WebRing: unusual museums of the Internet. {from Boing Boing}

Here and here are a couple of websites about the joys of trepanation. Some friends of mine are concerned that this will be The Next Big Thing among A Certain Segment.

Hilary Swank’s Academy Award acceptance speech infuriated JoAnn Brandon, whose daughter Swank portrayed in Boys Don’t Cry. (See this film!)

SSRI antidepressants may be effective against hot flashes

TopoZone: for people who don’t like maps where all there is between the highways is white space. This one has my block on it.

‘Harry Potter’ to encounter love and death [Nando Times]

As if it weren’t bad enough dept.: Chemotherapy may dull mental ability, research finds

“Ordinary doses of chemotherapy can sometimes appear to dull survivors’ intellectual

powers, leaving them with poor memories, muddy thinking and inability to do math in their heads, new research suggests.

Cancer patients often complain of “chemobrain,” or woolly-headedness during treatment. While they are typically reassured this will go away, little

attempt has been made until now to see if these subtle problems linger years later.

The new study, conducted at Dartmouth Medical School, found that people who get standard chemotherapy appear to be about twice as likely as other

cancer patients to score poorly on various intelligence tests an average of 10 years after their treatment.”

Ban the ‘Tubbies: “A coalition of child advocates today asked Public Broadcasting

System (PBS) President Pat Mitchell to stop broadcasting the Teletubbies, a television

program marketed to children as young as twelve months, because young children should

play instead of watching television, and fast food companies use the Teletubbies to market

junk food.”

ZEN— an experiential introduction.

The Military & CNN: My favorite muckraker Alexander Cockburn discovered that a Dutch journalist had discovered that, until recently, a handful of military personnel from the 4th Psychological Operations Group (i.e. PSYOPs)

based at Fort Bragg have been working in CNN’s

headquarters in Atlanta assisting in the production of news stories. A U.S. Army spokesperson confirmed their assignment and commented that, “conceivably, they would have worked on stories during the Kosovo war.” The liaison program reportedly ended only when the Dutch report on it broke. I’m as flabbergasted as Cockburn that no U.S. media have picked up this story!

Jobless white builder rules as African king

“HENK OTTE, a 43-year-old unemployed ex-builder from

Amsterdam, has been crowned King Togbe Korsi Ferdinand

Gakpector II following the discovery that he is the reincarnation

of the last great warrior king of the 250,000-strong Ewe tribe in

Ghana.” Here is his homepage.