The mysterious death of Carlos Ghigliotti, freelance infrared photography expert engaged by the House Committee on Gov’t Reform to investigate whether the FBI had fired first in the siege of the Branch Davidians. [Washington Post]
Monthly Archives: May 2000
Superluminal Speeds [New York Times]
I’m neglectful by several days in saying this: R.I.P. Sir John Gielgud, whose voice was described as being like “a silver trumpet muffled in silk.” I’ll never forget his Prospero in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books. Unfortunate that it appears he’s most destined to be remembered as Dudley Moore’s butler in Arthur!
The Solo Retreats From the Spotlight in Jazz. “I’m
often left wondering how it is that solos — and especially
that theme-solos-theme format — became such a necessary
part of jazz. Not everybody solos particularly well, after all,
and the number of bona fide stars whom you’d always want
to hear solo, because you identify with them, is at an
all-time low. Sometimes — too often — solos make listening
to jazz drudgework yet are nevertheless applauded, when
the real strength of the piece lay in some other part of it.” [New York Times]
New Scientist: Phantom cats revealed. Anaerobic bacteria introduced into the fibers of new carpets during the manufacturing process emit butyric acid. Many people find this to have an odor reminiscent of urine; customers, even in cat-free homes, raise vexing complaints that their new carpets smell of cat urine.
Haiku movie reviews. And a query engine for more comprehensive movie reviews.
On Left-Handedness, Its Causes and Costs. The New York Times organizes a discussion of the mystery of why some people are left-handed around the work of a geneticist who believes that about twenty per cent of the population lacks a specific dominance gene that makes others right-handed; people without the gene have a 50-50 chance of being right- or left-handed. Most interesting fact for me in this discussion: around 18% of identical twins have different handedness.
Amex Nixes X-Rated Exchanges. American Expres decided this month to terminate all of its adult website merchant accounts because of the unacceptable number of disputed charges arising from that sector. ‘…Many porn
surfers deny they’ve made the charges when confronted by a spouse — something
pornographers refer to as the “gak factor.” (Husbands run up a credit card bill at a smut
site, then go “gak” when their wives see the monthly statement).’ No matter; opportunity knocks — Visa will be there to pick up the slack.
JAMA for Java: Association of Coffee and Caffeine Intake With the Risk of Parkinson Disease: data from a prospective study of over 8000 Japanese-American men suggests that caffeine intake is associated with a lower Parkinson’s Disease incidence. [Journal of the American Medical Ass’n.]
Putin and Other Parasites by Stephen Kotkin. The Russian government can’t manage the failing Russian economy and society, because the Russian government is the biggest problem Russia has. In this light, the director of Russian studies at
Princeton University and the author of a forthcoming
book on “the Soviet collapse 1970-2000” tells us how to integrate this failing, worrisome Russia into the New World Order. Some of his advice: allow Russia an enhanced sphere of (economic) influence over the other former Soviet states; forge a tripartite mutual defense alliance with Russia and Germany; and exercise “China-like” considerations in foreign policy approaches to Russia.
For Memorial Day: A UNICEF report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children;
a newsletter from Swedish Save the Children on the use of children in armed conflict;
an under-construction site from the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, whose aims are
the adoption of, and adherence to,
an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC) prohibiting the military recruitment and use in hostilities
of any person younger than 18 years of age, and the recognition
and enforcement of this standard by all armed forces and
groups, both governmental and non-governmental;
and a Human Rights Watch mobilization to stop the use of child soldiers.
U.S. Uncovers New Evidence Against Pinochet. Finally, the Justice Dept. may have enough data to implicate Pinochet in the Washington car bombing that killed exiled Chilean socialist Orlando Letelier and U.S. peace activist Ronni Moffitt in September 1976. Since he had taken power in a coup that had overthrown Chile’s populist socialist leader Salvador Allende three years earlier, Pinochet had been obsessed with Letelier’s opposition. Just excused for health reasons from trial in the UK after the Spanish had tried to extradite him for civil rights abuses, he will doubtless never stand trial in the U.S. for the Letelier assassination even with the new evidence.
Utne Reader: Sidewalk Redemption: ‘I hang from an iron fence
a banner with the message “Confessions
Heard Here,” then sit beneath it with a
pen and notebook and wait to see what
happens. I have established some ground
rules: I will make it clear to anyone who
stops to talk to me that I’m writing a
story and plan to record their confessions
in my notebook. I’ll use only first names
or made-up names. I will not offer
absolution because I do not consider
myself empowered to do so. “I have
come to hear confessions” is all I will
offer; the interpretation of confession will
be up to the person before me.’
Cryptographic challenge: crack a “numbers station.” These mysterious shortwave broadcasts consist of a monotone human voice endlessly reading a series of numbers. There’s been some thought that these are a way for intelligence agencies to communicate with agents in the field, but no one’s sure. Reputedly, a civilian has never decrypted a numbers station message. Reputedly, the NSA has.
The Numbers Station Crack
Challenge is inspired by the RSA Laboratories Secret Key challenges which are designed to demonstrate the weakness of short key
lengths in commercial cryptography applications.
With the advances in networking that are available to everyone, an unprecedented amount of processor power can be rallied to crack
mathematical problems. Previously, only Governments that could afford Cray Supercomputers has access to this type of computational
power, and in the case of Cray the American Government forbade the export of such machines, effectively making them unavailable to
the rest of the world. Now with client based network cracking, almost any brute force cryptanalytic attack can be mounted with a more
than reasonable chance of quick success. Spectacular cracks have already been successfully mounted on problems that seemed
insurmountable only a few years ago. This can be done, the problem is, how can it be done? You are free to use any methods that you
can devise, using whatever you have at your disposal.
Martha Graham Dance Troupe suspends operations due to dire financial straits. Insufficient support for one of the world’s preeminent dance companies. “This would never have occurred in France or Germany
or Denmark. They would not let this happen. The arts
flourish in this country because of the people who pay for it.
But it’s not enough.” [New York Times]
Seventh-Grade Boy Held in Killing of Teacher in Florida: “…the boy had taken the pistol a week ago
from a dresser drawer in the home of his grandfather, who
owned it.” The boy had been ejected from the last day of class for throwing water balloons, and returned late in the day with a Saturday night special.[New York Times]
I generally like muckrakers, but the gentleman profiled in this article presents as an irresponsible, unoriginal attention-seeker. I knew him during his training; having had some pretty inspiring mentors back then, he appears to have been burdened ever since by the problem of his reach exceeding his grasp.
Salon.com: Who will care for the crazy? “The benefits provided by insurance companies for mental
illness are starvation rations. Reimbursement to providers for
face-to-face services have been cut in half over the past 10
years. Dr. John Iglehart in the New England Journal of
Medicine described typical benefits as consisting of ‘a
maximum of 20 outpatient visits and 30 hospital days each
year.’ “
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
–Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allan)
A friend suggests that, if we refer to weblogs as blogs, shouldn’t we call the links they contain blinks? If it catches on, you saw it here first. I think.
It makes intuitive sense that dietary cravings can indicate something about brain chemistry. For instance, a new study suggests that “alcoholics with strong cravings for carbohydrates may form a distinct
subgroup of patients with this disease. This type of alcoholic may drink to increase their serotonin levels, and may
increase their intake of carbohydrates if not drinking, to achieve the same effect, the researchers suggest.” Recognition of this alcoholic subgroup, if valid, might impact their drinking with therapeutic strategies that affect serotonin.
What To Do With Your Single, Precious Presidential Vote? Environmental activist Donella Meadows ends up not making much of an argument for her plan to “waste” her vote on Ralph Nader. Even if voting Green robs Gore of the chance to beat “George the Gerbil.”
Miami Herald op-ed piece calls for Repeal of The Second Amendment: “The right to bear arms made sense in the 18th Century to provide for the common defense
and afford citizens a guarantee against the encroachment of absolute monarchs. But today
we don’t rely on a militia to defend the country, and tyranny would involve a monopoly of
media, not muskets. Born as a bulwark of democracy, the Second Amendment is the last
refuge of gun fundamentalists and their well-financed lobbyists indifferent to the tragedies
their liberal gun laws produce. Who will be the first politician to stand up and shout:
‘Repeal!'”
Dennis Hans, freelance writer and occasional adjunct professor of American foreign
policy and mass communications at the University of South Florida, reports on the Merger of CBS and the Colombian government. [Common Dreams]
His knighthood is well-deserved, IMHO, but he had to wait two years to have it conferred until he was cleared of pedophilia charges.
CNN.com – Technology – Microsoft to delay Outlook patch : “Microsoft said it will delay
until the week of June 1 the release of a
major security update to its Outlook 98
and 2000 e-mail software. The delay will
allow Microsoft to make certain
last-minute modifications to the software
in response to feedback from customers.” The new, kinder, gentler, Microsoft?
There’s alot in Salon.com’s health column that’s fascinating this week, for various reasons. Take your pick:
Sound and fury Thousands of deaf
kids can hear, and speak, thanks to a
stunningly effective ear implant. So
why is the deaf community in an
uproar?
By Arthur Allen [05/24/00]Into the closet Can therapy make gay
people straight?
By Barry Yeoman [05/22/00]Ladies who spray If you sprinkle when
you tinkle, cut it out!
By Mary Roach [05/19/00]Skin trade Are burn victims going
without so that supermodels can
engorge their bodacious bodies?
By Art Allen [05/19/00]
Very little catches my eye on TV, and very little caught my eye in Salon’s preview of the fall TV lineup. These items did, for different reasons. On ABC,
People Who Fear People “stars David Krumholtz as a paranoid guy
who thinks everybody is spying on him. Jon Cryer plays
his neighbor, who’s spying on him.” Sorry to be a stick-in-the-mud, but as a mental health professional I’m worried this will be another insensitive attempt to make a joke of mental illness. And it’s an old joke, a one-liner really: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” And, also on ABC, Gideon’s Crossing, ‘starring Andre Braugher of Homicide: Life on the Street and executive produced by
Homicide creator Paul Attanasio. The ABC
announcement describes Braugher’s character, Dr. Ben
Gideon, thusly: “The voice of reason, empathy and
wisdom in a world of medical chaos, bureaucracy and
hypocrisy … he is Disease’s mortal enemy.” ‘ As over-the-top as that is, this one makes me worry that Braugher, an estimable and charismatic actor, will repeat David Caruso’s mistake in leaving NYPD Blue and flounder in a star vehicle without strong ensemble support. And speaking of Caruso: David Duchovny, in reluctantly signing on for another season of The X-Files, praised Caruso’s courage for walking out on a lucrative TV contract. (To self-destruct on the large screen, and then crawl back to the TV world with his tail between his legs and complete the act?)
Scholars, artists and fans from around the globe gathered in Romania Thursday for the Second World Dracula Congress, four days of
lectures and debate on the blood-sucking legend.
‘Bob Auger of Electric Switch, a DVD production
company, says: “This is the first time DVD is being seen as it is meant to be seen.” ‘
This doesn’t surprise me at all: “Concern over the accidental planting of genetically modified seed on several farms in Europe reached fever pitch
last week. And now a company in the US has warned that the problem is probably commonplace…In tests done last
year, but not widely publicised, 12 out of 20 random American consignments of conventional maize seed contained detectable traces of
GM maize. Two of these contained almost 1 per cent GM maize…Low levels of mingling are inevitable.” One more Pandora’s box has been opened.
Creative Skills Can Develop With Dementia. “In some patients with dementia, specific musical and visual skills can be
enhanced, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and Los Angeles report….Miller and his colleagues explain that ‘these processes have in common the recall of previously learned
information or images’ that permit them to continue ‘without the mediation of language.’
Importantly, while creativity continues, the quality of the creativity is different since it lacks an abstracting
or symbolic component, the researchers explain. In paintings, this results, for example, in realistic
depictions.” The researchers are fascinated by this glimpse into the machinery of creativity and the neurological locus of dementia. But, for the families devastated by the development of dementia in a loved one, this would be at best a poignant consolation prize, if you ask me.
House Vote on China Trade. Analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows the influence of PAC contributions on the China vote. If you simply divide the House members into two groups across party lines based on whether they voted for or against PNTR for China, you’ll find that supporters took in 76% more than opponents from members of the Business Roundtable; and that unions contributed 150% more to opponents than supporters.
Brain — Impaired Social Response Reversal. As if there was any question of the role of brain regions, especially in the frontal lobe, in the control of social behavior, the authors present a case of a patient who acquired hallmarks of antisocial personality disorder, or sociopathy, after a right frontal injury.
New Scientist: Stress express. I was taught that the link between stress and illness was the negative effect it had on the functioning of various components of the immune system. Now it appears that stress hormone levels may directly facilitate disease-causing pathogens in your body.
New Scientist: It’s not simply antibodies. We know less than we think we do about how vaccines work, and this ignorance is hampering the development of effective AIDS immunization. Once effective vaccines for other diseases have been developed, basic science research on their mechanism of action stops.
A rose by any other name is one step nearer: Presbyterian Church court approves gay ‘holy unions’
Local congregations are permitted to conduct religious ceremonies celebrating gay unions
if it is made clear they are not marriages, according to the highest court of the Presbyterian Church.
There’s something I find particularly outrageous about the killing of war correspondents by combatants. An Associated Press cameraman and a Reuters correspondent were killed in an ambush by rebel forces in Sierra Leone yesterday.
Brain scans of Gulf War veterans show brain damage. As compared to healthy veterans, those who came home from the war sick had loss of brain cells (on a new more sensitive imaging technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy) of a comparable magnitude to that found in degenerative neurological diseases, although affected areas were different.
“You need to ask yourself if you would be willing
to give up 5 percent to 25 percent of the brain cells in vital parts of your brain that serve as the relay station for all automatic
and subconscious functions of your brain.” Some researchers propose three Gulf War Syndromes with differing symptom patterns that roughly sort out according to etiology. These new MR spectroscopy findings were in veterans complaining of the most debilitating of the syndromes, Type 2, which appears to correlate with low-level nerve gas exposure during the war. Type 2 patients may have genetically lower levels of a blood enzyme that protects against nerve gas damage, thus making them more vulnerable to damage from low levels of nerve gas (something no one knew about when we sent them into battle in Kuwait, of course). In the new study the subjects with the greatest evidence of brain damage were the ones with the lowest levels of the neuroprotective enzyme.
Bullying for More Than Milk Money. An L.A. Times Tokyo correspondent tells an incredible story of what’s happened to schoolyard bullying in Japan – extortion to the tune of a half-million dollars in one case. School authorities and police knew about the problem but failed to step in. The bullies’ plot, which included killing their victim, making it look like suicide by forcing him to write a suicide note, was foiled only by the once-wayward son of a Japanese mobster seeking redemption. Although the drama and magnitude of this case grabbed headlines and prompted national soul-searching, Japanese social scientists say that extortion routinely accompanies schoolyard bullying in Japan. Picking on those cast as weak is significantly easier in a society with such an emphasis on group conformity.
“More than 20 years of Israeli spying operations in
Washington culminated in the interception of
e-mails from President Bill Clinton, intelligence
sources claimed last week.
The revelations come at a sensitive time as Ehud
Barak, the Israeli prime minister, is expected to
fly to Washington today for talks with Clinton
about the Middle East peace process.”[Times of London]
All this back and forth between the pharmaceutical industry and its detractors about whether selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants (Prozac [fluoxetine], Zoloft [sertraline], Paxil [paroxetine], Celexa [citalopram], Luvox [fluvoxamine], etc.) cause or contribute to suicidal feelings misses the point. A potential side effect of these medications is an intense kind of restlessness called akathisia that makes people feel so unbearably frantic that some may be driven to take their lives. Every mental health professional prescribing these drugs knows that, and it is useless for the pharmaceutical industry to argue that it is merely the patients’ depression, and not a drug effect, that contributes to the SSRIs’ suicide statistics (which indeed, as critics charge, may have been “spun” by the manufacturers to preserve profits). But the point is that the makers of these drugs have for the past decade or more aggressively marketed them to primary care providers (PCPs) over and above psychiatrists. The drug companies’ strategy is to persuade non-psychiatrists that they are so easy to prescribe that patients’ depression can be managed without needing to refer to psychiatrists or psychotherapists. Do we hear inadequate care here?? Most PCPs do not have the time or the expertise to track a patient’s suicidality adequately, and they are not sophisticated enough psychopharmacologically to recognize and address akathisia. (I know; I teach both suicide assessment and psychopharmacology and, at various times, have been approached by pharmaceutical companies to train PCPs,) I’ll bet that the proper analysis would show that any excess suicide mortality over the last decade or so in patients on SSRIs has a correlation with the proportion of SSRI ‘scripts written by non-psychiatrist MDs. ( No offense to the primary care physicians among you; you are victims of the no-holds-barred marketing tactics of Eli Lilly et al as well!)
But maybe it isn’t SSRIs at all. If there were a different reason over the past ten or fifteen years that depressed patients were committing suicide more (like the adverse impact on quality of mental health treatment caused by the penetration of managed care), this might be misconstrued as an SSRI effect. Since SSRIs became the first-line medications for depression during that time period, totally supplanting older antidepressants, treatment with medication for depression during that time period has been virtually synonymous with treatment with an SSRI.
Coup News Back on Fiji Site. “For the first several hours of the attempted overthrow of the government of the South Pacific island of Fiji,
one small website was feeding the world with news.
When it was inaccessible after that, fears were raised that the insurgents, led by coup leader George
Speight, had cut access to fijilive.com. As it turns out, it was probably a case of server overload. The site is back up, as is a mirror.” [Wired]
Geek.com Geek News – Intel’s new Xeons. “Intel announced limited availability of its newest Xeon
processors, running at 700MHz. The chips feature L2 cache sizes
of 1MB and 2MB, and unlike the older 550MHz Xeons that use
separate L2 cache chips, the L2 caches are built directly into
the chip die.” These chips run $1,980 apiece at present. Commentators note that the chips won’t be available in any quantity until the third quarter, making this a ‘paper’ rollout to offset Intel’s other woes in the press.
Black bear kills hiker in Smoky Mountain park, apparently without provocation. [I hike in black bear territory and had become accustomed to thinking of them as inoffensive, in comparison e.g. to the acknowledged threat when hiking in grizzly country.]
Images reveal lakes, snow, geysers on Jupiter moon Io. Galileo spacecraft flyby pictures depict an impossibly harsh, impossibly beautiful landscape (right).
Northwestern scientists shed new light on neurodegenerative diseases. A roster of apparently dissimilar neurodegenerative diseases are major challenges to neuropsychiatry: Huntington’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, Creutzfelt-Jakob Disease and the other prior diseases (see below), cystic fibrosis. They all share one basic common pathway — they arise from the neurotoxic effects of the accumulation of misfolded proteins due to metabolic errors. Misfolded protein is insoluble because of its conformation change, and aggregates, and the aggregation takes down good protein with the bad in a snowballing effect. It turns out there are a class of “chaperone” molecules called heat shock proteins that function to prevent misfolding and detect already-misfolded proteins to prevent their further accumulation. Neurodegenerative diseases, new research suggests, represent the body’s losing race between the misfolding process and its supply of the protective heat shock proteins.Elucidating the role of these molecular chaperones suggests a possible avenue for prevention and remediation of this vexing class of gruesome and fatal diseases.
Four museum curators share their lists of the top ten picks for the most influential visual artworks of the past 1,000 years. It would’ve been nice if the lists were hyperlinked to web reproductions of each piece.
Political scientist Daniel Bell’s experience teaching in Singapore teaches him that classical education and multiculturalism need not conflict. I’m not sure this makes the case persuaively in a way that translates into our own culture.
Scholars search for da Vinci’s DNA. Testing DNA found in smudges and
fingerprints in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and sketches may be a useful way to distinguish da Vinci’s work from that of his apprentices. An Italian art historian in Vinci has collected dozens of fingerprints from the master’s notebooks and drawings.
“Irradiating meat is the meat industry’s answer to filthy meat processing
practices that leave meat contaminated”: The union representing federal food inspectors joined a coalition opposing food irradiation (brokered by Public Citizen and including the Center for Food Safety, the Campaign for Biodemocracy,
Friends of the Earth, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the Nuclear Information
and Resource Service, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine). The union is concerned that irradiation is central to a meat industry initiative to police itself and displace the role of federal inspectors. “Although the meat industry claims that irradiation will make
food safer, the health impacts of eating irradiated food are uncertain. New chemicals called
unique radiolytic products are created in the irradiation process. No testing has been done
to identify these chemicals, much less to determine if they are safe for human
consumption. Evidence indicates that chromosomal damage (among other problems) could
occur as the result of consuming irradiated food. Further, meat that is treated using
irradiation often gives off a very strange odor.”
Violence Policy Center reacts to planned NRA cafe and store in Times Square, NYC: “Today’s announcement by the NRA that they are opening an NRA cafe and store in Times
Square is an amazing example of how bizarrely out of sync the organization is with
mainstream America. It will go down in history as the worst marketing decision since New
Coke. What will their sign say, ‘Over a Million Killed?’ It will quickly become a protest
Mecca in the wake of the high-profile shootings that now define our nation, each of which
will be laid at the NRA’s doorstep.” —Josh Sugarman, VPC executive director and author of the 1992 book NRA: Money, Firepower and Fear
Creative arts a vital industry in New England. The Boston Globe features a new report indicating that “The ‘creative industry’ (nonprofit institutions such as museums and libraries, individual
artists, and arts-related commercial activities) makes up
3.5 percent of New England’s total job base – more than our software or
medical technology industries. It is growing at a remarkable rate of 14
percent each year – nearly twice as fast as the average rate of job
growth in New England.” The arts, apparently, are a very good investment to stimulate employment and economic growth.
McCaffrey and his lieutenants once more firing on unarmed civilians.
Annals of the Age of Depravity (cont’d.): Family friend swiped girl’s life preserver to save himself, Mississippi police say. The seven-year-old girl drowned. Her body was recovered three days later. The survivor will stand trial for murder if he doesn’t succeed in evading his suicide watch in the county jail.
BBC: Children ‘losing sleep over internet’: “Excessive net-surfing and television is leaving
12-year-olds suffering the symptoms of
chronic sleep deprivation, say experts…Many children now have television and
computers even in their bedrooms, and are
allowed to stay up late using the internet.”
Guide climbs Everest in record 16 hours. Congratulations to 34-year-old Babu Chhiri, who in his tenth successful assault of Mt. Everest, climbed the peak in less than 16 hours! Last year, he also established a record for duration spent at the summit.
NIH knew drug could cause fatal brain disease, newspaper reports. Before there was synthetic growth hormone, human growth hormone extracted from the pituitaries of cadavers was used to treat growth hormone deficiency from 1963 and 1985. The program was ended because of accumulating deaths from Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD), one of several gruesome incurable fatal diseases with long incubation periods (kuru, sheep scrapie and “mad cow disease”, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy [BSE] are others) thought to be caused by mysterious, minute transmissible agents called prions. A new report alleges that, despite warnings, the NIH for seven years ignored signs that a more costly extraction technique with more intensive filtering was necessary to insure the safety of the cadaveric hormone.
The editor of the Washington Times objects to the characterization that his paper is under the editorial control of owner Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church. The Washington Post had made the attribution in covering Rev. Moon’s purchase of the UPI wire service earlier this week.
Atlantic piece takes swipe at Harvard prof. Christina Hoff Sommers, who set herself up in the early ’90’s as the conservative counter to “liberal hijacking” of gender studies, defames renowned Harvard gender identity psychological theorist Carol Gilligan in the latest Atlantic. She claims the research materials for Gilligan’s prizewinning and paradigm-changing 1982 book In A Different Voice were either flawed or faked. But neither Sommers nor the Atlantic ever contacted Gilligan to check this claim, and it apparently just isn’t true, reports Alex Beam of the Boston Globe. “Didn’t the Atlantic find it strange that Gilligan isn’t quoted
defending herself against Sommers’s dramatic accusation? ‘Sommers said to me that she tried unsuccessfully to reach
Gilligan,’ reports story editor Michael Curtis. He says Sommers’s
article wasn’t subjected to the usual fact-checking scrutiny
because it was a book excerpt, not an assigned article. Gilligan
will have to defend herself in a letter to the editor, which
won’t attract quite as much attention as Sommers’s cover story.”
Perfect Sound Forever is a quirky online music magazine that’s been around since 1993. Their self-described foci include performers/artists that deserve more recognition,
exploring little-known corners of music (i.e. bootlegs, music therapy), the politics of music, the music of politics, and exposing cliches about certain bands and styles of music. Here’s a compilation of some of their interviewees’ favorite music and here’s a page of their staff’s favorite music. Discerning folks, it seems, although there are some who appear to have stopped listening in the early ’70’s [Who am I to talk??]
More passion from the impeccable Médecins Sans Frontières. Drug Companies and the Third World: A Case Study in Neglect.
“The poor have no consumer power, so the market has failed
them,” said Dr. James Orbinski, international president of
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, the medical
agency whose work in war zones and in the third world won it
the Nobel Peace Prize last year. “I’m tired of the logic that says,
‘He who can’t pay, dies.’ ” [New York Times]. The agency advised African states not to sign new drug laws. “The medical relief agency Médecins Sans Frontières on Thursday called on a group of 15
African countries not to ratify new patent laws that it says could deny poor people access to life-saving
drugs. ‘The revised arrangement relating to intellectual property reinforces the monopoly given to patent-holders
beyond existing requirements in international trade rules and would cause a major obstacle to access to
medicines,’ MSF said in a statement.”
Metafilter sent me to this compendium of Dumb Laws from the various states.
An adult adoptee stalked by her birth mother dismantles the fiction that all who were adopted at birth yearn for the passionate reunion. “To believe that blood ties alone can bind a family goes beyond
the cliché of blood being thicker than water to assume a
miracle. Sure, it’s possible that the long lost can be suddenly
found and reclaimed in a hail of tears and kisses, but it’s not
something I’d count on, no matter how many times you’ve
seen it on TV.” [My adopted daughter is two, and my wife and I have recently been preoccupied again, as we had not been since we first contemplated her arrival, with the issue of what lies ahead in her (and our) coping with her adoptive identity issues.]
Salon: Movies in heat
“Films used to erotically seduce us; now they tend to sedate instead.”
Rock’s Original Poets, Still Howling: Stephen Holden wants us to think that Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Patti Smith are a holy triumvirate analogous to Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs. [New York Times]
National Rifle Association Unleashes Attack on Gore:
“Vice President Al Gore is the type of politician where nothing is
sacred, that will say and do anything to preserve their own
political future, even if that means using fear and deceptive
means,” Mr. Watts was to say, according to an advance text of
his speech. “His party used to say, ‘There’s nothing to fear but
fear itself.’ Now the vice president has nothing to offer but fear
itself.” I blogged below one persepctive on the centrality of racism to the NRA’s thinking. In fact, the more I read about their current defiance and grandiosity, the more it stars to look as if they’re trying to appeal mostly to the radical right of the black-helicopter, New-World-Order conspiracy peranoiacs; paramilitary militias; and tax resisters.
Challenging Islamic Myth on Organ Transplants as Ailments Rise: “…religious leaders are rallying with doctors and
community outreach workers to dispel a decades-old myth
that the Koran forbids organ donation.” Because organ transplantes between relatives, and even ethnically similar people, are more successful, both medical and transplant advocates and religious leaders in the Arab-American community are trying to get their constituents to go with the Muslim dictum that ‘He who saves a life saves humanity’ rather than the one that says the a Muslim will not see Heaven if the body does not go before God whole. [New York Times]
Court Rules U.S. Cable Law Is Constitutional. The FCC does have the right to limit the number of households a cable company may reach, and to force cable companies to share their capacity with others instead of filling it entirely with their own programming. The intention is to prevent consolidation in the cable industry similar to that bedevilling the rest of the public media. Get this — Time Warner Cable had contested the FCC’s authority on the grounds that it was an infringement of free speech rights!
“Microsoft has introduced a significant security enhancement for Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000. The Outlook 2000 E-mail Security Update and the Outlook 98
E-mail Security Update provide protection from most viruses, such as the ILOVEYOU and Melissa viruses, as well as other viruses
that spread through e-mail, or worm viruses that can replicate through Outlook. The Outlook 98/2000 E-mail Security Update puts
you back in control of your software. Once you have installed the update, mail is not sent on your behalf without your permission,
and you are protected from accidentally opening attached files that pose a security risk to your computer.
This update limits certain functionality in Outlook to provide a higher level of security; it was not created to address a security
vulnerability within Outlook. The update provides unprecedented security protection for Outlook and Microsoft encourages that all
users of Outlook 2000 and Outlook 98 install this update.”
Researchers from IBM, Compaq and AltaVista collaborated on this paper on the Connectivity of the web: “The study of the web as a graph is not only fascinating in its own right, but also yields valuable insight into web algorithms for crawling,
searching and community discovery, and the sociological phenomena which characterize its evolution. We report on experiments on local and
global properties of the web graph using two Altavista crawls each with over 200M pages and 1.5 billion links. Our study indicates that the
macroscopic structure of the web is considerably more intricate than suggested by earlier experiments on a smaller scale….
One can pass from any node of IN through SCC to any node of OUT.
Hanging off IN and OUT are TENDRILS containing nodes that are reachable from portions of IN, or that can
reach portions of OUT, without passage through SCC. It is possible for a TENDRIL hanging off from IN to
be hooked into a TENDRIL leading into OUT, forming a TUBE — a passage from a portion of IN to a portion
of OUT without touching SCC.” [Is that clear??]
A press release from the Violence Policy Center gives evidence that racism is a core value at the National Rifle Association.
NewsWatch: Mad About Media Criticism. The Center for Media and Public Affairs whines about journalists who whine about media critics.
US magazine issued a prominent retraction of its earlier story (which I blogged below) that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were disenchanted with S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y. “The US about-face reflects an increasingly common problem for
magazine editors in these days of steepening competition for a shrinking list of celebrities
who can actually sell newsstand copies. ‘Cruise obviously has his share of pull,’ says a
journalist who’s experienced the clout of Cruise and PMK. ‘At a magazine like US, they need
to be able to have Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman on the cover. You can tell from the size
of the correction that they were interested in keeping him happy and available to the
magazine.'” Cruise’s publicist also warned reporters calling for interviews with the star about his forthcoming M:I-2 that any question they ask about S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y will be the last question they get to ask. I guess S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y’s thugs don’t have to make US an offer it can’t refuse when Cruise’s publicists and attorneys do it for them.
Environmentalist Brower Quits Sierra Club Board. For those who follow environmental politics, the name of David Brower is among the most venerable. He led the Sierra Club in the ’50’s and ’60’s, was removed from its leadership in 1969 because of his contentiousness; remained contentious elsewhere in environmental advocacy through the ’70’s and rejoined the Sierra Club in 1983. Now he’s lambasting the Sierra Club for backing governmental proposals for usage of the Sierras, and for not coming out strongly against increased immigration to the US, which has recently been his bete noir. “I find going to the meetings is, frankly, a total waste of
time,” Brower said in a recent interview. “They practically discuss nothing
about conservation. You just get layers and layers and layers of
bureaucracy.” The Sierra Club shrugs off his criticism and his departure.
Going Cashless As Small Change Dries Up. “A strike by armored van security guards, now in its 11th day, is turning France into a cashless society.
Sales are down in small shops, waiters are losing out on their usual tips and beggars are deprived of the few coins they live off.
With the normal flow of cash between banks and shops cut off, the small change and banknotes normally used for everyday purchases
are becoming ever harder to find. Credit cards and checks are often the only way to pay for purchases.”
U.S. Surname Distribution. This site will generate a map of the US, with each state color-coded for the frequency with which a chosen surname appears in the state. Good starting point for a genealogical search. [via Robot Wisdom]
Feed explores two subtle but, it notes, far-reaching changes to the fabric of everyday life. First, Yield. Merge. Exit. Freak Out, dissecting the impact of the introduction of the new fluorescent yellow green street signs: “government-sponsored change to the visual landscape.” Then, the move to the new dollar coins : “Although the Sacagawea coin isn’t yet a
common sight, the advertising campaign
certainly is. Every bus and subway has
that creepy, deadwhitemale face of
George Washington urging us to use the
new coin, assuring us that it’s OK. But
isn’t a high-profile marketing blitz for
money itself a little odd? Why is the
government so desperate for us to adopt
this new coin? The party line is that the
Golden Dollar, while more expensive to
produce than paper money, is the better
deal in the long run since coins last around
thirty years while dollar bills are out of
circulation within a year.
But another possible reason is that the
new coin helps to placate powerful
lobbies such as the vending, transit, and
gaming industries … The U.S. Mint
made sure that the Sacagawea had the
exact same size, weight, and
electromagnetic composition as the (Susan B. Anthony dollar coin),
saving vending and slot-machine
manufacturers hefty retrofitting costs.
Conveniently, then, the government is
able to present itself as progressive while
keeping some big, important friends
happy along the way. ”
IDÉE FIXE: Portrait Of The Blogger As A Young Man Some thoughts on where weblogging fits.
…Even if it’s true the vast majority of
blogs would not be missed by more than a handful of
people were the earth to open up and swallow
them, and even if the best are still no substitute for
the sustained attention of literary or journalistic
works, it’s also true that sustained attention is not
what Web logs are about anyway. At their most
interesting they embody something that exceeds
attention, and transforms it: They are constructed
from and pay implicit tribute to a peculiarly
contemporary sort of wonder. A Web log really, then, is a Wunderkammer. That is
to say, the genealogy of Web logs points not to the
world of letters but to the early history of museums
— to the “cabinet of wonders,” or Wunderkammer,
that marked the scientific landscape of Renaissance
modernity: a random collection of strange,
compelling objects, typically compiled and owned
by a learned, well-off gentleman.
There’s an informative (I hope) portrait of Jorn Barger interwoven into the article as well.
Robot wisdom? That’s as good an encapsulation as
any, and none are very good. Barger’s ideas are at
once subtle and florid, and they don’t summarize
easily. Suffice it to say that they’re as much literary
as scientific, and that they orbit a complicated
connection between artificial intelligence and the
masterworks of James Joyce. Barger discovered that
link in the midst of trying to map out a
programmable taxonomy of human emotions…
Crazy for Star Wars by Robert Wright Poking holes (big enough to require thinking about) in the logic of the need for protection against nuclear attacks from “rogue states.”
“Even
if you examine the unabridged list of rogue states—Iraq,
North Korea, Iran, Lybia, Syria, etc.—you will search in
vain for a national leader who aspires to early death.
Muammar Qaddafi, for example, may seem erratic,
but look what happened when Ronald Reagan gave him
a sanity test. American jets bombed Qaddafi’s house as
punishment for sponsoring terrorism. The question was:
Would Qaddafi a) retaliate, b) not retaliate but maintain a
conspicuous association with terrorism, or c) start
keeping a lower profile? He chose c) and thus passed the
test.” [Slate]
Fortune: A New Way to Attack Cancer. A rundown on the excitement over anti-angiogenesis agents, slanted toward those looking for investment potential.
In The Issue. Believe it or not, the editor of the conservative National Review feels he has to defend McDonald’s to be pro-American. “Clearly McDonald’s is giving
people something they want. And, one last thing in their
defense: Big Macs taste really good.”
Cola row in India: Coke and Pepsi are squaring off to carve up the huge untouched Indian soft drink market.
On guard. Chickens are the newest guards of Canada’s southern border with the U.S.
Girl dies in Colorado after controversial “rebirthing” therapy. ‘The girl … told the therapists seven times that she could not
breathe and said six times that she was going to die.
But instead of unwrapping her, the therapists said “you got to push hard if you want to be born —
or do you want to stay in there and die?”‘ … ‘According to an investigator who viewed the tape there was a 20-minute lapse between the time
the girl’s last breath could be heard to the time she was unwrapped.’
New Privacy Threat: Genealogy? Your mother’s maiden name, which you use as your super-secret password prompt — right? — can be ascertained easily.
Invasion of the ePods. “This device could revolutionize the way we think about using
the ‘Net.”
Breast cancer deaths plummet 25% in UK and US over the last decade — “…most sudden drop in mortality for a
common cancer seen anywhere in the world.”
Anthrax could be killing heroin users: “Scientists at Porton Down biological defence laboratory, in Wiltshire, have discovered signs of anthrax infection in
two victims of a disease which killed 10 Scottish heroin users in the last month. One person in Norway also died
from the same disease.
A further nine Scots are ill, and one bears the black scab typical of localised anthrax infection, the report said.”
“This is a repugnant act against human and Christian ethics,” the pastor of the local evangelical church told reporters.
For Doctors, a Chance to Spot Victims in Denial. An article in a British trauma journal instructs ER workers on recognizing injuries consistent with “shaken adult syndrome”, indicative of covert physical victimization.
Two Accused of Murder in 1963 Alabama Church Blast:
One more in a growing, and welcome, wave of current prosecutions of white suspects believed responsible for
attacks on blacks in Alabama, Mississippi and other Southern states in the 1960s.
Kalle Lasn is Mad as Heck and Isn’t Going to Take It Any More. A portrait of the culture-jamming founder of Adbusters.
