Zooming In on Iran

Zoom in on Iran Zoom out on the Middle East

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made headlines again yesterday, with a speech calling for the downfall of both Israel and the United States. Of Israel, the Iranian leader said, “the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime . . . has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.”

Of the United States, he said, “the time for the fall of the satanic power . . . has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has begun.”

Amid such animosity, we decided it was time to zoom in on Iran. So today, we’ll measure the nation by the numbers and place it squarely on your mental map. Then, tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll retrace Iran’s history, from Alexander the Great to the rise of the current regime.

ran, By the Numbers

1935 - The year Iran asked the West to stop labeling the place “Persia” and to start using the name natives use: “Iran.” The language is still called Persian, though, or Farsi–from the modern province Fars (ancient Parsa, called Persis by the Greeks). Today, Persian is written in Arabic script, a holdover from medieval times, when Persian rulers fell to Islamic caliphs in Damascus and Baghdad.

1979 - The year an Islamic revolution forced Iran’s western-supported shah (”king”) into exile and Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic. In the republic, all adult citizens can vote, but clerics can veto laws and candidates deemed un-Islamic.

636,300 - Iran’s total area, in square miles (1,648,000 sq km). That’s slightly larger than the state of Alaska, and nearly four times the size of Iraq. The country sits on a vast waterless plateau, ringed by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the population lives at the foot of these mountains.

70 million - Iran’s total population. That’s more than France or the United Kingdom, but less than Germany or Turkey. It’s a youthful country–about half of its people are under 25–and increasingly urban. In 1950, about a quarter of the population lived in cities. Now, more than 60 percent do.

7.7 million - The population of Tehran, Iran’s largest and capital city. More than 13 million people live in its metropolitan area, at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea. More than half of the country’s growing industry is based there.

89 - Percent of the population that is Shi’a Muslim. Nearly everyone else is Sunni Muslim. The Shi’ite branch of Islam is the official state religion, and the nation’s post-revolution constitution guarantees Islamic principles of government.

85 - Percent of government revenues that come from oil. Only Saudi Arabia exports more crude than Iran, which is also one of the world’s leading natural gas exporters.

Iran, On the Map

Get a printable map of Iran’s mountainous geography:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_physical.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s mixed ethnicity:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_ethno.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s population centers:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_pop.pdf

–Michael Himick

Humpback Comeback

A deep sea singer returns

Whale watchers worldwide got a bit of good news this week, with the release of a new study that says humpback whales are making a comeback in the North Pacific.

According to the study, the number of whales in the North Pacific may have reached 20,000 for the period between 2004 and 2006. That’s up from a total of fewer than 1,500 whales 40 years ago, when humpback hunting was banned.

Experts still worry that some humpback subgroups are taking longer to bounce back, but one described the news as “definitely very encouraging in terms of the recovery of the species.” It’s certainly enough to make us want to dive in for a closer look at one of the ocean’s marvelous mammals.

Uproarious Rorquals

Humpbacks hail from the family of whales called “rorquals,” which includes the fin whale, the sei whale, and the blue whale, the world’s largest animal. Blue whales can grow to 100 feet (30 meters) and weigh up to 330,000 pounds (150 metric tons), bigger than any dinosaur we’ve yet discovered.

At 45 feet (14 meters) and 80,000 pounds (36 metric tons), humpbacks aren’t nearly as big as cousin Blue. But they can really sing. In fact, according to a 2006 study, humpback whales sing grammatically, combining sounds into phrases, and phrases into songs, according to complex rules called a “hierarchical syntax.” It’s similar to our ability to combine words into clauses and clauses into sentences.

Humpbacks can dance, too. They are among the most acrobatic of whales, sometimes leaping entirely out of the water. Such breaching is common among males during mating season, when humpbacks migrate from polar feeding grounds to tropical breeding grounds. It’s also during mating season that humpback males sing their syntactically sophisticated songs, presumably in pursuit of humpback gals.

Straining for Snacks

Like all rorquals, humpbacks are baleen whales. They feed by taking huge mouthfuls of seawater–literally tons of it–then forcing the water out between hundreds of plates of baleen (a.k.a. “whalebone”) that hang from the roofs of their mouths. The baleen plates work like a sieve, letting water out but keeping krill and other munchable marine life in.

To catch that seafood dinner, humpbacks sometimes use a special technique called “bubblenetting.” First, one or more humpbacks swim in a circle beneath a school of fish, blowing bubbles that float up to form a wall around their prey. Then the humpbacks swim up through their “bubblenet,” slurping the fish-filled water as they go.

It’s clever, and tremendously effective. A humpback whale can catch, and eat, as much as 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of food in a day. But that’s not too surprising–coming from a creature smart enough to sing in syntax.

–Steve Sampson

Coffee on the Brain

Your morning medicine?

Coffee drinkers will tell you that their brains don’t really work until they’ve had their morning cups. Well, this week, neuroscientists announced that those caffeinated cups may actually protect drinkers’ brains–by shoring up a remarkable bit of anatomy known as the blood-brain barrier.

Marvelous Membrane

First noticed by doctors more than 100 years ago, the blood-brain barrier is a sort of physiological filtering system inside the tiny capillaries (blood vessels) inside your head. It helps to protect your brain from chemicals and other “foreign bodies” that may be floating in your blood, including things that do you no harm as long as they don’t invade your brain.

By allowing only certain tiny molecules to squeeze between protective cells, the blood-brain barrier protects your mental machinery from infection–even as it enables essential communication between your brain and your blood.

“Great,” you say, “but what does that have to do with my coffee?” Maybe a lot, especially if your diet isn’t perfect. A new study by U.S. researchers suggests that a daily caffeine supplement, equivalent to a single cup of joe, could help keep your blood-brain barrier hale and hearty.

Caffeine vs. Cholesterol

Previous research has shown that high cholesterol can lead to “leaks” in the blood-brain barrier (and may play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease). Meanwhile, other previous research has pointed to a possible connection between brain health and coffee drinking.

So, for 12 weeks, the researchers fed lab rabbits high-cholesterol diets. They also gave some of their rabbits daily caffeine supplements. Then they tested the rabbits’ blood-brain barriers for damage. Result: the caffeinated rabbits had significantly less blood-brain barrier leakage.

Of course, that doesn’t mean your doctor is about to start prescribing coffee. But it certainly is food for thought. As the study’s lead researcher notes, “caffeine is a safe and readily available drug, and its ability to stabilize the blood-brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders.” Plus, it’s one medicine many would find easy to swallow.

–Steve Sampson

Messages from Mercury

After a journey of more than 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion km), NASA’s Messenger spacecraft has made its first flyby of Mercury and started beaming back messages to us. Want to know what those Mercurial messages say?

Little-Studied World

“Our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data,” says project scientist Sean Solomon. When the last spacecraft to explore Mercury, Mariner 10, made the trip 33 years ago, it could only see 45 percent of Mercury’s surface.

Already, Messenger has seen an additional 30 percent of the surface and beamed back more than 1,200 pictures. And it’s just getting started. Messenger has two more flybys to go, in October 2008 and September 2009. Then, in March 2011, it will fall into orbit around Mercury and stay for a year. Says another project scientist, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

The New Data

Well, we’ve seen a few things. New pictures show previously unknown features of the planet, including a variety of “colorful” impact craters and “The Spider,” a unique geologic formation with more than a hundred troughs radiating from a mysterious central region. Taken together, these new images suggest that Mercury’s geologic past may be more complex and interesting than scientists previously imagined.

What’s more, the largest impact crater on Mercury, called Caloris, is even bigger than scientists thought. Seeing through Messenger’s eyes, scientists now say Caloris stretches as much as 960 miles (1,545 km) from rim to rim. That’s longer than California or Italy. The object that made the crater must have been about the size of Los Angeles.

The Old Data

While scientists dig through all the new data, let’s review some Mercury basics. You remember these key facts, right?

1. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. Earth sits about 93 million miles (150 million km) away from the nuclear fireplace. Venus, about 67 million miles (108 million km). Mercury sits far closer–on average, just about 36 million miles (58 million km) away.

2. Mercury is super hot (and super cold). So close to the sun, the temperature can top 800 degrees Fahrenheit (425 degrees C). But Mercury is not the hottest planet. Venus’s thick atmosphere makes it more hellish. And the mercury on Mercury can dip to near -300 degrees Fahrenheit (-185 degrees C) in some spots. There may even be ice frozen in the deep dark parts of craters near Mercury’s north pole.

3. Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system. The place is only about a third the size of the Earth. Of course, Pluto is even smaller than Mercury, but the International Astronomical Union (IAU) no longer considers Pluto a planet. Want to know why? Find out.

Stating the Union

In front of a half-tough crowd

President Bush will deliver his final State of the Union address tonight. Well, maybe not his final one. After all, nothing in the Constitution says the State of the Union has to be an annual affair. Article II, Section 3 just says the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Nothing in there about doing it once a year. Nothing in there about making a speech, either. In fact, presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson put their statements in writing. So, how did the State of the Union address get to be the way it is? It all started with George Washington.

Precedents for Presidents

In 1790, President Washington delivered the first State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress convened in New York City (then the nation’s capital). At 1,085 words, Washington’s address is among the shortest ever. After hearing the president’s proposals, Congress debated, drafted, and delivered a courteous reply promising its cooperation.

So such speeches went until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president. Jefferson thought Washington’s approach reeked of royalty. (In fact, the idea for the State of the Union address did derive from a British tradition in which the king opened Parliament with a “Speech from the Throne.”) What’s more, Jefferson thought the Congress had better things to do than debate replies to presidential speeches.

Rather than speaking, Jefferson submitted his message in writing–saving Congress from “the bloody conflict which the making an answer would have committed them.” The next 24 presidents followed Jefferson’s lead rather than Washington’s, delivering written “information” instead of speeches.

Memorable Moments

In 1823, James Monroe used his written message to Congress to lay out the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”

In the midst of the Civil War, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln used his message to propose emancipation of the slaves. “The fiery trial through which we pass,” he wrote, “will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.”

Finally, in 1913, Woodrow Wilson decided to follow Washington’s lead and not Jefferson’s. He gave a speech to both houses of Congress–reestablishing, as he put it, that “the President of the United States is a person, not a mere department of the government hailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power.”

Media Darlings

Ten years after Wilson’s speech, Calvin Coolidge delivered the first State of the Union address to be broadcast by radio. But most agree that the master of the radio address was Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1941 famously looked forward to a future founded on four freedoms: “The first is freedom of speech and expression. . . . The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. . . . The third is freedom from want. . . . The fourth is freedom from fear.”

President Harry Truman delivered the first televised State of the Union speech in 1947, but he didn’t do it in prime time. The first president to take full advantage of the power of prime-time TV was Lyndon Johnson, in 1965. The following year saw the first televised opposition response immediately following the address. So much for carefully debated replies.

Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

 

 

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

//

Where’s Osama? Who knows! But lots of experts think he’s holed up somewhere in the arid, punishing, mountainous terrain along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border–hiding in a tiny crack in colonial history.

Imperial Overreach

During the 19th century, Britain ruled India, but Her Majesty’s agents in central Asia had a problem. Czarist Russia was starting to creep down into the region from the northwest. Well aware that many past invasions of India had come from that direction, the British decided to extend their imperial influence northwestward into Afghanistan–to create a buffer between their Raj and the Russians.

But Afghanistan proved easier to overrun than to run. British soldiers achieved Pyrrhic victories in two wars (1839-42 and 1878-80), but they never established control over the region–and they never subdued the fiercely independent Pashtun peoples living in the highlands around what is now the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Let’s Make a Deal

Eventually, the British just made a deal with Abd al-Rahman Khan, the emir of Kabul, who had gained influence over Afghanistan’s various ethnic, tribal, and subtribal groups. In 1893, Sir Mortimer Durand met with al-Rahman to establish who owned which turf. Durand drew a line on a map–since called the Durand Line–that cut right through Pashtun tribes and villages. Though al-Rahman and the Afghans protested almost immediately, it effectively (or ineffectively) became the border between Afghanistan and British India.

Then as now, Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line were united by language (Pashto), tribal traditions, ethnicity, a strict brand of Islam, and a code of behavior that emphasizes honor, dignity, hospitality, and the relentless pursuit of vengeance when wronged. They were also famously fierce fighters–so fierce that the British decided to “live and let live” with the tribes on their side of the border. As long as tribal elders maintained some semblance of order, and paid minimal respects to the British viceroy at Delhi, the British left them alone to handle their own affairs.

Let’s Make a Deal, Part II

In 1946, with the British already committed to leaving India, civil war erupted between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations. To the British, partitioning Muslims from Hindus seemed the best choice. So, in 1947, India got self-rule, but so did Pakistan–a “land of the pure” cartographically created out of Muslim-majority provinces in British India.

As a bouncing baby nation-state, Pakistan was in no position to change the convenient arrangement the British had created with the Pashtun tribes. So it didn’t. Instead, it carved the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas” (FATA) out of its North-West Frontier Province. To this day, Pakistani courts and police have no jurisdiction in the FATA, and Pakistani troops looking for terrorists–like, say, Osama bin Laden–have to fight their way into its unruly regions.

–Steve Sampson