[via Phil Agre’s Red Rock Eater News Service]: PRIVACY Forum: Massive Tracking of Web Users Planned — Via ISPs!. “Picture a world where information about your every move on the Web,

including the sites that you visit, the keywords that you enter into search

engines, and so on, are all shipped off to a third party, with the willing

cooperation of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). None of those pesky

cookies to disable, no outside Web sites to put on block lists–just a direct

flow of data from your ISP to the unseen folks with the dollar signs (or

pound, yen, euro, or whatever signs) gleaming brightly in their eyes behind

the scenes. You’ll of course be told that your information is “anonymous”

and that you can trust everyone involved, that you’ll derive immense benefits

from such tracking, and that you have an (at least theoretical) opt-in or

opt-out choice.”

This is seemingly one round fired in an internal battle between two luminaries in the addiction medicine field. Stanton Peele’s website attacks Doug Talbott’s Recovery Program by hosting the open letters of a disgruntled attorney who had a terrible experience under Talbott’s care and knows an ethical violation when he sees one. But, since you probably don’t care about Peele or Talbott, this is interesting to read as a good encapsulation of the clash of two treatment paradigms. Patients best understood as “dual-diagnosis” are often, in my opinion, ill-served and even damaged at the hands of rabid “recovery” proponents. [As an aside, Talbott’s Recovery Campus has been one of the flagship sites of Charter Behavioral Health Systems, the largest for-profit owner-operator of mental health care facilities in the country which is about to be liquidated under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I’m currently acting as medical director of a psychiatric hospital that was until recently a Charter facility.]

“It’s virtually impossible for animals to consent to sex with humans…”

Health officials warn of transgender tuberculosis risk.

Duck ‘n’ Cover, ’00’s style

Newest installment in the Annals of the Age of Depravity: Mich. Moves to Ban Sale of Babies

The Cosmos is Coming:

“When it comes online in six months to a year, Microsoft’s SkyServer will be the astronomical

equivalent of the company’s popular TerraServer, which catalogs aerial images of the Earth

and is one of the biggest databases on the Internet.

In the same way users of the TerraServer choose a region of the planet and drill down for

pictures of the ground at ever greater resolution, users of the SkyServer will be able choose

a region of the sky and probe deeper and deeper into space…

But unlike the TerraServer, which is essentially a collection of unprocessed pictures, the

SkyServer data will be somewhat ‘cooked’ –- analyzed and catalogued — allowing members

of the public to do science with the data.” [Wired]

The Sociable Media Group at MIT investigates issues

concerning identity and

society in the networked

world.

I just found out that Dave McReynolds, whose work for the New York-based pacifist organization the War Resistors’ League I’ve watched for more than thirty years, is running for President on the Socialist Party ticket.

[Salon]:

“On the eve of the

Columbine massacre anniversary, stunning new allegations

about the killings emerged from long-expected lawsuits filed

by victims’ families late Wednesday. They include charges that

a law enforcement officer, not Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris,

killed student Daniel Rohrbough, and that officers knew early

on that Klebold and Harris were dead, and thus could have

saved teacher Dave Sanders, who bled to death four hours

after he was shot.”

Born to pop pills:

“I was a Girl Scout in pursuit of my pharmaceuticals badge. I

was a walking medicine cabinet; I nearly rattled when I

walked. I trusted pills. I could have kissed the chemist who

created gel caps. Two blue-green gel caps — meditate on that. I

mean, was there any image more soothing? Not for me.” [Salon]

Molly Ivins tries to goose up your outrage level.