An original Declaration of Independence auctioned off at SOTHEBYS.COM today went for $8.14 million; the opening bid was $4 million. The document had reportedly been found in the backing of a picture bought at a Philadelphia flea market in 1989 for $4 by someone who was interested in the frame.

Gene found for color blindness in Pacific Islanders. I can’t believe that this news report doesn’t even mention that this (achromatopsia) is the subject of Oliver Sacks’ fascinating Island of the Colorblind.

Retailers Hid True Costs of ‘Free’ PCs – FTC You’re all pretty savvy consumers, aren’t you? The FTC says you might not have known what you were really getting yourself into if you bought one of those computer-and-internet deals, because of deceptive advertising.

The Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Wildfire Rages at Wash. State Nuclear Site. Is there a natural uprising against human nuclear hubris this summer? Grassfires now threaten the Hanford Reservation as they did the Los Alamos National Laboratory last month. Radioactive environmental catastrophe looms, some say, if the winds spread the fire the wrong way through this obscene, contaminated dumping ground. Plutonium could be dispersed in smoke and ash, and radioactive ground denuded of vegetation by the fires could be washed into the Rio Grande by seasonal rains. Public health officials have demonstrated over and over again that they minimize risks to prevent public panic; “serves-you-right” doomsayers (like me) always spin worst-case-scenarios to wag our fingers more dramatically. I’d love to hear some credible, objective environmental scientist’s estimation of the degree and impact of such risks.

Pollution Eats Into Russian Exports of Caviar. What is the story on why the reduction is so drastic? This news item says that pollution of the Caspian Sea attributable to oil exploration and industry, as well as a contribution from increased illegal poaching, has cut caviar harvests by 2/3 in just one year.

Technology may finally enter the land mine-disposal fray.

Pressure Increases to End Nuclear Reprocessing. 90% of radioactive pollution of the northeast Atlantic comes from the Sellafield (UK) and La Hague (France) reprocessing plants for spent nuclear fuel. Now, but for the abstention of Luxembourg, the other countries with northeast Atlantic concerns are unanimously urging a move to dry storage of spent nuclear fuel instead of reprocessing. No comment from the UK or France yet. In the early ’90’s, this watchdog group was successful in pushing through a ban on direct sea dumping of nuclear wastes, which had been rampant up to that point. The UK and France, which initially opposed that earlier ban, joined in within a year. Recall that Sellafield’s viability is already questioned on fiscal grounds, far more persuasive than environmental concerns are to the nuclear industry. Also recall that Germany recently became the first industrialized state to resolve to totally decommission its nuclear power-generating capacity.

Forget me not. Neuroscientists are pushing the envelope, even if the work remains reductionistic and inferential for now, of understanding the biological basis of social affiliation. Recall the posts below on mirror neurons in primates, and autistic subjects’ failure to use facial recognition circuitry in the brain in interpersonal perception. Now this elucidation of the role of oxytocin in shaping relationships, at least in rodents…

Do they really still think, no matter how glaring or grotesque, that New Tobacco Labels actually deter smokers? It’s not as if any of the health warnings will be news to anyone, or that being better informed is the key to beating one’s compulsion.

Relatively Few Watch Penile Implant Webcast. The penile pump is the highest-rated solution for serious male erectile dysfunction; an implantation was webcast to increase public understanding of the technique, but only a few thousand, orders of magnitude less than those who have “tuned in” to other surgical procedure webcasts, watched. Might penile surgery be too unbearable for male viewers in particular?

The venue is different, but the white man is still not letting any savages stand in the way of his land grab.