Couldn’t some of the hackers out there make this happen more often?

South Carolina Legislature Ponders Bill Requiring Student Politeness

“People who lose their language ability because of brain damage

develop an extraordinary gift for spotting liars, scientists have

discovered.

Stroke victims who have suffered damage to the brain’s language

centres learn how to detect the subtle facial expressions that can

indicate when a person is lying. Tests on a group of aphasics –

people who cannot converse after brain damage – showed they could

detect liars nearly threequarters of the time, compared with a 50:50

success rate for undamaged people. One aphasic who had recently

suffered brain damage performed no better than healthy subjects,

indicating that the ability is learnt through experience.” [Nature via The Independent]

New Scientist: Killing off an archetype “Is our perception of infanticide all wrong? Step-parents are no more likely than biological parents to

murder their children, according to Swedish researchers. This

flies in the face of Canadian findings from over a decade ago,

which indicated that having a step-parent is the single

greatest risk factor for being maltreated as a child.”

“Go ahead. Make my day.”

‘(Clint) Eastwood, whose Mission Ranch Hotel in Carmel,

Calif., has been sued for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, is striking back

with a Washington lobbying campaign for new legislation to

modify the law. “I figure I won’t back down because of all these

people … who can’t defend themselves,” says the 69-year-old

Mr. Eastwood. Well, “I can, and they will be seeing me for a

long, long time.” ‘ [Wall Street Journal]

Defendant promises to keep his nose clean

Some say macabre tour in Salem, Massachusetts, goes too far

“People say tourism is the answer here,” Councilor Regina Flynn told The Salem Evening News. “On the other hand, it’s what kind of tourism do

you want?” This city which capitalizes heavily on its infamous witch trial history goes just nuts with gloom and grue, especially around Halloween, but is denying a license to a proposal to give tourists tours by hearse of gory landmarks including the sites of some recent murders.

Lego Links up with Spielberg: he lends his name to Lego Studios’ new digital movie-making kit for kids, and will judge the results. Kids build “stories” with Lego movie sets and bricks, film them with an included movie camera, dump the film into their USB port, and use a movie editing suite to do stop-action animation, add sound effects and dialog, and make credits and titles. Completed films are uploaded to a chld’s personal page at a Lego Studios website for possible nomination for a “junior Oscar.”

Alternative therapy at state expense: Study looks at Medicaid coverage of nonconventional care for children: A study by a University of Michigan family practitioner shows that 3/4 of the states reimburse for some alternative medical treatments given to children covered by their Medicaid programs. “The percentage of states that have agreed to pay for such services ranges from 74 percent for chiropractic down to 11

percent for naturopathy. Several states allow children to see an alternative practitioner as their primary care physician, or to

see alternative providers under Medicaid’s preventive screening, immunization, vision, dental and hearing program. Terrence Steyer, M.D., a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and lecturer in the U-M Departments of Family Medicine and

Internal Medicine, conducted the survey of 46 state Medicaid programs to get a sense of how far the current trend toward

alternative medicine had extended into state-funded pediatric care…. Alternative medicine is usually defined as care not generally taught at American medical schools nor provided at U.S.

hospitals. It spans the spectrum from vitamins and herbal supplements to acupuncture and hypnosis.”

Cannes Do or Die?

The first lady of film festivals ain’t no Sundance. Or is it that film festivals ain’t what they used to be? Or is it that film ain’t what it used to be?

Prosecutorial and journalistic difficulties in “shaken baby” cases: “Shaken baby cases are amongst the most difficult to prosecute.

There are usually no witnesses to the crime, the determination

of time of death must often be based on statements made by

potential suspects, and the conviction frequently rests on the

persuasiveness of dueling expert witnesses.

Media coverage of these cases also rarely illuminates the key

question: How much doubt do experts have about the diagnosis

and timing of death? In coverage of the court room, defense and

prosecution experts are given equal weight – but journalists

rarely go to outside sources to determine which position

represents the medical mainstream.

As a result, public opinion can be swayed by arguments that are

considered specious by most experts.” [Newswatch]

Physicist Group Says Missile Defense Tests Fall ´Far Short´. Apart from politically-based misgivings about an anti-missile defense system, there’s the unanswered question of its technical feasibility.

The world’s largest professional association of physicists says the Pentagon’s test program is an inadequate basis for an informed decision about whether the proposed weapon can actually shoot down enemy warheads. Interception tests do not take into account at all the offensive countermeasures an attacker would take to overwhelm or confuse a missile defense system. President Clinton plans to decide after the next round of testing in June whether the $60 billion program should be given the green light. The American Physical Society’s statement is available at the group’s website. The Pentagon, of course, rejects the group’s criticism.

And China has weighed in on the proposed weapon. Its “chief arms negotiator said today that the American proposal to build an antimissile defensive shield posed an unacceptable threat to China’s security and could force Beijing to significantly expand its own nuclear forces in response.” [New York Times]

The editor of Newswatch explores the journalistic invocations of Heisenberg uncertainty.