The Guardian: Iranian link to bomb on Pan Am 103. CNS News last night reported that an Iranian defector (who reportedly controlled his country’s terrorist operations for a decade and is being debriefed by the CIA) has proof that Iran planned and financed the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Blair gets tough with doctors, comes back from his paternity leave ready to move British medicine away from professional self-regulation and the “consultant is king” culture of the National Health Service.

GoodBye! The Journal of Contemporary Obituaries, “an opinionated bimonthly magazine which chronicles the dead – famous, infamous and non-famous.”

A science writer I like very much, Matt Ridley, summarizes the evidence for a controversial theory that AIDS was caused when thousands of Africans were given a live polio vaccine grown on chimpanzee kidney tissue in the ’50’s. “(A) particular type of live polio vaccine called Chat may have been grown in the 1950s in cells

derived from chimpanzee kidneys. Chimpanzees are the probable animal source of the AIDS virus; live

vaccines could have been contaminated if an infected animal was used. Chat was tested on more than 1 million Africans in 1957-60, in the very areas where AIDS subsequently became epidemic for the first time.

Two other, less serious forms of AIDS developed in parts of west Africa at about the same time, each epidemic closely associated with an

area in which similar live polio vaccines may have been tested.

Stated thus, the theory seems purely circumstantial. It boils down to seven assertions, all of which must be tested to destruction….”

‘The descent into scumdom is a slippery slope, as

(Harry) Stein notes in his charming new memoir, How I

Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing

Conspiracy (And Found Inner Peace)…His

fellow converts from the pre-fab liberalism of their

youth will know what he means. One day you get

an inkling that maybe affirmative action isn’t very

fair; the next thing you know, you’re joining the

NRA, even though you hate guns…Like the good conservative he now is, he

blames it all on a woman…’

Philospoher Ian Hacking is tired of “the social construction of…”

Joey Skaggs is at it again: cemetery theme parks. [Salon]

New Scientist reviewer says frothy book deserves cult status.

The Punch Lines: ‘Although the literati like to think they’re

superior to the millions of simple folk who tune

into Jerry Springer and Who Wants to Be a

Millionaire, their savage attacks on each other

are often as ugly, tacky, and phony as any

World Wrestling Federation bout. Still, a quick

breeze through last month’s Manhattan

publications proves that literary fuck-you fests

are alive and kicking, along with our

fascination for them.’ [The Voice Literary Supplement]

Salon: If code is free, why not me?

“Some open-source geeks are as open-minded about sex

as they are about hacking,” says reporter Annalee Newitz from a rapturous position “at the feet of three charming naked men…” in a state of partial undress.