change their names. You may not recognize the names Mr. Marion Morrison, aka John Wayne and Mr. Reginald Dwight, read Elton John.

It seems, in England at least changing one's name has become increasingly popular. According to the latest figures from the UK Deed Poll Service, 30% more applications were processed in September compared with the same month the previous year.

It is estimated that a record 58,000 people will change their name by the end of 2011 - an increase of 4,000 on the previous year. A decade ago, only 5,000 people changed their names.

There is a celebrity influence as the UK Deed Poll Service has confirmed 15 new Wayne Rooneys, 5 Amy Winehouses and 30 Michael Jacksons as well as nearly 200 people with "Danger" as their middle name.

Some seem to change their name for different reasons all together. Consider for example, 300 people opted for John Smith – a good, solid, albeit less inspired choice. Some change their name as an escape. US-born model and niece of Osama Bin Laden, Wafah Dufour, took her mother's maiden name after the events of 11 September 2001.

Hotels and Clubs should call themselves Casino

Jack Dikian

October 2011

By now we have all heard, and perhaps even participated in the debate on the issue of problem gambling and how governments, or more to the point the Gillard federal Government, can legislate the use of pre-commitment technologies to enforce the amount so called gamers (read gamblers) will wager in a given period.

Now I’m not going to get into the psychology of gambling - the personality risk factors, the impulsive personality, and perhaps the influence this has on the development of an impulse control disorder and possible pathological gambling.

What I do want to say is relatively simple. If the commercial viability of hotels and clubs is based on the economics of poker or slot machines – then the obvious (maybe naive) question has to be why. Surely if pokies have such an impact on the bottom line then perhaps hotels and clubs should all call themselves “casinos” and stop describing their venues as family friendly, promote association with sporting bodies, and exist on every street corner.

Secondly, how is it, (and this is from the 1999 Australian Productivity Commission) that there were 180,000 (more recent reports estimate this to be around 200,000) poker machines in Australia. Given that there is/was an estimated 860,000 machines in the world – Australia represents about 21% of all the gambling machines in the world. Put another way, we have over 20% of all the gaming machines in the world. Given the size of our population – it won’t take a genius to see we have an underlying problem.

On a per capita basis, Australia has more than five times as many pokies and other gaming machines than the United States.

Here are some stats:

38.6% of adult Australians play the pokies
- In 2003 / 2004 gamblers lost $9.1 billion on pokies. The average chance of winning the jackpot playing 1 line is 1 in 50,000,000 
and the average chance of winning the jackpot playing 20 lines is 1 in 2,500,000.

A hole five times the size of California

Jack Dikian

October 2011

Ozone (O₃) is a pale blue gas, slightly soluble in water is constantly being produced and destroyed by various reactions associated with ultraviolet light from the sun. Normally, the production and destruction balances, so the amount of ozone at any given time is pretty stable. Ozone helps shield us from damaging or harmful ultraviolet rays.

Over the years it has been reported that human activity has changed the natural balance. For example, manufactured substances such as chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons have been known to destroy stratospheric ozone much faster than it is formed.

The Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer, an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances was opened for signature in September 1987, and entered into force on January 1, 1989.

And even though the production of chlorofluorocarbons has stopped for some fifteen years, a paper in the British science journal, Nature reports that an ozone hole five times the size of California has opened over the Arctic for the first time. The loss of ozone is largely put down to a deep cold, which causes water vapor and molecules of nitric acid to condense into clouds in the lower stratosphere.

The graphic is a NASA image showing ozone at about 20km altitude. Red represents large ozone, purple and grey represent very small ozone amounts, and the white line marks the area within which chemical ozone destruction takes place. Source: The Australian and AFP

Health Service Performance by Country

Jack Dikian

October 2011

In 2000 The World Health Organization carried an analysis of the world’s health systems using 5 performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states. 1

The five indicators:

• Overall level of population health
• Health inequalities or disparities within the population
• Overall level of health system responsiveness
• Distribution of responsiveness within the population
• The distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population

One key finding is that the impact of failures in health systems is most severe on the poor everywhere, who are driven deeper into poverty by lack of financial protection against ill- health. Also it seems that performance does not necessarily reflect the amount of money spent on health.

The U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of gross domestic product on health services is ranked 18^th.

1. The World Health Report 2000 – Health systems: Improving performance.
Published by the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
Price: 15 Swiss francs (10.50 Swiss francs in developing countries) 
ISBN 92 4 156198 X

The full report is available on www.who.int/whr

1. France
2. Italy
3. San Marino
4. Andorra
5. Malta
6. Singapore
7. Spain
8. Oman
9. Austria
10. Japan

32. Australia