Hiiumaa House

Hiiumaa is the second-largest of the many islands off the coast of Estonia, in the Baltic Sea. Of the islands I have visited, Hiiumaa is my favorite. It’s still relatively undeveloped (despite the land boom from moneyed Finns), I suspect because of the relatively long ferry ride to get there. The only ferry currently servicing Hiiumaa leaves from Rohuküla, on the west coast of mainland Estonia and over an hour’s drive from Tallinn (the main city and port of entry to Estonia).

Estonia has hundreds of islands, but only four major ones, of which Hiiumaa is the second-largest, at about 300 square miles. At its highest point, Hiiumaa rises only 200 feet out of the Baltic sea; like the rest of Estonia, it is essentially low and flat. It’s located in the far west of the country, about 15 miles off the coast of the Estonian mainland. The western reaches of Estonia, including Hiiumaa and Saaremaa, are on an area of the earth’s crust that is rising at the rate of about 1/8 inch per year. Hiiumaa emerged from the Baltic sea about 8500 years ago (rising as the weight of the retreating glaciers came off), and has been occupied by humans for about 7000 years. The island is basically composed of limestone, with a large number of erratic boulders (mainly granite) deposited by the melting and retreating glaciers.

On this particular trip, after the 90 minute ferry voyage that deposited me in Heltermaa, I headed first toward Kärdla, the largest town on the island. I took the main road at first, then diverted toward Hellamaa to get off the main track a bit. The countryside is very pretty everywhere on the island, with small farms and forests dominating the landscape. Near Kuri I spotted this particularly nice farmhouse, built mainly of granite blocks from erratic boulders. Many of the farmhouses incorporate some erratic boulders, and I’ve seen others that were entirely built of them (like this one), but none quite so fine as this.

These erratic boulders fascinate me, as they look so out of place compared to the rest of the geology of Estonia. You can see a fine picture of a large erratic boulder here, but most of them that I’ve seen are much smaller. They are mainly granitic rock, almost all of them a reddish or pinkish color — very attractive. On my many hikes around Estonia, I’ve run into them just about everywhere — even in the bottom of meteorite craters (another interesting phenomenon of Estonia geology that I’ll write about on another day).

The history of these erratic boulders is really quite simple, once you discover the mechanism. The granite outcroppings occur naturally far to the north, in what is today Finland. During the ice age, when great sheets of thick, heavy ice pushed southward, they scraped chunks of this Finnish granite off. As the glaciers ground their way southward, the chunks were abraded and crushed, forming the rounded boulders we see today. Some of them worked their way up from the bottom of the glacier as the ice itself was crushed and melted as it moved. Eventually those boulders made it to modern-day Estonia, and considerably further south. But when the ice age ended and the glaciers melted, those boulders in or below the ice sheet in Estonia found themselves on dry land there — and untold numbers of them, of all sizes, then littered the landscape.

I’ve read that the distribution of size versus number is exactly the kind of exponential curve you’d expect: there are an extremely large number of small “boulders” (potato size and smaller), and a quite small number of really large boulders (say, a cubic meter or so, or larger). The larger ones in Estonia have all been named; most are in parks or protected areas, and have well-marked trails leading to them. The excellent maps available in Estonia mark the locations of these “erratic boulders", and I’ve visited many of them. Only on rare occasions have I met anyone at one of these boulders (I once surprised a pair of lovers who, I think, never knew I was there <smile>!). But it’s clear from the well-walked trails that they are nonetheless often visited — I’ve never found one that was neglected.

The farmers on Hiimuaa knew a good building material when they saw it, as this handsome house attests. Thankfully there are plenty more boulders in situ, with the largest and most interesting actively protected.

As usual, click on the photo for a larger view…

Absent Decorum

At the funeral for Coretta Scott King, some Democrats took the opportunity to use this public platform for some Bush-bashing (ex-President Jimmy Carter and Reverend Joseph Lowery, in particular). If your main source of news is the MSM, you probably don’t even know about this. The politicization of Mrs. King’s funeral is all over the blogosphere, however.

On the right side of the blogosphere, the commentary is mostly about the lack of decorum displayed by these Democrats. The feeling is that such political discussion was completely inappropriate at a funeral service. I share this perspective — I believe the eulogies and speeches at a funeral should be about the person who died, and the life that he or she lived. When the funeral is for someone of such accomplishment as Mrs. King, someone held in such high regard by nearly everybody … well, then, appropriate remembrances shouldn’t be hard to come by.

On the left side of the blogosphere, by and large the commentary is more like this example:

From the DailyKos:

Is there anything we do that they do approve of? Besides continuing to give birth to self-hating Toms like the Condoleeza Rices, Clarence Thomases, Kenneth Blackwells, and Lynn Swanns of the world?

Someone not Republican in MSOC’s thread said that folks should have “sat down and been quiet”. Clearly we now must also have white funerals if we are to be accepted as equals.

I’ll alert the media.

In other words, flat-out rejection of the idea that Carter and Lowery said anything inappropriate. On other posts you’ll find outrage at the simple presence of President Bush (whose remarks, by the way, were all about Mrs. King) at the funeral — the general notion is that he is a Republican, and Republicans have no right to be at the funeral of a civil rights leader. As best I understand the logic of these posts, that right is earned only by having participated in civil rights marches in the '60s. Or something like that.

I actually watched the funeral service; I suspect (from their comments) that many writers on both sides of the aisle have not. I was moved by most of the eulogies; shocked by one (the Reverend Lowery), angered by one (Jimmy Carter), and thought several others were quite inappropriate for the occasion.

Once again, my overwhelming reaction is one of sadness for our country, and the state of its political conversation. And in this case, of sadness that the family and friends of the good Mrs. King had to suffer through the politicization of her funeral by Carter, Lowery, and others.

Decorum in our public conversation is a very useful device. The absence of decorum has consequences. Mrs. King’s funeral is one example; in my opinion, we’ve lost forever the chance to celebrate her life publicly and collectively — this is a loss not only for her family, but also for the nation she was a proud citizen of. That chance is not likely to be repeated. In other circumstances, the absence of decorum helps polarize people on opposite sides of a discussion, to the point where a useful, civil debate cannot be held. We all lose on this. There are many positions that liberals hold that I find incomprehensible, and I would love to gain an understanding of how they come to hold those positions. I cherish the unfortunately very rare occasions when I get to take a peek into a liberal’s brain — I always learn something, and sometimes I change my own positions as a result. But the uncivil discussions that dominate our current political context, such occasions remain rare. That’s a sad thing.

So I call for some more decorum, please — knowing that it’s almost certainly a futile gesture. If 9/11 couldn’t shock our political debate into more decorous form, I don’t know what the hell could…

Oops!

For decades, nutritionists, doctors, and others have recommended low-fat diets for their health benefits. In recent decades, this community has attributed reduced rates of cancer (especially colon cancer and breast cancer), heart attacks, and strokes to such a diet. Millions of people have tried, with varying success, to follow the (wildly variable and conflicting) guidelines propounded by these people in an effort to improve their health or simply to lose weight.

Oops.

A just-published, $415M, eight-year federal study of 49,000 women concludes that a low-fat diet in fact does none of these things (at least, not with the study’s target audience of 50 to 79 year old women). Women on low-fat diets had cancer rates, heart attack rates, and stroke rates insignificantly different from those of women who ate whatever the heck they wanted to.

Oops.

And it gets worser: the women on the low-fat diets didn’t even succeed in losing weight.

Oops and double-oops.

Lest you think this study was some light-weight, flaky, fly-by-night sort of thing, consider this:

From the New York Times:

"These studies are revolutionary,” said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. “They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy."

The study, published in today’s issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, was not just an ordinary study, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. It was so large and so expensive, Dr. Thun said, that it was “the Rolls-Royce of studies.” As such, he added, it is likely to be the final word.

"We usually have only one shot at a very large-scale trial on a particular issue,” he said.

Oops.

The way that this study turns preceding consensus belief on its head is a great example of the value of the scientific process. Even the combined education, experience, and intuition of a large group of well-informed people can turn out to be wrong — and has, on countless past occasions. We often mock the ancients for their belief that the universe revolved around the Earth — the the fact is that their beliefs were the consensus of the best-educated, best-informed, most-respected people of their time. We’re no different, and their are other recent medical beliefs to use as illustrations. For instance, just a couple of decades ago, the consensus amongst scientists and medical professionals was the stomach ulcers were caused by stress and excess acid. Oops. It turns out that they’re caused by a bacterium, and they are easily treated. Decades of well-informed consensus turned out to be wrong. Looks like they’re wrong again.

One difference with this particular affair, though, is that there is a multi-billion dollar industry with a vested interest in the belief that low-fat diets are healthy. This industry, it’s easy to predict, will do everything they possibly can to impeach this study. The battle will be interesting to watch…

I’ll leave you with the “money quote” from the NYT article (it’s also how they concluded):

But Dr. Freedman, the Berkeley statistician, said the overall lesson was clear.

"We, in the scientific community, often give strong advice based on flimsy evidence,” he said. “That’s why we have to do experiments."

Oops.