Mapping the Cab Driver’s Brain: The posterior hippocampus of London cabbies hypertrophies in proportion to their years of driving a cab. This area, thought to be involved in memory functioning, probably stores the detailed navigational information they learn on the job.

“There seems to be a definite relationship between the navigating they do as a taxi driver and the brain changes,” researcher Eleanor Maguire told the BBC.

Woman Seeks Sex Before Divorce

Lilly Files for Approval of Once-Weekly Prozac. Faced with declining sales from competing SSRIs, and the looming expiration of its patent rights in 2003, this is one of several slightly different formulations of fluoxetine (Prozac), the first of the new generation of antidepressants, that Eli Lilly proposes to market.

[Thanks, Abby; no, really!] Tennessee Farm Is Laboratory of Human Flesh

Valdis Krebs has updated his fascinating Internet Industry Map – Strategic Alliances, Joint Ventures, Technology Development, Partnerships with network metrics and printability.

“There seems to be no

critical culture in America today. A critical culture is one that struggles actively over how human beings should live and what our

life means. Most of us can remember living in the critical culture of the sixties-a few of us can even remember the critical culture

of the thirties-and we can feel the difference. When a critical culture breaks down or wears out or fades away, sources of joy dry

up. What makes this happen? Why has it happened now? Is the loss permanent? Or are there traces, fragments, intimations of a new

critical culture just around the corner? Where might it come from? How can it come together? Is there anything people like us can

do to help it come?” [Marshall Berman writes in Dissent]

Musical Ballots (washingtonpost.com): Would it make a differennce to your Presidential choice to know what kind of music each candidate listens to? [Washington Post]

Museum takes Howdy Doody to court- CBC Infoculture

Cultural revolution: women allowed onstage in Iran for the first time since 1979. [The Globe and Mail]

Mapping the Cab Driver’s Brain: The posterior hippocampus of London cabbies hypertrophies in proportion to their years of driving a cab. This area, thought to be involved in memory functioning, probably stores the detailed navigational information they learn on the job.

“There seems to be a definite relationship between the navigating they do as a taxi driver and the brain changes,” researcher Eleanor Maguire told the BBC.

Woman Seeks Sex Before Divorce

Lilly Files for Approval of Once-Weekly Prozac. Faced with declining sales from competing SSRIs, and the looming expiration of its patent rights in 2003, this is one of several slightly different formulations of fluoxetine (Prozac), the first of the new generation of antidepressants, that Eli Lilly proposes to market.

[Thanks, Abby; no, really!] Tennessee Farm Is Laboratory of Human Flesh

Valdis Krebs has updated his fascinating Internet Industry Map – Strategic Alliances, Joint Ventures, Technology Development, Partnerships with network metrics and printability.

Take 2: A Photo Archive of City Streets: The New York Public Library embarks on a project to create an archive of photographs of nearly every street in the five boroughs of New York City. (Does this remind anyone of Geoff Nicholson’s Bleeding London?)

Newest influence-mongering trend: get the President’s ear by contributing to his wife’s Senate campaign. Surprising?

More media consolidation.

Both Slate and The New York Times focus on what the Pope didn’t say in his apology for the sins of the Catholic Church.

New York Times: ‘Americans have become used to hearing nutty talk from

leaders of the National Rifle Association. But Sunday’s

outrageous assertion by the group’s executive vice president,

Wayne LaPierre, that President Clinton is “willing to accept a

certain level of killing to further his political agenda”

deserves special condemnation.

Mr. LaPierre made his sick suggestion that the president

relishes having gun tragedies to exploit in an interview on

ABC’s “This Week.” He was there to push the N.R.A.’s

demonstrably false line that the nation already has enough

gun laws on the books if only the administration would

enforce them.’

Europe is in love with Short Message Service. [New York Times]

Microsoft to Back a Browser Keyword System. Companies pay RealNames Corp. hefty fees to lock up ownership of keywords; you type a keyword into your browser and are magically taken to the site that owns the keyword! RealNames gets revenue from every referral to the corporate sites as well. Microsoft takes 20% of KeyNames, which has just filed for an IPO.

This site gushes about the goings-on at some of the hippest night spots on Sunset Boulevard.

“Who is Gladwell kidding?

Scientists have been harping on

so-called nonlinear effects for decades. Nonlinearity is the basis

of catastrophe theory, chaos, complexity, self-organized

criticality, punctuated equilibrium, and other scientific fads.

Everyone knows about the butterfly effect, which holds that a

butterfly flitting through Iowa can trigger a cascade of

meteorological events culminating in a monsoon in India.

Gladwell cites none of this work, and understandably so. His

utopian message is that by manipulating tipping points we can cut

down on crime, reduce teen-age smoking, and sell lots of

sneakers without massive efforts. But the lesson of nonlinear

research is that many phenomena are unpredictable, and

especially the complex social phenomena upon which Gladwell

focuses. Our culture is awash in potential tipping points. When we

try to tip events in one direction, they activate other tipping points

and careen down the wrong path. This is the law of unintended

consequences, about which you have written so eloquently, Ed.” [Slate]

Take 2: A Photo Archive of City Streets: The New York Public Library embarks on a project to create an archive of photographs of nearly every street in the five boroughs of New York City. (Does this remind anyone of Geoff Nicholson’s Bleeding London?)

Newest influence-mongering trend: get the President’s ear by contributing to his wife’s Senate campaign. Surprising?

More media consolidation.

Both Slate and The New York Times focus on what the Pope didn’t say in his apology for the sins of the Catholic Church.

New York Times: ‘Americans have become used to hearing nutty talk from

leaders of the National Rifle Association. But Sunday’s

outrageous assertion by the group’s executive vice president,

Wayne LaPierre, that President Clinton is “willing to accept a

certain level of killing to further his political agenda”

deserves special condemnation.

Mr. LaPierre made his sick suggestion that the president

relishes having gun tragedies to exploit in an interview on

ABC’s “This Week.” He was there to push the N.R.A.’s

demonstrably false line that the nation already has enough

gun laws on the books if only the administration would

enforce them.’

Europe is in love with Short Message Service. [New York Times]

Microsoft to Back a Browser Keyword System. Companies pay RealNames Corp. hefty fees to lock up ownership of keywords; you type a keyword into your browser and are magically taken to the site that owns the keyword! RealNames gets revenue from every referral to the corporate sites as well. Microsoft takes 20% of KeyNames, which has just filed for an IPO.

This site gushes about the goings-on at some of the hippest night spots on Sunset Boulevard.

“Who is Gladwell kidding?

Scientists have been harping on

so-called nonlinear effects for decades. Nonlinearity is the basis

of catastrophe theory, chaos, complexity, self-organized

criticality, punctuated equilibrium, and other scientific fads.

Everyone knows about the butterfly effect, which holds that a

butterfly flitting through Iowa can trigger a cascade of

meteorological events culminating in a monsoon in India.

Gladwell cites none of this work, and understandably so. His

utopian message is that by manipulating tipping points we can cut

down on crime, reduce teen-age smoking, and sell lots of

sneakers without massive efforts. But the lesson of nonlinear

research is that many phenomena are unpredictable, and

especially the complex social phenomena upon which Gladwell

focuses. Our culture is awash in potential tipping points. When we

try to tip events in one direction, they activate other tipping points

and careen down the wrong path. This is the law of unintended

consequences, about which you have written so eloquently, Ed.” [Slate]