Seeing Drugs as a Choice or as a Brain Anomaly. Psychiatrists debate whether the brains of abusers are malfunctioning badly enough to make their actions nonvolitional. Brain changes in heavy chronic drug users are easy to demonstrate, but when do they cross the line to being considered responsible for alterations in behavior, or worthy of being called a disease? Ramifications are legal and fiscal as well as medical, of course. [New York Times]

EPIC Testimony on Use and Misuse of the Social Security Number. Mark Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, testified before a subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee on May 11.

In conclusion, there is clear authority in both legislation and judicial opinion that supports the enactment of further laws to limit the collection and use of the

Social Security Number. It is particularly important that such legislation not force consumers to make unfair or unreasonable “choices” that essentially

require trading the privacy interest in the SSN for some benefit or opportunity.

What’s News at Junkbusters. “This page is updated frequently, for the benefit of both reporters and consumers who want to keep posted on current events affecting

their privacy. ”

Wired: New York Times Site Exposes CIA Agents. “A freedom of information activist plans to publish online a classified CIA document that was pulled from The

New York Times‘ site after newspaper officials learned it exposed the identities of Iranians involved in the

1953 U.S. and British-backed coup that overthrew Iran’s elected officials.

The Times used the graphic to accompany an article detailing the coup. In a technical glitch, those who

visited the Times website on June 16 were able to read the names of the agents when they downloaded

the graphic.”

Wired: Amazon to Break Embargo on early sales of fourth Harry Potter book, slated for July 8th release and inspiring booksellers’ dreams of dollar signs and ringing cash registers.

Oh my, Dr. Laura says her feelings have been hurt by those nasty homosexuals trying to axe her upcoming TV show. “I’ve cried more at times than I would like to admit,” Schlessinger told Time magazine. “It’s been agonizing.” But she also persisted: “Not being able to relate normally to a member of the opposite sex is some kind of error. We were biologically meant

to give birth to more people.”

In Gamble, U.S. Supports Russian Germ Warfare Scientists. U.S. support is massively endowing the careers of some 2200 scientists at more than 30 institutions throughout the former Soviet Union. It might not be an oversimplification to say that we are buying them out mostly to prevent them from selling their expertise to some notorious “rogue state”.

Feed: Street Level, the brave new world of urban mapping. “New York City and Los Angeles,

already seen as the epicenters of American narcissism, are

getting to know themselves a lot better these days. With

sophisticated computer simulation and mapping projects

underway, they’ll soon know themselves down to the square

foot. Both maps will integrate aerial photos with data gathered

from city agencies, utilities, and developers, and will be

continuously updated in years hence.” Among other consequences, the maps, it is claimed, will make for “one-stop shopping” for potential terrorists.

The Jerusalem Report is amused as Islamists attack apparent hidden anti-Islamic messages in multinational brand name advertising.

Squall: Blowing the lid on the Bilderberg conference: “You’d imagine that if the President of the World Bank, the director of the World Trade

Organisation, the Queen of the Netherlands and the head of the Xerox Corporation were

amongst the delegates at an international conference, there would be some mention of it in

the media.

But then again this is the annual meeting of the highly influential and highly secretive

Bilderberg Group, a collection of top ranking western politicians, media moguls, corporate

presidents and big bankers who meet at a different location each year to conduct

clandestine talks on the furthering of global capitalism. Every delegate, including a handful

of carefully selected journalists, are sworn to secrecy.”

Fetus Develops Taste for Food in the Womb. It appears that exposure to

flavors either through amniotic fluid or in breast milk can influence a child’s food preferences.

APB news: Satanists Suspected in Theft of General’s Skull

A satanist likely is to blame for the theft of a Civil War general’s skull from a Rochester cemetery during

this week’s summer solstice, police said today.

Fading aroma. The gene pool of wild arabica coffee plants is under threat. Over 90% of the coffee we drink is arabica, and the highland forests of Ethiopia from which it originates, and where wild coffee plants make up most of the underbrush, have lost more than half of their trees in the past 30 years. When cultivated coffee on plantations outside Ethiopia is devastated by the diseases from which they are in peril, breeders turn to the Ethiopian gene pool for help.

Fetus Develops Taste for Food in the Womb. It appears that exposure to

flavors either through amniotic fluid or in breast milk can influence a child’s food preferences.