CokeSpotlight. Greenpeace and Adbusters kick off a massive campaign against Coca Cola’s environmental hypocrisy as a polluting sponsor of the first “Green” Olympics: ‘To be Number One in the world: that’s the

goal of The Coca-Cola Company. That’s

why Coke is the longest running

corporate sponsor of the Olympic Games.

It’s a partnership that has helped make

Coke the world’s best known brand, sold

in nearly 200 countries.

But there’s something different about the

2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney,

Australia. They will be the first Green

Games, a global celebration of sport,

culture, and the environment.

In the Green Games, Coca-Cola isn’t winning the race. Coke keeps

its products “always cool” with the help of HFCs, some of the most

potent global warming gases ever produced.’

Mental Health is Not an Issue…Yet. “Then, you realize you’ve asked the wrong question. You are asking how many of the downtrodden have to die. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about

the mentally ill. They’re crazy. Not until the mentally ill begin to see who is responsible for their continued suffering, and find that person, and show

up on his doorstep with their agony, and share it with him, will mental health care be available for all who need it.”

“…simply a mistake where a piece of type accidentally fell onto the page during production”, or (much more likely, it would seem) a clever culture-jam by a guerrilla Seattle Times employee?

I want one of these!

Alas, Inability to secure funding stream axes NewsWatch.

‘On Tuesday, May 30,

NewsWatch.org, a daily media

criticism Web site run by The Center

for Media and Public Affairs, ceased

operations. Described by Smart

Computing as one of the “best

little-known Web sites,” on the Web,

NewsWatch.org was launched a year

and a half ago to serve as a

“consumer’s guide to the news.”

Rather than look at the inside stories

behind the day’s news – who was up,

who was down and who did what to

whom – NewsWatch focused on news

content, examining inaccuracies,

distortions, lack of context and other

controversies of interest to the

consumers as well as the producers

of news.’

Scientists Excited by Rare Meteorite Find in Canada:

like “…sampling on the surface of a comet”. But why does Reuters confuse meteorites and asteroids?

A Spelling Test of fifty commonly misspelled words. I consider myself to be a strong speller yet I’m chagrined to say I only scored 86%.

Adult stem cells can produce a wealth of cell types, Science authors report. This exciting study by a Swedish team shows that, when grown within an embryo, adult neural stem cells can revert to a precursor state that can give rise to lineages of a variety of tissue types. The pluripotentiality of embryonal stem cells has long been recognized, but current ethical concerns have led to a ban on tissue from embryos. This discovery about the open-ended potential of stem cells from adults opens the way to therapeutic advances, such aas growing replacement organs, that do not require embryonic tissue. Of course, neural stem cells are among the most difficult cell types to obtain from living adults, so it would be nice if we discovered similar versatility in other types of adult stem cells.

Toshiba euthanasia laptop goes on display. “The patient got a needle in their arm, while the computer sat on the bed. The laptop

asked the patient twice if they knew what they were doing. The third time they had to

hit the space bar to confirm they wanted to die. Fifteen seconds later a message was

sent to a switching unit, which turned on a compressor.” [The Register]

New Scientist: Before the big bang. One cosmologist’s attempt to apply string theory to the thorny problem of the singularity at the origin of the universe has some surprising results:

“Our Universe is a patch of the inside

of a black hole,” amd there was a time before the Big Bang. Something like this notion is all over science fiction, however, from even before we knew about black holes. Does anyone remember the culmination of James Blish’s Cities in Flight series from the late ’50’s?

Survey: Online Therapy Bad Idea. I don’t think I’m just trying to protect my market niche as a psychiatrist when I say that I agree with this survey finding.

Little-known ventriloquist puts words into Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ mouth.

Annals of the Age of Depravity (cont’d.): Mother Kept Son Locked Up for 30 Years.

‘”Why didn’t we report it? Because this was something between the two of them,” one person from the village was quoted as saying.’

The Travel Guide Says what? Words fail me.