Accidental Blogger

Women and Prairie Voles

The last elections may only manage to put a skidding brake and not a complete halt on the run-away train wreck that is the Bush administration. Despite the thumpin' at the polls, the Bushies are bent but not broken. Even in the lame duck years of this presidency, Bush and his cronies will seek to do as much harm as they can get away with. Democratic law makers need to be suspicious, vigilant and ever conscientious in containing the damage. Despite congressional oversight, Bush can do extensive harm with cynically ideological political appointments.  Congress can't stop them all - some don't require congressional approval. But for the sake of America and common decency, every Bush nominee (political and judicial) who comes up for confirmation, must be looked at with a microscope and a fine toothed comb. If he can get away with it, Bush will place in position of power reactionary ideologues who will play havoc with the social, cultural and political fabric of this country. Here is an example of what I have in mind.

Demeaning to women
A physician known for peddling bad science gains power over health services for millions.

Everybody makes mistakes. Doctors, even excellent ones, are not exempt. But a physician who consistently promotes false data so as to influence patients' gravest personal decisions falls far outside the norm. This month, the Bush administration placed just such a doctor in a position of enormous power to affect the health of 5 million Americans. The choice is absurd and irresponsible.

President Bush appointed Massachusetts obstetrician-gynecologist Erik Keroack to direct family planning programs for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Keroack certainly has experience in the field: He was medical director of A Woman's Concern, a chain of crisis pregnancy centers. The organization's Web site calls distribution of birth control "demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness."

To dissuade women from choosing birth control or abortion, the group relies on more than ideology. Under Keroack's direction, the centers burdened women with medical information that was twisted, debunked or brazenly fictitious. Among its erroneous claims, the group asserts that condoms "offer virtually no protection"against herpes or HIV. How many cases of sexually transmitted disease has that dangerous disinformation caused? In fact, as Slate magazine notes, the National Instititutes of Health report that condom users have an "85 percent decrease in risk of HIV transmission."

A Woman's Concern also preaches the egregious falsehood that teenagers who receive abortions "may face an eight times greater risk of contracting breast cancer by age 45." This dangerous propaganda has been debunked repeatedly by medical professionals, most recently by the National Cancer Institute.

Keroack personally takes responsibility for a bizarre, unsubstantiated theory meant to promote abstinence. Citing the body chemistry of a tiny rodent called a prairie vole, Keroack claims that humans who have multiple sex partners develop a neuropeptide deficiency that renders them unable to form long-lasting bonds. Scientists, including one Keroack cites as a reference, call the theory scientifically unsupported.

Keroack now distances himself from the tactics of A Woman's Concern. Perhaps, then, the public could view his past direction of the group's medical curriculum "mistaken." He has not, though, convincingly discarded his hostility to birth control. Given that Keroack's out-of-the-mainstream views are his most distinctive trait, it's fair to guess that the president chose Keroack to appeal to his base rather than to improve women's health.

Keroack's penchant for spreading bad science has won him the power to affect the health of millions of women. He will oversee 4,600 family planning clinics federally mandated to provide family planning counseling, birth control, breast exams and other health services. Bush could hardly have made a more cynical choice. For 5 million American women, Keroack's appointment is a grave medical mistake.

Dissing Military Parents: Bush's Old Habit

First Cindy Sheehan, then Dolores Kesterson and now Senator Elect Jim Webb of Virginia, whose campaign hinged largely on his opposition to the Iraq war.  It seems that George Bush just doesn't know how to treat parents whose children are fighting and dying in his wars, with the proper respect they deserve. During a meeting with newly elected lawmakers at the White House, Bush had the following exchange with Webb.

"At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source."

But unlike the two gentle Gold Star mothers Bush has insulted before, Webb is an angry father. And a feisty combat veteran to boot. His reaction to Bush's dismissive curtness?  He wanted to slug Bush ! Wow! I bet Webb was feeling exactly as many other military parents feel towards the Commander in Chief.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

“Jim did have a conversation with Bush at that dinner,” said Webb’s spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd. “Basically, he asked about Jim’s son, Jim expressed the fact that he wanted to have him home.” Todd did not want to escalate matters by commenting on Bush’s response, saying, “It was a private conversation.”

A White House spokeswoman declined to give Bush’s version of the conversation.

A Legacy of White Wash

George W. Bush plans to raise mega bucks for his presidential library.  The target amount is a whopping 500 million dollars.  This kind of money will surely not go towards buying multiple copies of My Pet Goat. More likely, it is meant for re-writing history. For the right price, you can buy the right historian to polish up a tattered and tarnished legacy. But can a whole fleet of dedicated scribes put this Humpty Dumpty of a presidency back together? I don't know. The faintest ink is more permanent than the longest memory. Perhaps a way ought to be found to preserve all liberal blogs of the past five years in a parallel archive.  They contain the eye witness account of Bush's terrible regime and can act as a counterpoint to whatever lies the Bush library plans to propagate for posterity.

WASHINGTON - He may be a certified lame duck now, but President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library.

Eager to begin refurbishing his tattered legacy, the President hopes to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush lived in Dallas until he was elected governor of Texas in 1995.

Bush sources with direct knowledge of library plans told the Daily News that SMU and Bush fund-raisers hope to get half of the half billion from what they call "megadonations" of $10 million to $20 million a pop.

Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential "mega" donors and are pressing for a formal site announcement - now expected early in the new year.

"It's a stretch," said another source briefed on the plans. "It's so much bigger than anything that's been tried before. But the more you have, the more influence [on history] you can exert."

The half-billion target is double what Bush raised for his 2004 reelection and dwarfs the funding of other presidential libraries. But Bush partisans are determined to have a massive pile of endowment cash to spread the gospel of a presidency that for now gets poor marks from many scholars and a majority of Americans.

The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Bush's institute will hire conservative scholars and "give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President's policies," one Bush insider said.

It remains to be seen whether Bush's low standing in the polls and his rejection by voters in the midterm elections will make it harder to raise funds.  There's another major inducement for potential donors: Their names aren't required to be made public.

Arianna Huffington has a humorous take on Bush's elaborate and expensive attempt at misrepresenting his failed and reviled presidency. Half a billion dollars for a white wash? How much does it cost to tar and feather?

Bees,Dogs and Monkeys (Sujatha)

Ruchira has animals on the brain, and now so do I. I thought immediately of her post "Liquid Explosives and Solid Lies" when I found this curious news item about trained bees being used to detect explosives.
There go the hopes of all those corporations spending millions of dollars on developing complex detection equipment!
And for your edification, this non-news news: First Dog Barney has been pressed into service to cheer up the troops in Iraq.
OK, so the last piece wasn't really true, but this one is. Be very afraid, your job's going to get outsourced next to the trained monkeys. It's truly one for the macacas!

How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?

Or the iguana, the civet cat, the monkey or the chinchilla? Pet ownership in affluent societies now goes far beyond Fido, the canine and Fluffy, the feline. Too far, may be. Exotic animals as household pets is a relatively new practice in normal households. The ever increasing demand for rare animals is fueled by celebrity ownership of such animals and by parents indulging their children's whim of wanting to be different. But what looks cute in a zoo or on Discovery Channel, may be hazardous to our health if housed in our homes. Zoonotic diseases caused by infectious agents crossing over from animals to humans are caused by close encounters between man and beast.  The recent scares over global epidemics of avian flu and SARS are instances of such cross-species infections. The danger of pathogens crossing over from rare animals to humans is that it often takes a long time before the source of the infection can be identified. The HIV virus for example, has been suspected to have entered the human population from monkeys who can carry the simian version of the virus.

Exotic animals captured in the wild are streaming into the U.S. by the millions with little or no screening for disease, leaving Americans vulnerable to a virulent outbreak that could rival a terrorist act.

Demand for such wildlife is booming as parents try to get their kids the latest pets fancied by Hollywood stars and zoos, and research scientists seek to fill their cages.

More than 650 million critters — from kangaroos and kinkajous to iguanas and tropical fish — were imported legally into the United States in the past three years, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documents obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

Countless more pets — along with animal parts and meats — are smuggled across the borders as part of a $10 billion-a-year international black market, second only to illegal drugs.

Zoonotic diseases — those that jump to humans — account for three-quarters of all emerging infectious threats, the CDC says. Five of the six diseases the agency regards as top threats to national security are zoonotic, and the CDC recently opened a center to better prepare and monitor such diseases.

The Journal of Internal Medicine estimates that 50 million people worldwide have been infected with zoonotic diseases — those carried by animals that can be spread to humans — since 2000, and as many as 78,000 people have died.

U.S. experts don't have complete totals for Americans, but partial numbers paint a serious picture:

•Hantavirus, which is carried by rodents and can cause acute respiratory problems or death, has sickened at least 317 Americans and killed at least 93 since 1996.
•More than 770 people have been sickened since 2000 with tularemia, a virulent disease that can be contracted from rabbits, hamsters and other rodents. At least three people have died.
•Three transplant patients in New England died last year after receiving organs from a human donor who had been infected with the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus from a pet hamster. There have been 34 U.S. cases since 1993.

Peace: A Treasonous Word?

It is interesting that I should come across this story right after I posted a comment on Prawfs Blawg where a discussion was under way as to whether the criticism of the Iraq war is in some ways responsible for its failure and if criticizing the war constitutes treason during war time. Although the majority of Americans now believe Iraq to be a disaster, not every one does so for the right reasons. Not all Iraq war critics are convinced about the fundamental futility and immorality of the  misadventure. Some of those who have turned against the war, did so because they gradually began to see it as a losing proposition, not that it was a criminally wrong thing to do in the first place. The blame for the mess and horror in Iraq has variously been assigned to the incompetence of the Bush administration and to the unpatriotic grumblings of Vietnam era style peace activists. That is why I fear that we may not have learnt the lessons of Iraq, just as we didn't learn one in Vietnam. I am afraid when another pesky and arrogant leader of an oil rich nation dares to insult, needle or provoke us, we will embark upon yet another misguided war to teach a lesson in democracy and good manners to the oppressed masses of yet another sovereign nation.

A Colorado woman has run afoul of her neighborhood homeowners' association (the only remaining American institution that operates with totalitarian authority!) for putting up a Christmas wreath depicting a "peace" sign. The sign is seen by many residents as an expression of anti-Iraq war sentiments. They want her to take the wreath down or pay a fine until she does. But isn't Christmas the season for Peace On Earth?  And are we not fighting in Iraq to promote freedom, democracy AND peace? The wreath owner, Lisa Jensen has refused to take the decoration down saying, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."  What a silly, unpatriotic woman!

"DENVER — A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

"Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said Sunday.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."

Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000 and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she's not going to take it down until after Christmas.

The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board "will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive."

The subdivision's rules say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee. Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members."

Down But Not Out

One significant casualty (at least for now) of the disastrous and immoral Iraq war is the neo-conservative philosophy of shaping the world, particularly the middle east, through aggressive military invasions.  With Bush-Cheney's Iraq policy now thoroughly discredited and in shambles, their neo-con supporters are scrambling to distance themselves from this administration. But they also remind us quietly that the idea of the Iraqi invasion was not flawed - only its execution by the incompetent bunch in the White House, was. They are a crestfallen bunch. To their astonishment and bitter disappointment, Bush did not turn out to be the knight in the shining armor they had hoped for but rather the emperor without a stitch on him, as many of us skeptics had suspected all along.

But the neo-cons are intrepid and dogged warriors - albeit of the armchair variety. They don't dirty their fingernails in the battle field. They get down and dirty only in the corridors of power where they are perennially in search for a committed fellow traveler who will fulfill their fantasies of world domination through military might. Their fondest dream of course is to reshape the middle east in order to make the region a more hospitable (and supplicant) place for the US and Israel. With numerous failed schemes on their resumes, they are ever eager to hatch a new one. With blood on their hands and egg all over their faces, the veteran empire builders of the neo-con movement are lying low. A new spokesman has emerged to begin the rehabilitation process. Joshua Muravchik a self described dyed in the wool neo con and resident scholar of the American Enterprise Institute, has already boldly called for the bombing of Iran. Muravchik now warns those of us who may be gloating over the demise of neo-conservatism, to not pour our celebratory champagne yet. Neo conservative war-mongering will emerge from the ashes he assures us, with the right war and the right warrior.

These are dark days for the neocons.

The midterm "thumping" the GOP suffered on Nov. 7 was largely a repudiation of the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, a conflict linked to neoconservative ideology. Donald Rumsfeld, the administration's leading patron of neoconservative personnel, was quickly ousted as defense secretary. Key players from the administration of Bush the elder are back — former secretary of state James Baker heading the search for new Iraq policies, and former CIA director Robert Gates nominated to take over at the Pentagon — leading some to believe the president will cast aside the neoconservative influences that have distinguished his foreign policy from that of his father.

So, is neoconservatism dead?

Far from it. Neoconservative ideas have been vindicated again and again on a string of major issues, including the Cold War, Bosnia and NATO expansion. It is the war in Iraq that has made "neocon" a dirty word, either because President Bush's team woefully mismanaged the war or because the war (which neocons supported) was misconceived. But even if the invasion of Iraq proves to have been a mistake, that would not mean that the neoconservative belief in democracy as an antidote to troubles in the Middle East is wrong, nor would it confirm that neoconservatism's combination of strength with idealism is misguided. Neoconservatism isn't dead; it can be renovated and returned to prominence, because, even today, it remains unrivaled as a guiding principle for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.

The rest of Muravchik's article describing the neo-conservative philosophy, hopes and dreams here.

The Rusty Iron Curtain - Still Deadly

During my teen years, I used to be an ardent Ian Fleming fan until I graduated to John le Carre, whose tales of espionage are peerless. The cold war years were hugely beneficial to the spy novel genre, which comprised a large chunk of the publishing industry until the Berlin Wall fell and the communist bloc dissolved amidst the magic of democracy and the free market. I must say that I sometimes miss the now defunct fictional world of ruthless secret agents and cerebral, melancholy spies. (Al Qaida doesn't quite lend itself to thrilling spy vs. spy narratives.) 

International diplomacy and statecraft have changed dramatically in the last two decades vis-a-vis the communist - capitalist ideological divide. Old enemies have been befriended and new enmities have sprung up in unexpected places. But it appears that the political climate within Russia has not changed very much, sushi bars and newly minted millionaires notwithstanding. Last week I wrote about the poisoning of Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. Litvinenko has since then died and the lethal poison was identified as the highly radioactive metal polonium and not thallium as previously believed.  Although Kremlin has vehemently denied it, Russian involvement is suspected.  According to Russian cultural commentator Artemy Troitsky, politics of secrecy and intimidation are just as alive in today's Moscow as they were during the Iron Curtain days. Troitsky is nostalgic for the officially totalitarian era of Leonid Brezhnev.  The so called liberalized Russia of Vladimir Putin unnerves him even more.

At least in Brezhnev's time you knew where you stood. We had no illusions. Public life was black and white. Censorship was overwhelming. Journalists wrote under instruction and according to the social and political orders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. .. Now, in the new Russia of sushi bars and oligarchs, the situation is more shameful and rotten than it was then.

Democracy is on the retreat in Russia, from the nationalistic rhetoric and sub-superpower gestures of its leaders to the energy threats of Gazprom, to the millions poured into European soccer clubs. Now, instead of black and white, we have different shades of grey. In the media, self-censorship is in vogue. Journalists know what is good for them to write, and what is not. In an increasingly materialist society, they depend on the authorities' goodwill to keep them in their luxury lifestyles. They deliver the goods, convincing themselves that Putin - in the face of threats from afar - is the lesser of evils.

As for myself, half a year ago I stopped posting difficult items on my website, Diversant Daily, feeling tired and uninspired. Or was it fear? ...  I try to convince myself that I have stopped writing about politics, not out of fear but because the subject is no longer interesting. I am not sure. What I do know is this: it is demoralising to write the same things over and again, to no effect. It is demoralising to realise that among Russia's silent majority Putin is genuinely popular and there seems no way of waking these people up. Most depressing, however, is that the so-called democracies of the west are turning a blind eye. One day, messrs Blair and Bush, the Germans and the Italians, will regret that." 

A Civil War By Any Other Name...

While the real and bloody war rages on in Iraq, the Bush administration is locked in its own make-believe war over semantics.  Four thousand Iraqis are dying per month, according to the latest figures and we are splitting hairs over the proper term to define the conflict. However, in the era of 24/7 coverage of world affairs, it is hard to put a verbal spin on events that we see unfold with our own eyes. But this administration, whose entire Iraq war effort was based on a string of lies, is still shamelessly trying to pretend that the scope of the Iraqi disaster is something less horrendous than the facts on the ground and the bodies in the morgues.

After the initial euphoria of the swift US military victory and removal of Saddam Hussein, the first inklings of discord were characterized as the "sour grapes" grumblings of disaffected Baathists. Soon, it escalated to acts of terrorism by foreign Al Qaida affiliates whom Bush wanted to fight there rather than here. When it became clear that the blood bath is now mainly due to Iraqi on Iraqi violence, Bush and Co. reluctantly allowed that there was some sectarian violence between Shia's and Sunnis. How many Iraqis must suffer horrible deaths by shooting, burning and suicide bombings and for how long, before Bush will admit that his immoral war of aggression in Iraq has unleashed a full blown civil war there? No amount of slick word play will  alter the body count and the widespread fear and unrest that the country has plunged into.

Is Iraq in a civil war?

Though the Bush administration continues to insist that it is not, a growing number of American and Iraqi scholars, leaders and policy analysts say the fighting in Iraq meets the standard definition of civil war.

The common scholarly definition has two main criteria. The first says that the warring groups must be from the same country and fighting for control of the political center, control over a separatist state or to force a major change in policy. The second says that at least 1,000 people must have been killed in total, with at least 100 from each side.

American professors who specialize in the study of civil wars say that most of their number are in agreement that Iraq’s conflict is a civil war. “I think that at this time, and for some time now, the level of violence in Iraq meets the definition of civil war that any reasonable person would have,” said James Fearon, a political scientist at Stanford.

While the term is broad enough to include many kinds of conflicts, one of the sides in a civil war is almost always a sovereign government. So some scholars now say civil war began when the Americans transferred sovereignty to an appointed Iraqi government in June 2004. That officially transformed the anti-American war into one of insurgent groups seeking to regain power for disenfranchised Sunni Arabs against an Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and increasingly dominated by Shiites.

Others say the civil war began this year, after the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra set off a chain of revenge killings that left hundreds dead over five days and has yet to end. Mr. Allawi proclaimed a month after that bombing that Iraq was mired in a civil war. “If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is,” he said...

Some Bush administration officials have argued that there is no obvious political vision on the part of the Sunni-led insurgent groups, so “civil war” does not apply.

In the United States, the debate over the term rages because many politicians, especially those who support the war, believe there would be domestic political implications to declaring it a civil war. They fear that an acknowledgment by the White House and its allies would be seen as an admission of a failure of President Bush’s Iraq policy.

The rest of the New York Times article here. 

Sometimes A Line Is Just A Line

                        

(Edward Hopper's People in the Sun and Room by the Sea)

Edward Hopper is an artist I admire immensely. This review by Professor Donald Kuspit of Hopper's art currently on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York irritated me to no end. The ever manufactured new angle, interpretation, reconstruction, deconstruction of an established and well known artist's work have their merits only if something hitherto unknown surfaces about his/ her life and philosophy to shed new light on the artist's motivation and technique. Beyond that we ought to leave art alone - to be seen, understood and enjoyed by viewers as they see fit. I have argued this before in an earlier post  where I made a similar point about the heavy handed silliness of art mavens.

"There’s been much talk about the moody silences of Hopper’s spaces and the oddly disturbed figures around or in them -- they seem to be living the lives of quiet desperation that Thoreau spoke of. But I suggest that the people are distractions from Hopper’s real concern: buildings. They abound in Hopper’s works, often dwarfing the figures into insignificance _ _ or using them as foils to offset structure and space. Buildings are man-made constructions of geometrical space, and as such inherently abstract and autonomous. They have a charismatic quality of their own, independently of the people who use them. Hopper is a kind of Cubist, treating buildings as abstract structures with a life of their own, and often more uncannily alive than the people who use them.

Cubism was in part inspired by Cézanne’s "little cubes," as Picasso called the buildings that spotted Cézanne’s late landscapes. They are the point of departure for the cunning geometry of the buildings in Picasso’s early Analytic Cubist masterpieces ...  Hopper’s houses also have the authority of geometry, but they look peculiarly irrational next to Picasso’s Cubist houses, which, for all their oddness, have a quasi-Bauhaus look, although they’re eccentrically rather than dogmatically rationalist.

Hopper’s houses are also recognizable as functional buildings inhabitable by human beings. Picasso’s aren’t: they have no human function. They’re pure abstractions, formal constructions which seem to have no human significance......  Modern rationalist architecture is in fact not very functional, if part of its function is to emotionally support people, not simply to physically contain them.

Hopper’s buildings may read as Cubist archisculptures, but they clearly have psychosocial import. Hopper registers their effect on the people who live and work in them: his buildings raise the pressing question of when a house becomes a home -- an empathic place, more humanly meaningful than an abstract castle. Never, Hopper’s pictures imply: the fit between his buildings and his people is not very good. (italics mine)

Did we need to be reminded of this rather easily discernible truth contained in the last line of the preceding paragraph? Whoever sees Hopper's art will figure out quickly that the "aloof misfit" between the human figures and their surroundings is in fact what makes Hopper's Americana distinct from Norman Rockwell's cheerful version. The title of Kuspit's review poses the wholly unnecessary riddle : "Edward Hopper: Cubist in Disguise?" In my opinion, Hopper was nothing in disguise. He was a brilliant realist who painted what he saw and felt. Yes, he drew a lot of buildings. Buildings have sharp angles, lines and geometric shapes and they cast shadows of sharp angles, lines and geometric shapes. So what?  Should that make him a cubist?  Sometimes a line is just a line and an angle forms where the lines meet. Happens all the time when you draw or paint. There were (and are) artists who willingly defined themselves as impressionists, expressionists, cubists, surrealists etc. etc.  Hopper did not. In fact from what I know, he didn't talk about his art much and let the paintings do the talking. Please read the review if you have the patience and note that Kuspit admits in the end that Hopper was not in fact a cubist. Then what was the point of this lengthy speculation?  Please see some of Hopper's work here and decide if one has to go into such convoluted lengths to truly appreciate Hopper's forlorn brilliance?