Leadership and Innovation: Gutenberg Sparked A Learning Revolution

 

Johannes Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press, contrary to popular belief.

What he did was far more complicated and important.

He took others' creations — such as ink, movable metal type and a simple paper press — and improved them.

The result was a complete system that could mass-produce any text.

Michael Hart, in "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History," argues that Gutenberg is the eighth most important person who ever lived (just ahead of Christopher Columbus): "Without him, the invention of modern printing might have been delayed for generations. His press was a major factor  — possibly even the crucial factor — in triggering the revolutionary developments of modern times."

In a 1998 Time-Life list of the greatest leaders and inventors of the past millennium, Gutenberg towered over all others.

Gutenberg (1398-1468) was born in Mainz, by the Rhine River in Germany, the youngest son of a well-to-do goldsmith who worked for the Catholic bishop's mint.

On The Go

When he was 13, the professional guilds tried to force the rich to reduce the cost of loans to Mainz, so the Gutenbergs moved down river to Eltville. Johannes graduated from college in nearby Erfurt in 1420 and returned to Mainz to work for the mint.

Nine years later he left, probably in reaction to another breakdown in negotiations between the guilds and the upper class.

By 1434, he was living in Strasbourg, where ideas for a new printing process came to him, as he put it, "like a ray of light." Two years later he set up a partnership with the owner of a paper mill and one of his former apprentices while he continued to work as a goldsmith.

But in 1439 he ran into financial problems when 32,000 metal mirrors he manufactured could not be immediately sold. They were designed for an Aachen holy-relic exhibit, which was postponed for a year due to floods.

To appease investors, he shared a secret: His printing press was in progress.

By 1450 he was back in Mainz operating his press, thanks to an investment by a businessman and a loan from Gutenberg's brother-in-law.

"There is a cliche about inventions that they burst to life in the minds of poverty-stricken loners, who struggle in garrets to turn brilliant novelties into material form," wrote John Man in "The Gutenberg Revolution." "But he was quite well off, he was a great team worker, and most of the materials and devices for his invention existed before he came along."

Gutenberg built his system on innovations that had made it possible to print limited copies:

• The Chinese invention of paper, introduced in Europe in the 12th century.

• The Roman screw press for agriculture, adapted to print on paper.

• Movable type, which meant producing letters or punctuation on wood or metal stems that could be reused to create new pages.

• Oil-based ink, which avoided smearing on wet paper, crucial in the printing process.

All of those innovations needed extensive improvement to make printing easier and faster — and Gutenberg made it happen.

He divided the printing process into two steps.

1. Making the type and setting it. Using his goldsmithing skills, he created an alloy from lead, tin and antimony and used it to cast type in molds. This produced tiny blocks that were strong and provided uniform figures. The type led to text for a page arranged in a frame to slide into the printer.

2. Printing. He invented a movable undertable for the press on which sheets could be changed quickly. He had to experiment to find the right type of paper for the new process, since most sheets were too hard or soft. He also tried out old ink recipes to find the best formula for using metal type on paper.

Gutenberg's lesson is to build on the achievements of others to create your own success.

Because Gutenberg did not print his name on what he published, speculation abounds over what he printed. His early publications are believed to have been church documents and a Latin textbook.

His best-known work was the Gutenberg Bible, of which he made 180 copies in two volumes totaling 1,275 pages each.

The first volume was published in 1454 and cost the equivalent of three years' wages for a clerk.

The Advantage

This was dramatically cheaper than handwritten versions, whether printed on paper or vellum, a product made from calfskin. Some of his Bibles were also lavishly illustrated by hand after printing and sold at a premium.

With only 5% of Europe's 50 million people literate in 1450, the prospects for mass consumption of pamphlets and books didn't seem bright.

And even the press system was labor-intensive.

One compositor could typeset just two pages a day. On top of that, several people had to operate each press, and once the pages were printed, they had to be dried, cut and compiled into bound books.

Gutenberg ended up employing as many as 30 people at a time.

Yet it all proved worth it.

"Gutenberg originally saw his innovation as a way to produce expensive texts for rich patrons more easily, such as his massive Bibles," Steven Goldman, author of the Teaching Co. audio course "Great Science Ideas That Changed the World," told IBD. "Soon enough, new opportunities enabled by this technology became apparent, and the market took off, much as it did for the Internet, which was originally designed for linking researchers in nuclear physics. Europeans became instantly print-drunk."

Onward

Gutenberg and progress were soon on a roll:

• The Protestant Reformation was driven in large part by mass distribution of its ideas.

• Martin Luther's first writings critical of the Catholic church sold 300,000 copies from 1518 to 1520.

• The first newspaper was published in Venice in 1556.

•Scientists could finally share discoveries easily.

• Latin declined in usage, as publications appeared in local languages, which inspired nationalism.

According to Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin in "The Coming of the Book," European printers by 1500 had produced 20 million texts. A century later the number had ballooned to 200 million.

"The explosion in books required a comparable increase in production of paper and ink, which required the creation of a whole new kind of industry, with larger mills, more raw materials, more investment, increased transportation capacity, more extensive marketing and distribution, and more workers who were technically trained," said Goldman, who is a professor of history and philosophy at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. "Publishers needed authors to create original content, which drove a book-selling industry, which created a demand for education, promoting further growth!"

Gutenberg himself didn't get rich. In 1456, just as money from his Bible production was about to roll in, his overdue investors cynically foreclosed on his print shop.

"Gutenberg never played the victim," wrote Man. "He stayed in Mainz and made a fighting comeback. Among other things, he published 300 copies of a 754-page Catholic encyclopedia in 1460, containing 5 million characters, twice the number in the Bible."

In 1462, war broke out between rival claimants to the archbishop of Mainz, and Gutenberg backed the loser. He had to move back to Eltvile, where he set up a small print shop. Then in 1865, the archbishop of Mainz pardoned his enemies to bring peace to the realm.

Three years later in Mainz, he died. His grave has been lost, but cemetery records note that he was "inventor of the art of printing, deserver of the best from all nations and tongues, to the immortal memory of his name."

Tue, Nov 12 2013 00:00:00 E A04_LS
By Scott Smith

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

11/11/2013

Confronting the Legacies of Slavery

Otto Dettmer

Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

 

DURHAM, North Carolina — Late one afternoon in March, officials unveiled a new monument at the University of the West Indies, in Cave Hill, Barbados. The ceremony featured African drumming, a historian’s lecture, a bishop’s prayer and a song performed by a school choir with the chorus, “We cry for the ancestors!”

Those ancestors, 295 of whom have their names on the monument, were slaves who once lived where the campus now stands. What today is a university was once a plantation. What is now a nation was once a colony. In Barbados and throughout the Caribbean, slavery remains a vivid and potent metaphor, and a cultivated memory.

Presiding over the event was Sir Hilary Beckles, the head of the university and a prolific historian. He and his Jamaican colleague Verene Shepherd have spurred on the recent call by the 15-member Caribbean Community for Britain, France and the Netherlands to pay an undefined amount of reparations for slavery and the slave trade. The group plans to file suit in national courts; if that fails, it will go to the International Court of Justice.

Uniting the Caribbean around any kind of policy is not easy. The region is linguistically and politically fragmented, with links to former colonial powers or the United States often trumping cooperation. But with this new call, the community, known as Caricom, is tapping into one thing that all its member states have in common: the lingering effects of slavery.

Calls for reparations have a long history. As early as the 1790s, one French anti-slavery activist argued that the enslaved could easily ask not just for freedom but for repayment for generations of unpaid labor. But at the time of emancipation, the British granted not the ex-slaves but their former owners “reparation” in the form of a large financial indemnity.

Haiti won its freedom 1804, but in 1825 it agreed to pay an indemnity to France in return for diplomatic recognition. The money was used to compensate French plantation owners.

Today this all seems shocking. In 2001 France decreed slavery a “crime against humanity,” and the U.S. Congress formally apologized in 2008 for the “enslavement and racial segregation of African Americans.” American universities have begun to apologize for their historical links to slavery. And thanks to films like “Twelve Years a Slave,” Europe and America are being forced to confront the realities of slavery on-screen.

But only reparations can reverse the long-term harm. As Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said, “We have to have appropriate recompense.”

The claim is not, however, about compensating individuals, but their communities. And in this way, since most countries in the Caribbean are financially in debt to international banks, Caricom is making a provocative argument: It is actually Europe that owes the Caribbean.

This is more than just creative accounting. When economists debate why some countries are poor and others are rich, they often focus on the cultural, political or economic structures of poor countries. But historians of the Caribbean have long argued that national inequality is a direct result of centuries of economic exploitation.

The foundations for this argument go back to a 1944 book by the Trinidadian historian Eric Williams, “Capitalism and Slavery.” Mr. Williams had to pay $500 to help subsidize its publication by the University of North Carolina Press, but the book became a classic, and he later became his country’s prime minister.

His argument, that the profits from the slave trade and slavery were the foundation for Britain’s Industrial Revolution, spurred decades of debate and research, and today there are hundreds of books documenting slavery’s profound impact on the modern world.

But knowing is one thing; figuring out what to do is another.

Consider this: In 2003, Haiti’s president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, called on France to repay the 1825 indemnity, which he blamed for his country’s poverty. The argument was historically sound: to pay France, Haiti had had to borrow money from French banks, entering a century-long cycle of debt.

But a French commission concluded that, while there was a responsibility on France’s part, financial reparation was not the solution. Its report suggested that French aid to Haiti was a kind of “reparation” and urged more of it.

After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, President Nicolas Sarkozy offered an aid and debt-forgiveness package to the country. But the French government never officially apologized, let alone offered compensation.

Despite the rightness of the Caribbean nations’ claim, European governments are likely to respond similarly this time. If Caricom accepts this approach, the call for reparations may ultimately just come to play a strategic role within international negotiations over aid and trade.

Perhaps, though, something more will come of this. In the United States, calls for reparation have long served mostly as a catalyst for debate. One good way to make the point that something is important, after all, is to attach a monetary value to it.

That goes for history, too. Scholars have worked for decades to educate people through their writing and teaching. Now their arguments will be heard in court, and perhaps find their way into headlines.

Just as important, the discussions around reparations — in the Caribbean as in Europe — might become an occasion to delve into history, to mourn but also confront the many ways in which the past continues to shape the present.

What would it mean to truly rid our world of the legacies of slavery? In the Caribbean, it would mean undoing the divisions created by colonialism, through regional economic cooperation and reduced dependence on foreign aid and foreign banks.

It would mean, above all, ending the continuing mistreatment and stereotyping of Haitians, who were the pioneers in the overthrow of slavery and have been paying for it ever since.

In Europe and the United States, it would mean abandoning condescending visions of the Caribbean and building policies on aid, trade and immigration based on an acceptance of common and connected histories.

It would mean, above all, consigning racial discrimination, exploitation and political exclusion to the past. That would be the truest form of reparation.

 

Laurent Dubois

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES. October 28, 2013

Laurent Dubois, a professor of romance studies and history at Duke, is the author of “Haiti: The Aftershocks of History.”

 

The HIV rebound nobody is discussing

Is an AIDS-free generation on the horizon? Not without the help of sex workers and other marginalized "key populations," public health officials say.

Hawa Abdallah works in a brothel in Tanzania's largest city, where a third of sex workers are infected with HIV.

 Photo by Mia Collis/The Global Fund

The world needs more prostitutes like Hawa Abdallah. At least that’s what many public health officials believe.

There’s something about the 25-year-old the harsh angle of her eyebrows, the way her red lipstick contrasts with the dirty walls, the cold stare she directs at passing men -- that says she’s in control. Abdallah has sex with as many as 20 men every day in a brothel in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's largest city, where 1 in 20 residents and 1 in 3 sex workers are infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

But a series of simple steps have kept Abdallah healthy until now: She knows how HIV spreads. She is tested regularly. And she’s confident enough to insist that her customers use condoms every time. Just as importantly, she’s managed to avoid the assault, arbitrary arrest and extortion that plague the profession. Health officials say that unless more prostitutes start fitting a similar profile, the world doesn’t stand a chance at beating back the virus.

It’s not just sex workers, of course. The same applies to injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, inmates and other groups in which HIV rates have moved against the global trend, and continue to rise. Which is why experts with organizations as diverse as the World Health Organization and Human Rights Watch agree that government officials must do more to support these “key populations” - no matter how illegal their activities may be - if they want to see an AIDS-free generation within their borders anytime soon.

Halting the spread of HIV among these key populations comes down to a series of calculated risks for both governments and the individuals themselves. Abdallah’s calculations started several years ago.

She never intended to spend her nights negotiating in the dark with a never-ending stream of drunks. She wanted to be a hair stylist. But the young woman quickly discovered that no matter how busy her beauty salon became, no matter how many hours she put in cutting and braiding hair, she rarely earned more than $20 per day -- not nearly enough to support her two young children and a long-term boyfriend who scrapes by as a motorcycle taxi driver.

Her first night in the brothel, she made close to $60 -- triple the amount in a fraction of the hours. Her boyfriend discovered what she was doing and tried to make her to stop.  “I have refused,” she said. “It’s worth the risk.”

Among the most immediate of those risks: It’s illegal. Tanzanian law states clearly that men and women caught “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” can be locked up for three months. Male sex workers can be charged with “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” and punished with a minimum of 30 years and a maximum lifetime sentence. Officials consider both prostitution and homosexuality to be threats to the social order.

But of course, those same officials have also been preoccupied with a far more serious societal threat in recent years. When HIV began ravaging Africa, making its population the most-infected on the planet in the last decades of the 20th century, the virus struck Tanzania particularly hard. By the mid-90s, close to 1 in 10 Tanzanians were dying; a generation of children were orphaned; local economies buckled. And for years, the Tanzanian government lacked the resources to respond in force.

The situation changed to some extent in the early 2000s when the newly formed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, among other groups, began funneling billions toward the cause. At long last, Tanzanian officials -- like many of their neighbors in sub-Saharan Africa -- had both bragging rights and the numbers to back them up. Treatment coverage jumped from 3.5 percent in 2005 to 55 percent in 2011. The number of health facilities providing HIV care and treatment services rose from a few dozen in 2004 to about 1,200 in 2012. Mother-to-child transmission of the virus plummeted. People started living longer.

With similar results coming in from around the world -- including one from UNAIDS showing a 50 percent drop in new infections in more than 25 low- and middle-income countries over the previous decade -- former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood before a crowd in Washington in 2012 and declared that “as we continue to drive down the number of new infections and drive up the number of people on treatment, we will get ahead of the pandemic, and an AIDS-free generation will be in sight.”

But optimism wasn’t running quite so high in the back alleys and brothels of the world --including Abdallah’s. While HIV prevalence among the general population has decreased to 5 percent in Tanzania, it’s on the upswing globally among “key populations” at the greatest risk for contracting and passing HIV, according to an August 2013 report from the Foundation for AIDS Research, or amfAR.

In fact, HIV prevalence is 22 times higher among people who inject drugs. In low- and middle-income countries, men who have sex with men and female sex workers are 19 and 13.5 times more likely, respectively, to have HIV than their peers. Many researchers have long downplayed the rates in key populations, believing they represent only a “modest share of the epidemic globally” and represent a major concern only in countries with low-level epidemics. But amfAR contends that members of these groups are critical because they are often part of “dense, high HIV-prevalence social and sexual networks” that help the disease spread rapidly from one population to another.

Consider 22-year-old Abdul Rashid. After stumbling into a community resource center several miles from Abdallah’s brothel in Dar es Salaam, Rashid -- still strung out on marijuana and cocaine -- was tested for HIV. The results came back quickly: Positive. And he wasn’t a bit surprised.

Rashid enjoys having sex with female prostitutes at a brothel near his drug den. But the premium he pays for sex without a condom, combined with the high price of drugs, long ago left him in such a financial bind that he started having sex with men for cash. To top it off, police also recently arrested him for selling drugs and threw him in one of the local jails -- notorious places for sex among inmates. Within the last few months alone, Rashid may have spread the disease widely within all four of the primary “key populations” in Tanzania. If those individuals then have sex with their partners -- who are often not a part of the high-risk groups -- the virus then spills into the general population.

Sitting in a filthy orange T-shirt on the floor of the drug center, Rashid seemed too dazed to care. “I have no option to change my status, so I must say, ‘OK, if that’s the case now, I have nothing to do,’” he said.

Of course, this situation isn’t unique to Tanzania. Key populations and their sex partners account for as much as 51 percent of new infections in Nigeria, 33 percent in Kenya, 80 percent in Morocco and 47 percent in the Dominican Republic. And according to some estimates, men who have sex with men alone could make up more than half of all new infections in Asia by 2020, amfAR reports.

"Sex workers do not have a place to speak against injustices done to them ... If they go to the police, the police just become their customers for that night."

“Unless effective strategies are put in place to mitigate the HIV burden in key populations, the global epidemic will worsen over time, preventing the world from realizing the dream of an AIDS-free generation,” the group warned in its August report.

That brings us back to Tanzania’s dilemma -- similar to the one faced by most countries where prostitution is illegal. Should officials enforce the law of the land or facilitate safer testing and treatment for prostitutes in the name of public health? 

When drafting their “Strategic Framework on HIV and AIDS” several years ago, the government decided to take a calculated risk and “acknowledge the vulnerability of sex workers and men who have sex with men.” The document advocated for their access to HIV prevention information and services and, surprisingly, “for decriminalization of their activities.” Despite the worries of some that it would come across as a tacit endorsement of illegal activities, the officials decided to push ahead with this approach because the potential gains in the HIV fight could be huge.

And it’s worked, to a limited extent. A report published in June by Human Rights Watch found that “a few state hospitals and some nongovernmental organizations throughout the country” have succeeded in providing friendly services to the “most at-risk populations.” Through its health agencies, the government has also supported the outreach efforts by local governments and nonprofits. Even so, this limited success is “systematically undermined” by police officers who abuse their authority and often make things worse, the report concludes.

“The Tanzanian government has committed on paper to reduce the stigma for at-risk groups, but that commitment is meaningless if the police regularly rape, assault, and arrest them,” concluded Neela Ghoshal, the author of the Human Rights Watch paper. “The government’s HIV policy can’t succeed if police are driving away the very people the public health programs most need to reach.”

A survey by the country’s National AIDS Control Program in 2010 found that a full third of sex workers in Dar es Salaam reported being beaten by their customers, but few felt comfortable reporting the crimes to police. When Human Rights Watch interviewed 66 men, women and children who were current or former prostitutes, at least 23 said the police had forced them into sex -- often in exchange for release from custody. Some of those police officers refused to use condoms, “making the police possible conduits for transmission of HIV and other STIs.”

As a public health worker in the city of Mwanza told the group, “Sex workers do not have a place to speak against injustices done to them ... If they go to the police, the police just become their customers for that night.”

The situation is not much better at government health centers. The same Human Rights Watch report identified dozens of cases in which “health workers turned away sex workers and other key populations from health facilities, or publicly humiliated them.”

That includes a case where a drug addict went for treatment after being attacked by a mob in Dar es Salaam and was denied anesthesia while the staff stitched up his wound. “I asked for it, and the nurse said, ‘We don’t need to. We are going to sew you without. We could inject you with poison rather than with anesthesia.” In another example, a gay man in the semi-autonomous region of Zanzibar asked to be treated for a sexually transmitted disease and was told to leave. “You already have sex with men,” a staff member told him. “Now you come here to bring us problems. Go away.”

Experiences like those create an atmosphere of fear and distrust that pushes these key populations so far underground, they become almost impossible to reach with HIV prevention messages, testing or treatment. “And that’s woeful,” said Dr. Ade Fakoya, a senior advisor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. “Because it’s coverage of these very basic, essential interventions which is key to the death of the epidemic.”
Some organizations have managed to break through. As the sun sank a little lower one recent evening, some health workers partnering with the nonprofit Public Services International began setting up camp in the courtyard of Abdallah’s brothel.

She sat several feet away, watching as they erected an Army-green burlap tent and pulled out tables, pamphlets, rubber gloves and HIV test kits.

Because it was still early, and because the truck drivers and local drunks hadn’t started spilling from the nearby bars, many of the prostitutes were relaxing on the stoops outside their rooms. Some had begun drinking to brace for the hours ahead. Others played with their children.

About 150 women between the ages of 15 and 49 spend their nights in this particular brothel - a small fraction of the 7,000 plying the streets of Dar es Salaam - and most seemed to know the drill. When one emerged from behind the green flaps of the tent, another stood and entered for her check-up.

“We’re not afraid of these tests,” Abdallah said, unconvincingly. “I’ve done this before. So have they.” To prove it, she clutched the sides of her black floral purse -- embroidered with the word “Sweet” -- a little more tightly and headed into the tent.

Program Manager Shahada Kinyaga watched her from a distance. “It wasn’t this easy in the beginning,” she said. “When we first approached them, they were thinking maybe we were police officers looking to exploit them or that we wanted to publicize their activity to get them into trouble. They wouldn’t let us come near.”

To change that, the PSI workers took the time to speak with a single sex worker, sharing health information and returning repeatedly. Eventually, that sex worker started sharing bits of the knowledge with her friends in the brothel -- how to get free condoms, for example, and how to tell if a customer is infected with syphilis or herpes. In time, the women allowed PSI to hold workshops on building “negotiation skills” to convince their customers to wear condoms and to set up the HIV testing tent. Those diagnosed as HIV-positive began listening to the health workers about follow-up care at local clinics, and reported back about whether they were receiving the appropriate treatment. Bottom line: It’s not that the women didn’t want help -- it was a matter of who to trust.

“So, more of them are doing this now,” Kinyaga said. “They are testing more regularly. They are using condoms more. Some of them don’t do it 100 percent of the time, but it’s a step.”
Inside the tent, Abdallah’s black-and-white striped pantsuit stood out starkly in the diffused light filtering through the burlap. She looked like a stylish prisoner in a war camp. She also looked worried.

These moments of dread -- of waiting for test results -- are part of the calculated risk Abdallah accepted from the beginning. But she tries to tell herself that if she plays the game well, if she insists that every one of her customers uses a condom every single time, if she tests regularly and receives follow-up treatment when needed, she stands a good chance of living to see her two children grow old. Within a few years, she’ll also have enough money in the bank to build a home and open her own beauty parlor. That endgame is why she’s here in the first place -- why she says, “This is a good environment for me.”

Within 30 minutes, her test results are ready. Her face is stone-cold and will remain that way no matter the verdict. Abdallah knows that as long as she works in this brothel, the uncertainty will linger. HIV-negative. For now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Jason Kane traveled to Tanzania with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The international financing institution provides funding to countries to support evidence-based programs that prevent, treat and care for people living with the three diseases
PBS, Nov. 5, 2013.

 

 

10 Old Wives’ Tales People Still Believe (Kitabu koko)

Few people really think a watched pot will never boil, but many still believe a few other old wives' tales.

We've all heard old wives' tales -- half-remembered bits of folklore, quack medicine and superstition passed on as the gospel truth. And while thinking that a broken mirror creates bad luck might seem preposterous (surely, we tell ourselves, no one actually believes that sort of thing), some old wives' tales are amazingly persistent and continue to hold credence with a surprising number of us. You might even have thought one or two tales were true yourself!

Carrots improve night vision
Many people think that eating carrots, or other foods rich in beta-carotene, will improve their ability to see in the dark. In fact, there is no medical evidence to support this belief. The idea may originate in propaganda from the Second World War: The British government claimed the keen night vision of its fighter pilots was the result of eating carrots. In fact, it was merely disinformation intended to prevent the German intelligence services from discovering the British had mounted radar sets in some of their aircraft.
Toads give you warts
If you look at a toad's bumpy skin, it's easy to see how people might believe that touching one would give them warts. The bumps on a toad, however, are not warts. They're simply a characteristic of the toad's skin. The warts that people get are caused by a virus -- specifically a human virus -- and are not transmitted by toads.
Too much TV hurts your eyes
Most people remember being warned by their parents that too much television would hurt their eyes. But in truth, there is no known link between watching television and permanent eye damage. Staring at a screen for too long can cause temporary eye fatigue, however, which might be how this old wives' tale started.
The mother’s abdomen indicates the sex of the baby
Even today many people believe that the way a pregnant woman carries her baby can predict the child's sex. If the mother's tummy is more pronounced at the top, the belief goes, the child will be a girl, whereas if the mother is "carrying low" it will be a boy. Actually, though, there is no connection between the mother's belly shape and the child's gender. It's the individual structure of the mother's body that determines the shape of her abdomen during pregnancy, not the child's sex.
You shouldn’t swim after eating
Children eager to splash into the sea or a swimming pool are often warned that if they go swimming within a half-hour or an hour after eating, they'll get cramps. In fact, there's no known correlation between eating before swimming and getting cramps. The body is perfectly capable of digesting and swimming at the same time.
You will catch a cold if you go outside with wet hair
An old conviction states that a person who goes outside with wet hair will catch a cold. But in reality, damp hair has nothing to do with whether you catch a cold or not. Like warts, colds are the result of viral infections. Contact with other infected people is the root cause, not wet hair.
Shaving your legs makes hair grow back thicker
Shaving your legs doesn't make the hair on them grow back more heavily. If that were the case, men, who tend to shave their faces daily, would all have impenetrable beards of incredible proportions. This belief probably originates from the fact that a razor typically cuts hair at the thickest part, making the trimmed hair seems larger. New hair growing against shaved skin also stands out more because of the contrast.
Feed a cold, starve a fever
Many fever sufferers have diminished appetites when they're unwell, but that doesn't mean they actually ought to be eating less. People suffering from either a fever or a cold need a healthy, balanced diet with plenty of fluids. There is some evidence, notably a 2002 study from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, that indicates fasting may stimulate an immune response in some fevers, but the data is not sufficient enough to conclude fever patients should ever be starved.
Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis
Crack your knuckles in public and you can be certain some busybody will warn you that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. The good news is it doesn't. The bad news is habitually cracking your knuckles over many years may cause a reduction in grip strength and flexibility, according to rheumatologist Dimitrios Pappas on the John Hopkins Arthritis Center website. It may not be arthritis, but it's a good reason to avoid it.
Cats choke babies
Cats have always had bad press in folklore, often presented as malevolent tricksters. An old wives' tale holds that cats will suck the breath out of the mouths of newborn babies. Another version of the tale claims that cats will sleep on babies' faces, smothering them. The first is impossible, and the second is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, the ASPCA recommends that pets of any kind always be supervised around small children. This is so children, who don't understand the consequences of their actions, won't harm or frighten pets or be bitten or scratched.

James Holloway

Ehow.com

Galaxy may have 11 billion Earth-like planets

This artist's rendition shows Kepler-69c, an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, located about 2,700 light-years from Earth. Photo: Associated Press

Our Milky Way galaxy is crowded with far more habitable Earth-like planets than previously thought - at least 11 billion of them in orbit around distant stars, a team of planet hunters led by UC Berkeley astronomers said Monday.

Erik Petigura, a Berkeley graduate student, analyzed data from the Kepler spacecraft and calculated that at least 50 billion stars much like Earth's sun are blazing throughout the galaxy. Kepler itself has been crippled since last summer by damage to its steering gear and is no longer providing new information to earthbound scientists.

But based on current data provided by Kepler and its telescope over the past four years, Petigura estimates that 11 billion planets roughly the size of Earth are flying in orbits around those suns - at distances that make temperatures on the planet neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist.

Astronomers call that kind of orbit the "Goldilocks zone," and it's where astronomers will focus their search of life, they say.

It's possible that even more Earth-like planets exist than Petigura estimates, for his analysis takes into account only one class of hot stars that are known to be very much like our sun. There are other stars called red dwarfs that are about the size of our sun only cooler, and many so-called "exoplanets" may be circling them too, he said.

When those red dwarf stars are included, there may be as many as 40 billion Earth-size planets in habitable zones of the Milky Way with mild temperatures that are similar to climates on Earth, Petigura said.

Petigura's colleagues are Andrew Howard, a former Berkeley postdoctoral fellow now at the University of Hawaii, and Geoffrey Marcy, the Berkeley professor and pioneer planet hunter who has been leading the search for "exoplanets" since the first was discovered 18 years ago.

Their report is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and they discussed it Monday during a news conference.

Marcy called the Kepler spacecraft, with its remarkable telescope, "the best planet-hunting machine ever."

Its flood of data, he said, is answering the question countless others around the world are asking: "whether our planet Earth is some kind of cosmic freak, or instead is a common occurrence within our Milky Way galaxy."

The astronomers are joining 400 other scientists reporting new results this week at the second international Kepler Science Conference at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

November 4, 2013

David Perlman is The San Francisco Chronicle science editor.