Slate’s Politics column has a couple of interesting tidbits today: Clinton’s reflections on his lame duck waning-days status; the phenomenon of Clinton nostalgia in light of the deficiencies of the men who vie to succeed him; the Republican plan to revamp the Presidential primary system; and Gary Coleman’s impending entry into politics.

Deconstructing the media’s obsession with Generation Y.

Slate Diary: A police officer looks at casual marijuana use. “A cop is a cop 24 hours a day, and even when I’m off

duty, I find it difficult to observe drug use nonchalantly.

That’s why, as my girlfriend dressed and her roommate

consumed her “Chinese food” on the roof, I found myself

hitting the redial button on their phone pad, trying to get

the number of the delivery service.”

NLPstuff Michal Wallace has started a “wiki” about Neurolinguistic Programming. This “wiki” tool intrigues me, as a medium for web-based collaborative learning. This is the first time I’ve run across it. NLP, on the other hand, is something I’ve long been interested in, as both a set of specific techniques for helping people change through changing beliefs, and as a unique way of describing what change agents may be doing without knowing it.

When I was newer to weblogging, I noticed that everyone had a big list of other weblogs as a sidebar, so I made one myself. I found a list of one week’s most popular logs (in terms of how many others linked to them), so I linked to them. I think it was a sign of progress when I changed the header to “weblogs I read,” but I just tonight finished culling out the ones I don’t really follow. There are a few others I need to add…

dack.com > web > flash is evil

Do you think this was deliberate, or was it really a typo? [courtesy of Metafilter]

Here are librarians’ accounts of the stupid people about whom they snicker with other librarians.

David Bianculli, New York Daily News TV critic, finds “Buffy the

Vampire Slayer” pushes the envelope.

Relieved to report that Cruise and Kidman appear to be defecting from S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y, according to Hollywood gossip. “And (Cruise) appears not to have been very

supportive of fellow S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-i-s-t John

Travolta’s attempts to turn B-a-t-t-l-e-f-i-e-l-d E-a-r-t-h (by L. R-o-n H-u-b-b-a-r-d, the founder of S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y) into a movie.

While working on Eyes Wide Shut, it is

claimed that he hinted to executives at

Warner Bros, the studio behind both movie

projects, that releasing B-a-t-t-l-e-f-i-e-l-d E-a-r-t-h would

be a mistake.” (No matter, the film is likely to be a bomb anyway, but maybe a few more people will avoid it if its provenance is known.)

Indian village is ostracised for one murder too many: “In India, daily reports abound of crimes against women – dowry burnings,

gang rapes, female infanticide and cases of low-caste women stripped and

paraded through villages.

Many of these crimes pass barely noticed. Ms Devi’s death would also have

gone unpunished – her attackers are wealthy and would probably have

bribed the police – had it not been for the mahapanchayat.”

Germans fooled by D. Duck. Two journalists from the venerable Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung admit they’ve been having more than a chuckle or two at the expense of the culturally authoritative German newspaper’s highbrow readers. Members of a society called Donald that promotes Donald Duck, they’ve been slipping Donaldisms into the paper’s headlines and captions with astonishing regularity for more than ten years.

Will Frank Gehry’s stupendous proposed waterfront “cumulus cloud of titanium” design for a new Guggenheim Museum branch in New York ever really get built?

If it’s only rock and role [sic] why should we like it? by Hannah McGill: “Can we really trust our rock stars to venture beyond the

boundaries of their job descriptions? Increasingly, they are

getting above themselves. They produce movies. Star in

movies. Write movies. Write novels. Diddle about with stocks

and shares and web-related ventures. Import absinthe. Model

for Calvin Klein. Become priests. Today’s pop star has the

attention span of a cocaine-addled gnat. No wonder it takes

them an average of six years to make an album.” [The Scotsman]

“Lucian Freud has long been regarded as one of Britain’s

greatest living artists, and auctioneers at Sotheby’s were

delighted when one of his paintings came up for sale at their

august institution.

But two porters at the Bond Street auction house did not quite

see it that way and when it arrived they threw it into a giant

crushing machine, where it was destroyed. Yesterday

Sotheby’s was coy but it is understood the porters were not

making a critical evaluation on Freud’s artistic technique. The

plant study, valued at £100,000, arrived in a wooden case the

porters put out with the rubbish, believing it to be empty.” [The Independent]

New PBS President Seeks Input on Future of Network, plans a creative summit of film and TV heavyweights to brainstorm on what PBS ought to be doing. Do you really want the likes of Steven Spielberg, Katie Couric, and Ted Koppel to reinvent public television for you?

In the Quantum World, Keys to New Codes. Researchers report that they are using the previously arcane philosophical concept of quantum entanglement as the basis for an almost-fully-realized system of secure cryptography.

Who’s Filling Your Prescription? I don’t know if this is true in your state, but in Massachusetts, if it walks like a pharmacist and talks like a pharmacist, and wears a white coat and performs many of the same functions as a pharmacist, it’s not necessarily a pharmacist and, thus, not necessarily regulated by the state. “Pharamacy technicians” have little required training beyond a high school degree and, by some accounts, are responsible for half of all prescription errors.

Lake Monster Now Has a Price on His Head: “After years of unconfirmed sightings, Ogopogo — Western Canada’s equivalent of the Loch Ness monster — now has a reward on its head

thanks to local businessmen, who have taken out an insurance policy just in case it is found.”

Wild at heart

“Paleontologists have found what appears to be a fossilised dinosaur heart in the chest cavity of a 300-kilogram

plant-eating beast that died 66 million years ago. The discovery may help resolve a long-running debate over dinosaurs’ metabolism.”

Two new medical research findings with potentially very important implications in reducing suffering: Researchers Target Mechanism for Cancer Pain, finding a protein that may block some of the bone destruction responsible for the excruciating pain in bone cancer. And Researchers Reduce Transplant Rejection in Mice: by using antibodies against a T-cell surface antigen, they block activation of the T-cells that cause graft-vs.-host disease, a major cause of catastrophic failure of bone marrow transplants.

A warning for you parents of young children: Mixing Fever-Reducing Drugs Is Bad for Children. Many pediatricians have advised fever-phobic parents that, instead of holding to the four-to-six-hourly dosage interval for either ibuprofen (Motrin etc.) or acetaminophen (Tylenol), parents could alternate doses of the two agents every two or three hours. Word is that this can cause additive side effects and do more harm than good.

Tsunamis Seen Possible Along U.S. East Coast. Newly-discovered sea floor cracks off the mid-Atlantic coast, if geologically active, could trigger tsunamis along this heavily-populated coast. Geologists predict that the “tidal waves” would be on a par with the storm surges caused by class-three or -four hurricanes. 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, a class-four storm, was the costliest natural disaster in human history, largely because of its storm surge damage.

Study Sees No Benefits From DARE. “Cash-strapped schools are still relying primarily on the DARE program to keep their students off

drugs even though a number of studies have questioned its effectiveness, according to a survey of educators.

In recent years, several studies have concluded DARE does little to keep children off drugs….(T)he study’s author, said she

was disappointed to see so many schools continuing to use the program.”

I know I shouldn’t be linking so often to the New York Times, because the links expire pretty quickly, but this is one fascinating article — read it quickly! The Human Family Tree: 10 Adams and 18 Eves: “…geneticists, by tracing the DNA patterns found in people

throughout the world, have now identified lineages

descended from 10 sons of a genetic Adam and 18 daughters

of Eve.”

On the record: NASA plans to put flight data recorders in future Mars missions, preparing for mission failures.

The Epidemic of Cyberstalking: the Internet can be a truly scary place to live. [Wired]

Because she reported that her obesity prevented her from getting a job, a British woman qualified for a grant to join a slimming club under a government scheme aimed at helping the long-term unemployed find work. (She ended up losing 180 lbs. but still hasn’t found work.)

The Secret Service is taking a closer look at ‘Where’s George’, the site I previously described where you follow bills whose serial numbers you’ve registered and marked with its URL.

Webdweller – Home of the average human face. This site collects photos of viewers and morphs them together, aiming at portraying the “average human face.” So far they have around a hundred contributions, almost all of them Caucasian, but they hope that will broaden in time. Not ’til the ethnic mix of web users broadens…

Thyroid Humor?