Presumed twin removed from 4-month-old boy’s belly, Cairo newspaper reports.

The Call From the Wild . Stories of cell phone calls saving lives in the wilderness are becoming common, yet using a cell phone in the backcountry risks raising the hackles of other climbers or backpackers. Objections arise from the aesthetic violation of the isolation of the wilderness, the perception that having a cell phone facilitates a backcountry traveller taking more risks than is prudent, and the wastefulness of unnecessary search and rescue missions “resulting from frightened people giving in to the temptation to call when they get tired or lost, instead of relying on themselves.” Washington Post

Cold War Oncology – Bismuth-213, part of the decay chain from uranium-233 left over from weapons-grade uranium stockpiles at Oak Ridge TN, may be a boon to cancer chemotherapy.

Planet lovers campaign to save Pluto Express – NASA’s first unmanned expedition to Pluto and the Kuiper disc is threatened with cancellation, partly because of the two failed missions to Mars. The Planetary Society wants its 10,000 members to lobby Congress to preserve the Pluto trip.

The letter carrier wants to know your email address. If you sign up for this service the U.S. Postal Service wants to offer, your existing email address will be cross-referenced in a giant USPO database with your street address. Anyone could send you an email if all they know about you is your snailmail address. Think about the spam possibilities! ZDNet

Please Change Beliefs is conceptual artist Jenny Holzer’s May ’99 web installation. Holzer’s subversive aphorisms are playing a prominent part at the anti-Republican demonstrations in Philadelphia, acording to news sources. Artcyclopedia

World War II prisoner emerges. He is presumed to be a Hungarian thought to have died in WWII but in reality incarcerated in a Russian mental hospital for the 55 years since. Piecing together the story is complicated, however, since he is confused and does not recall who he is or what happened to him. This man never learned Russian and can barely speak his native Hungarian; he has had no one to speak to since another prisoner’s release twenty years ago. BBC

Sounds like a plot from one of those tacky Indian films…

National Abortion Rights Action League’s factsheet on the record of Republican vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney: “During his ten years in the U.S. House of Representatives, former

Rep. Cheney cast 27 votes on abortion and reproductive rights. Of

that number, 26 were anti-choice votes.” The details follow.

Fusing Beauty and Terror, Reverence and Desecration: The Fallen Concorde. “Critic’s notebook” commentary in the New York Times. Abit over-the-top but has a useful punchline. “The Concorde crash,

in other words, ought to shock people out of retro ways of

thinking in all spheres of culture.”

Asylum Plea by Chinese Sect’s Leader Perplexes the U.S.. We either deny asylum and turn a religious leader over to persecution, or we grant it and tell the Chinese we harbor elements they find offensive. Complicating the matter further, China has accused him of criminal activities. The U.S. and China have no extradition treaty, so it appears to be a matter of U.S. discretion. New York Times

Break all the rules. In the last year, researchers have begun to suspect that the speed of light has slowed since the big bang.

One argument in support of a changing light speed is the fact that temperature

and density are relatively uniform across the Universe. There’s no way such far-flung corners of space can be causally

connected unless light once travelled faster than it does now.

Now theoreticians argue that, if this is true, it requires that electric charge must have appeared out of nowhere.

…If the speed of light isn’t

constant, then charge conservation–another central tenet of physics–will be violated. One way to understand their proof is to think of

light as a wave of oscillating electromagnetic fields with an associated electric current shuttling charge back and forth. If the speed of

the wave falls, the associated current will deposit charge faster than it picks it up, resulting in a net creation of positive charge.

If the speed of light were falling gradually as the universe expands, we would expect to see evidence of the violation of charge conservation, which we don’t. But, if the decrease in the speed of light occurred rapidly in the first seconds after the big bang and has stayed constant since then, it might account for another vexing problem in cosmology — the apparent asymmetry the universe has in terms of favoring matter over antimatter. New Scientist

Break all the rules. In the last year, researchers have begun to suspect that the speed of light has slowed since the big bang.

One argument in support of a changing light speed is the fact that temperature

and density are relatively uniform across the Universe. There’s no way such far-flung corners of space can be causally

connected unless light once travelled faster than it does now.

Now theoreticians argue that, if this is true, it requires that electric charge must have appeared out of nowhere.

…If the speed of light isn’t

constant, then charge conservation–another central tenet of physics–will be violated. One way to understand their proof is to think of

light as a wave of oscillating electromagnetic fields with an associated electric current shuttling charge back and forth. If the speed of

the wave falls, the associated current will deposit charge faster than it picks it up, resulting in a net creation of positive charge.

If the speed of light were falling gradually as the universe expands, we would expect to see evidence of the violation of charge conservation, which we don’t. But, if the decrease in the speed of light occurred rapidly in the first seconds after the big bang and has stayed constant since then, it might account for another vexing problem in cosmology — the apparent asymmetry the universe has in terms of favoring matter over antimatter. New Scientist

Break all the rules. In the last year, researchers have begun to suspect that the speed of light has slowed since the big bang.

One argument in support of a changing light speed is the fact that temperature

and density are relatively uniform across the Universe. There’s no way such far-flung corners of space can be causally

connected unless light once travelled faster than it does now.

Now theoreticians argue that, if this is true, it requires that electric charge must have appeared out of nowhere.

…If the speed of light isn’t

constant, then charge conservation–another central tenet of physics–will be violated. One way to understand their proof is to think of

light as a wave of oscillating electromagnetic fields with an associated electric current shuttling charge back and forth. If the speed of

the wave falls, the associated current will deposit charge faster than it picks it up, resulting in a net creation of positive charge.

If the speed of light were falling gradually as the universe expands, we would expect to see evidence of the violation of charge conservation, which we don’t. But, if the decrease in the speed of light occurred rapidly in the first seconds after the big bang and has stayed constant since then, it might account for another vexing problem in cosmology — the apparent asymmetry the universe has in terms of favoring matter over antimatter. New Scientist

Sting Stung by Abu-Jamal Claims. The pop artist gave a large check to the widow of the police officer Mumia Abu-Jamal has been convicted of killing after learning that his name has been used in support of Abu-Jamal without his consent, as a result of his opposition to the death penalty and work on behalf of Amnesty International. On the other hand, is it possible that he’s repudiating Abu-Jamal after police groups have called for boycotts of his recent tours and refused to work overtime duties at his shows; as with Springsteen, gearing up to attack him as a highly visible figurehead of anti-police sentiment?

Ladies in waiting. A mathematician argues that women should have twice as many public toilets as men. New Scientist

Break all the rules. In the last year, researchers have begun to suspect that the speed of light has slowed since the big bang.

One argument in support of a changing light speed is the fact that temperature

and density are relatively uniform across the Universe. There’s no way such far-flung corners of space can be causally

connected unless light once travelled faster than it does now.

Now theoreticians argue that, if this is true, it requires that electric charge must have appeared out of nowhere.

…If the speed of light isn’t

constant, then charge conservation–another central tenet of physics–will be violated. One way to understand their proof is to think of

light as a wave of oscillating electromagnetic fields with an associated electric current shuttling charge back and forth. If the speed of

the wave falls, the associated current will deposit charge faster than it picks it up, resulting in a net creation of positive charge.

If the speed of light were falling gradually as the universe expands, we would expect to see evidence of the violation of charge conservation, which we don’t. But, if the decrease in the speed of light occurred rapidly in the first seconds after the big bang and has stayed constant since then, it might account for another vexing problem in cosmology — the apparent asymmetry the universe has in terms of favoring matter over antimatter. New Scientist

Dancing with Death: “In the craziest of crazes, to pounding music,

Brazilian teenagers line up in nightclubs to

beat each other senseless in choreographed

fights: 60 children have been murdered in four

years.” The Irish Times

Isolated Bhutan turns on TV (7/22/2000). The San Jose Mercury goes for the one-year followup on the King of Bhutan’s June 1999 decision to allow television and the internet. And it isn’t a pretty sight.

They may have ‘made his day’, but is it festival material??? Nando Times

Court blocks ABC’s Kevorkian interview

A state appellate court has blocked ABC’s planned prison interview with

Jack Kevorkian, the assisted-suicide advocate jailed for helping a terminally ill man take his own life in 1998…

During the last two years, the state Department of Corrections has tightened restrictions on media access to prisoners and now bars all

televised interviews with inmates. ABC, backed by various news organizations, argued the restrictions violate the First Amendment.

Department spokesman Matt Davis said ABC’s interview proposal, which called for Walters and 10 other people to be admitted to the prison for

nine hours, demonstrated the possible disruptiveness of media access to prisons.

Nando Times

Ibuprofen reduces amyloid found in Alzheimer’s; may eventually find use to prevent the disease, a new study shows in a mouse model. There’s been evidence before; for example, it’s been observed that people who have been on chronic anti-inflammatory medication, e.g. for rheumatoid arthritis, have a lower rate of the dementing disease. However, many neurologists pooh pooh the idea.

New Scientist‘s coverage of the Concorde disaster notes that a 1996 study commissioned by the FAA advised of the Concorde’s vulnerability to the type of fuel tank fire that was probably involved in the current crash.

Billionaires for Bush (or Gore): Return on Investment [via RobotWisdom]

New Greenhouse Gas Identified, Potent and Rare (but Expanding). Trifluoromethyl sulfur pentafluoride (SF5 CF3) so far occurs in the atmosphere in a concentration of one part in ten trillion, but its concentration appears to be steadily rising and it traps heat more effectively than all other known greenhouse gases. What’s more, once produced, it probably takes over 1,000 years to break down. Its source is a mystery. Speculation hinges upon a secret military or industrial use or an inadvertent byproduct of some industrial process. The similar gas SF6 is used in electronics and weaponry production. New York Times

To Texas Farmers’ Burdens, Add the Grasshopper At least two of the ten plagues of the Old Testament story of Exodus — drought and “locusts” — have come back to bite George W.’s homeground this summer. Are we headed for the death of the firstborn? New York Times

San Diego District Attorney Offering Free DNA Testing

“The San Diego County district

attorney has begun a policy of offering free DNA testing

to prison inmates who say they were wrongly convicted and

would be exonerated by this increasingly common scientific

method.” This is the first time a DA’s office is volunteering the service, at $3000-5000 per test. They say that recent high-visibility accusations of prosecutorial misconduct against them have absolutely nothing to do with the offer. New York Times

Could a virus make you fat? A commn virus that causes respiratory symptoms also interferes with metabolism and causes fatty weight gain. In animal studies, infected animals fed the same as controls gain much more body fat; and in humans, 30% of obese people as compared with 5% of lean people show signs of having been infected with this virus. Could we give a childhood inoculation against obesity one day? BBC

Webmonkey’s MP3 Overview

I’ve been saying all week with relief that at least it’s not another Bush-Quayle ticket. Now: How Dick Cheney Is Like Dan Quayle by Timothy Noah Slate

The new issue of the Journal of Mundane Behavior is out, and has several worthwhile articles (and one impenetrable one which I’m not blinking). First, Validating Your Merit in Letters of Application for Employment: “We

find and describe five supporting sources that letter writers use to convince readers of their merit:

Self-report, important others, objective indicators, achievements, and previous roles and experiences.

The idea of introducing evidence to convince target people (e.g., potential employers) can be generalized

to any context in which actors seek to convince a judgmental audience about self-presentation claims.

This idea, which we label ‘self-validation,’ suggests that the ‘truth’ in self-presentation and in

applications for employment is not as clear as may be thought.” This could actually be useful in thinking about how to write these letters.

Tilting at Windmills Why physicians need to learn to be more mundane with their patients. We psychiatrists already understand this as the essence and the privilege of the way we interact with and help our patients. Journal of Mundane Behavior

The mundane and the limits of the human. About storytelling and its relationship with the mundane.

A useful way to think of the mundane is as a story that, we assume, does not need to be told. If something is mundane, we

assume, it is something with which everybody is so well acquainted that relating these details is not only boring but redundant.

The assumption that the mundane does not bear examining is the same assumption as that of a story that does not need telling.

But it is precisely these stories that we assume are so self-evident they don’t need to be told that play crucial roles in

determining who we are and, more crucially, what we exclude, silence and ignore in order to maintain this determination.

Considers the fascinating comeuppance anthropologist Elizabeth Bohannon (Shakespeare in the Bush) received when she explored her hypothesis of the universal resonance of Hamlet by telling the story to a group of elders of the Tiv, a West African tribe that had never heard of Shakespeare. Journal of Mundane Behavior

(Sort of) New Hacker Resource site: ‘Hacker News Network announced earlier this week that it will be merging its

website with the websites of its “parents,” L0pht Heavy Industries and @stake. All

three groups focused on improving knowledge about computer and Internet security,

and now the three related websites will consolidate to offer news analysis (currently

covered by Hacker News Network), security advisories, white papers, and tools

(currently offered by the L0pht), and comprehensive security services (from

@stake).’ Geek News

Boy says in court that family dog did rape him. In 1994, the then-7-y.o. boy’s mother was jailed for allegedly ramming an object into his rectum after he was incontinent of feces. She insisted that she didn’t do it and that her son had been raped by the family’s pit bull. Now, seven years later, the victim, who is now 14, says that that’s exactly what happened [via Romanesko’s Obscure Store].

Doctors back ‘controversial’ operation. Reports indicate that some severely emphysematous patients may benefit, counterintuitively, from surgery removing part of their lungs. BBC

Herbal supplement warning issued. A Maryland dermatologist, in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, warns that the lack of regulation of “natural” herbal remedies means they could contain a number of animal tissues that could spread BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), or “mad cow disease.”

West Nile virus found in Massachusetts, where I live. I logged below the news about the likely spread of the virus this summer, and I’d just been thinking aobut this when I got a mosquito bite earlier this week. Nando Times

Engaged. A new publicly accessible Well conference on weblogs and weblogging.

Lego Cthulu

Web Site Posts Secret CIA Briefing Papers “A secret CIA overview of the U.S. intelligence community prepared for visiting Japanese intelligence officials has been posted on an Internet site frequented by activists opposed to government secrecy, prompting security concerns among intelligence officials and their overseers on Capitol Hill. The CIA briefing, containing some sensitive information about budget trends and so-called “hard” intelligence target countries, appeared a week ago on Cryptome, an Internet site maintained by John Young.” Washington Post

Medicine Merchants: How Companies Stall Generics and Keep Themselves Healthy. “That is not what Congress envisioned in 1984 when it passed

a law intended to keep drug prices down by speeding up the

entry of generic drugs. The Drug Price Competition and

Patent Term Restoration Act was intended to foster

competition between brand and generic companies, and it

has. It was not supposed to prompt rivals to join hands in

keeping drugs off the market. ” New York Times

The First Church of the Last Laugh. “The world’s oldest religion, the world’s largest church. You may already be a member. To find out press here…”

Rabbi’s Comment on Senator Sparks Probe In a way, the infamous Jewish Defense League rears its ugly head again. “A rabbi from New York is

under investigation after he allegedly made death threats against

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman during a cable television show,

officials said today.” The rabbi said that Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, is a traitor for not supporting release for Jonathan Pollard, serving a life sentence for spying for Israel.

Man Sues Over Arrest for Taping Police Chief. Are police in the course of their official duties protected by a right to privacy against their conversations being taped? A taper was wrongly arrested, a judge said, and the charge thrown out of court. Now the taper is bringing suit for wrongful arrest.

State Trooper Dies Of Hepatitis C, 19 years after he received an infected needle stick while while assisting in a drug arrest as a rookie.

Paper chase. Crime investigations hinging on the source of paper used for a ransom note, or identifying a page fraudulently inserted into a document, etc., are about to receive new assistance. A new technique efficiently utilizes mass spectrometry of trace elements found in a paper sample to reveal its unique chemical fingerprint. New Scientist

The Village Voice: Features: Protest 2000. Keynote article of a special, fat Voice section introduces the anti-globalization movement that flexed its muscle at the recent WTO and IMF meetings, and of which we’re about to hear alot more at the conventions. And here’s how to act up yourself.

Back from the brink. Keith Jarrett’s recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome, and how it has changed his music. The Guardian

Outtakes: the rise of provisional history. Atlantic

Have they found the lost Leonardo? Giorgio Vasari (1511-74) may have built a wall covering up a fresco by da Vinci to paint his own, cherished fresco in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Leonardo was reputedly experimenting with his materials when he painted this ‘missing’ fresco, so not much of it may survive. Thermographic evidence may be brought to bear to ascertain its exact nature and location. If it appears to be intact, should the Vasari be razed to access it?

In a new Oxford University-published book, The End

of Time: The Next

Revolution in Physics,

the independent maverick physicist Julian Barbour

asserts that time

simply doesn’t exist. This

by itself is not so shocking.

My friend Artie, for

example, has always

insisted that there’s only

change, not time. Things

move around; time may

just be a way of noting

that. But Barbour goes

further. He says there’s no such thing as motion

either. Instead, Barbour sees a universe filled with

static instants — instants that contain “records” that

fool any conscious beings who happen to find

themselves encased in one into believing that things

have moved and time has passed.

Barbour’s theory meets one test of important new

ways of looking at the universe: It doesn’t, on the

face of it, make a lot of sense. [Feed]

And Julian Barbour’s own website discusses his ideas further.

The music never stopped. From discussion at the New York Academy of Sciences covered in the Globe and Mail. Was the development of music an individual biological adaptation that helped endowed members of the species survive, evolutionarily selected for and genetically encoded? Several bits of evidence point that way, some argue. Music is universal, in all human cultures. The age of the oldest archaeological evidence of musical instruments suggests its extremely early development in human evolution. Lullabies are universal; maybe happy contented infants have a survival advantage if sung to. Musical ability might make one more attractive to potential mates, viz. the way pop stardom and sexuality are intertwined. Tribal bonding through music is such an innately powerful experience; the survival advantages of group cohesion are obvious. But others feel that this is little different from other cultural developments like writing and visual art — cultural but not biological adaptations. ‘ “As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless,” (Steven) Pinker wrote in

his 1997 book How the Mind Works. “Compared with language, vision, social reasoning

and physical know-how, music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle

would be virtually unchanged.” ‘

The Queen Is Dead. How Judy Garland went from gay icon to an embarrassment. The Atlantic

Superfish are no superfix for hunger. Jean-Michel Cousteau writes about these genetically modified salmon that grow twice as large six times as fast as a natural Atlantic salmon, while consuming only 3/4 of the food. 100,000 of these, raised by a Canadian firm, await regulatory approval for sale to U.S. markets, the largest in the world for farmed fish. Like the first green revolution, this is supposedly a response to world hunger. But we should know by now world hunger isn’t so much a problem of undersupply as inequity of distribution, and just as the green revolution took care of agribusiness first, this development is mostly good for biotechnology. The problem is that some mathematical models indicate that introducing transgenic fish into a native population — and do you believe that sequestration is possible?? — may so adversely influence the overall fertility of the species that it will lead to extinction. So hurry up and eat your salmon. Environmental News Network.

Now contrast the above concerns with this critique of a related issue — environmentalists’ concerns about the introduction of non-native species into ecosystems. Reason magazine covers the controversy created by philosopher Mark Sagoff’s contention, at this spring’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that

arguments over which landscapes are to be preferred…should be recognized for what they are and debated on their proper terms, as

value judgments that are rooted not in science, but in aesthetics. The fact is that tastes vary. Some people love

to look at fields of amber grain and to hear the gentle lowing of cows in a barn. Others prefer prairie grasses

dotted with wildflowers and the rude huffing sounds of bison. Ecology will not and cannot tell us which

landscape is “better” or should be favored. The most beautiful landscape or ecosystem, like beauty itself, is in

the eye of the beholder.

In conflict, voice of Kashmiris unheard: “For 40 years, many in India’s only Muslim-majority state have

longed for union with the neighboring Islamic state of Pakistan.

But a decade of death and destruction, wrought by a

Pakistan-supported insurgency, and by Indian forces’ harsh

efforts to suppress it, has changed all that. Most Kashmiris are

now alienated from both masters in New Delhi and

self-proclaimed saviors in Islamabad.” Noticed how generic this problem of relatively powerless Muslim populations interfacing with greater powers is in the hotspots in disparate parts of the world? Off the top of my head, as well as Kashmir there’s Chechniya, Kosovo, East Timor, Azerbaijan…Boston Globe

Death in Venice. Joshua Micah Marshall: “It’s true that all of America’s

G-7 partners, save Japan, have abolished capital

punishment, but the reason isn’t, as death-penalty

opponents usually assume, that their populations eschew

vengeance. In fact, opinion polls show that Europeans

and Canadians crave executions almost as much as their

American counterparts do. It’s just that their politicians

don’t listen to them. In other words, if these countries’

political cultures are morally superior to America’s, it’s

because they’re less democratic.” The essayist tries to show that the death penalty opponents’ argument is flawed, but IMHO it’s his that is flawed. He wants to set up the straw man argument that liberals always claim to ‘speak for the “little guy,” the “working family,” or, in Al

Gore’s recent phraseology, “the people, not the

powerful” ‘, to claim that liberal opponents of the capital punishment are hypocritical. But no death penalty opponent I’ve ever known or read argues that it’s the will of the masses! They say that it’s morally preferable and our legislators should rise to a higher standard, precisely as Marshall describes is the case in western Europe and Canada. Impassioned political positions always condescend to public opinion, don’t they? Otherwise they wouldn’t be controversial.

And, in more death penalty scrivening, Benjamin Soskis argues that the current move for moratoria on execution, as in Illinois, may actually strengthen the death penalty, based as they are not on a fundamental objection to the central principle that a state may take a life but merely concerns about the imperfect application of that principle. The New Republic

See the International Space Station from your own back yard

“With the aid of free NASA software, stargazers and space enthusiasts can track the

progress of construction on the ambitious space research

facility.

And they can do it with the naked eye.

A new web site developed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight

Center in Huntsville, Ala., is making it easy and exciting for

enthusiasts across the country and around the world to

catch a glimpse of the orbiting facility.”

Featured Author: J. K. Rowling If you still need to catch up on what the Harry Potter business is all about, the New York Times has collected its reviews of the previous three books, articles about the author and the phenomenon, coverage of the backlash, and Janet Maslin’s and Stephen King’s reviews ofGoblet of Fire.

Hope Erodes for Azerbaijan’s Sea of Refugees. One out of every eight people in thsi country lives in a refugee camp. The government of Azerbaijan does nothing. The UN High Commission on Refugees signs off with a shrug. While this New York Times article has clearly chosen to depict the worst of the worst, should any human being live like this?

And not a moment too soon…

Oil Leak Forces Halt of Second Japan Nuke Reactor, two days after an earthquake had forced the shutdown of another reactor at the plant. As usual, officials stress that no radiation was released into the outside environment.

Is this what happens when disgruntled ex-workers don’t have access to firearms?

New low in denying protection of law by blaming the victim‘s ‘stupidity’.

Court Rules Rude Cab Driver Went Too Far. Could you ever see a ruling like this in a major U.S. city??

Blind Analyst Killed by Angry Patient. The patient also killed the analyst’s wife and then himself. Five years of analysis, which the assailant’s wife claimed had made him worse, had cost him $130,000, for which he had sought a refund. The 91-year-old analyst reportedly used a technique called “water magnetism“, a term I’ve never heard of in conjunction with psychotherapeutic technique and which smacks of quackery in the telling; perhaps more appropriately described as money magnetism?

Animators Say, ‘That’s All, Folks’. In the aftermath of the hasty closing of Fox Animation Studios, the future of traditional ‘pencil-on-paper’ animation is in question…except, of course, for Disney and wannabee Dreamworks.

Hope Erodes for Azerbaijan’s Sea of Refugees. One out of every eight people in thsi country lives in a refugee camp. The government of Azerbaijan does nothing. The UN High Commission on Refugees signs off with a shrug. While this New York Times article has clearly chosen to depict the worst of the worst, should any human being live like this?

Thousands Form Human Chain Around U.S. Air Base in Okinawa on the eve of expected arrival of G8 leaders for summit conference. Recall this is the base where three marines were convicted of the rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl in 1995, another marine was recently arrested and charged with the molestation of a 14-year-old girl while she slept in her bed at home, and an airman was apprehended after a hit-and-run accident.

Ruling Frightens Stalking Victims. Michigan’s 1993 anti-stalking law was thrown out on federal appeal, as criminalization of “a substantial amount of conduct protected by the First Amendment”. The ruling “may mean Michigan stalking victims cannot count on state law to

protect them from their tormentors anymore, and that 125

convicted stalkers now behind bars could soon be back on the

street.”

Hate (or Hate Crime) becomes a partisan issue.

Celebrity Donors. A list of Hollywood’s high-roller contributors to Bush, Gore and Nader, including links to information about each contributor. Center for Responsive Politics

Automakers urged to implement ‘smart car’ devices. Federal safety officials say new technology offers first credible possibility of eliminating much of the human error behind collisions. (Approaching innovations include radar to sense stationary obstacles, night vision, adaptive cruise control that senses the distance to vehicle ahead, smart steering assistance to keep a car travelling down the center of its traffic lane, linking emergency services to car-borne GPS etc.) Nando Times Some human error, of course, may not be eliminated. There was a replay of an extraordinary audio clip from last year on this evening’s All Things Considered on NPR. Jack E. Robinson, the hapless Republican contender for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, had been getting carried away ranting to an ATC interviewer over his cellular phone about the Massachusetts Republican leadership’s lack of confidence in him, as he drove down the road. All of a sudden, slam! he has a clearly audible auto accident.

Radioactive runoff reported near Los Alamos lab. Yes, indeed, as feared, first significant rainstorms since the wildfires are flushing radioactive isotopes down Los Alamos Canyon.

EyeTracking Online News. For four years, a study by Stanford University and the Poynter Institute has examined online news readers’ eye tracking patterns. They find, contrary to expectations, that the eyes go first to text rather than photos or graphics. A further finding from the study is that banner ads do catch readers’ attention for long enough to perceive the ad. Many other findings about online news-reading habits here.

Quakes may explain the mystery of the Oracle of Delphi. Reading that (archaeological) headline, why did I think of the information technology industry first? [grin]

New autism study buoys parents’ hopes but has doctors worried: “First, parents clamored

for the hormone secretin in hopes it would help their autistic children, but the tests proved

disappointing. Now a new theory is triggering desperate parents’ interest – and this time the

stakes are higher because it could spur misuse of the nation’s most precious antibiotic,

vancomycin.” No placebo-controlled trials yet. Nando Times

Is it Wise to Bet on Mathematical Progress? The publishers of a book about a man obsessed with Goldbach’s conjecture — a deceptively simple but famously unproven mathematical hypothesis from 1742 — have offered a $1m prize for a reputable proof of the conjecture before March 2002. They’ve indemnified themselves against the possibility of having to pay out; thus, the underwriter of the iinsurance policy is in essence placing a bet against a solution to the conjecture within the timeframe. Would mathematicians agree on the odds — around 100:1 — that the unnamed insurance company took on? Lingua Franca

The next new important antipsychotic drug wins FDA nod. Concerns about ziprasidone’s cardiac safety held up approval in 1998 but new clinical data is clears it for release. Schizophrenia, the major target condition for antipsychotic medications, is an immensely tragic disease with a devastating toll. A series of newly developed medications has made it far easier to treat in the last decade, the first real advances since the initial introduction of antipsychotic medications in the 1950’s set in motion the possibilities (for better or worse) of deinstitutionalization and community treatment of the seriously mentally ill. Despite the broad incidence of schizophrenia and the likelihood that your life has intersected with that of someone who has the disease or has the disease in their family, the seriously psychotic are a disenfranchised population; so this revolution does not attract as much public attention as the previous decade’s more “sexy” breakthroughs in antidepressant drugs, starting with Prozac. No bestselling Listening to Zeldox or Zyprexa Nation in the offing, I’m afraid.

And what’s up with this? It seems that marketing consultants have decreed that almost all newly developed psychiatric medications have to have an ‘x’ or a ‘z’ — if not both — in their brand name to be taken seriously these days. Zeldox, Zyprexa and Clozaril are three of the last five antipsychotics. If we include ‘q’, we can add Seroquel. Turning to antidepressants, we find Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Trazodone, Celexa, Serzone, Luvox and Effexor. Zyban is sort of in there too; it’s Wellbutrin marketed for smoking cessation instead of antidepressant use.

You buck this trend if you read here.

So you think you’re in love? Further fascinating data from functional MRI, this time about the areas of the brain involved in the “brain activity” called being in love. Areas of the brain involved in visceral emotion, the experience of elation, and the brain’s reward system are activated when subjects are shown pictures of their love object but not when shown pictures of friends of the same gender as the loved one. New Scientist

Mind phantoms. A Swiss neuroscientist attempts to explain ghosts as an epiphenomenon of brain damage. While I agree that very strange sensory or cognitive experiences follow from damage to parietal regions responsible for distinguishing self from non-self, I think this idea about ghosts is quite reductionistic, regardless of one’s beliefs about the paranormal. New Scientist

Fossil Fantastic. Thanks to a reader who sent me this blink to a webpage from Los Angeles Metro Rail about the remarkable, repetitive Ice Age fossil finds of a tunnelling machine operator working on their system.

The View From the Top. President Clinton freelances for Newsweek on the Middle East peace negotiations.

R.I.P. Jan Karski at 86; Warned West About Holocaust. Begged by Warsaw Jews to take news of their plight to the west as he prepared for a secret mission from the Polish Resistance’s government-in-exile to London and Washington, Karski, who was a Polish Catholic, went into the Warsaw Ghetto to witness firsthand. The Polish Underground actually arranged to infiltrate him into a concentration camp in the uniform of a Ukrainian guard. He remained embittered for the rest of his life by the reluctance he felt from the Allied governments to act on the news he conveyed.

There were five points that the two men in the Ghetto

asked Mr. Karski to pass on to the Allied leaders:

Preventing the extermination of the Jews should be

declared an official goal of the Allies fighting Hitler.

Allied propaganda should be used to inform the German

people of the war crimes taking place and to publicize

the names of German officials taking part.

The Allies should appeal to the German people to bring

pressure on Hitler’s regime to stop the slaughter.

The Allies should declare that if the genocide

continued and the German masses did not rise to stop

it, the German people would be held collectively

responsible.

Finally, if nothing else worked, the Allies should carry

out reprisals by bombing German cultural sites and

executing Germans in Allied hands who still professed

loyalty to Hitler.

Mr. Karski later said that the Jews’ proposals were “bitter

and unrealistic,” as if they knew such a program could not

and would not be carried out, and that he had told them

their five points went beyond international law.

For the rest of his life he remembered the response of the

man accompanying Mr. Feiner: “We don’t know what is

realistic, or not realistic. We are dying here! Say it!”

Unless I’m sadly mistaken, the heroism of this man, of whom I had known nothing until I read this obituary, needs to be better known. New York Times

Tom Lehrer: Songs & More Songs By Tom Lehrer. Rhino Records re-releases most of the work from the ’50’s and ’60’s (except for his highest-charting album, That Was the Year That Was) of this perverse and reclusive mathematician-turned-songster and ’60’s cult figure. Here are the liner notes. And here is a realaudio of “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. Lehrer has painfully consented to several high-profile interviews, like this one in the Washington Post, in conjunction with the release, in contrast to much of the intervening decades when he was content to cultivate the rumor that he was dead.

Drowned in the Desert. Several weeks ago, I posted an entry about research on using the analysis of vapors from decomposing corpses to establish the time since demise. I mentioned the counterclaims of the forensic entomologists that their accuracy in establishing time of death needed no improving upon. Here’s a review of the memoir by preeminent forensic entomologist Lee Goff.

It is a fine

thing, rare in fiction and not so common even in

non-fiction, to read an account of how an expert applies his

talent. It is the nearest thing to magic in the real world, and

not to be despised merely because Goff’s skill lies in a

place where people prefer not to look: where maggots feed

on the flesh of dead people.

As a founding father of the modern science of

forensic entomology, Goff is most often called on to

determine the time of death of a murder victim, and his

accuracy can awe…I was glad

there were no photographs in the book, only tasteful line

drawings of insects. Beetles, ants, wasps, flies, mites and a

centipede all parade in Goff’s bestiary, but it is maggots

which rock his world.

…A forensic

entomologist was baffled by the unusual size of some of

the maggots on the corpse of a 20-year-old woman found

stabbed to death by a logging road. It turned out that the

big maggots, which had grown more than twice as fast as

they should have done, had been feeding from the victim’s

nose, which was suffused with cocaine from years of drug

abuse.

By the way, Goff’s major research methodology involves murdering scores of pigs each year and planting them in the wild to study their decomposition under various circumstances. London Review of Books

The Center for Responsive Politics reviews the corporate donors to the coonventions this summer, most of whom have major issues pending before Congress. Eight corporations (AT&T, AIG, Microsoft, HP, GM, Global Crossing, Lockheed Martin and American Water Works) are nonpartisan — funding both parties’ summer bashes in equal measure, although most of them have favored the Republicans in other campaign contributions this season. The cost of the Republican Convention is an estimated $50 million, up from $30 million four years ago. The Democrats, who also spent around $30 million in 1996, are laying out $35 million this time around. Taxpayers fund $13.3 million of each convention (why on earth should we be paying for this??), and for the remainder the parties depend on corporate largesse. You can click through from this site to access lists of all the donors giving $100,000 or more to either party.

Russia’s Poison Mushroom Death Toll Rises to 95, many in one region. Gathering wild mushrooms is a popular Russian summer activity. A local variety of death cap has apparently mutated to resemble ordinary edible mushrooms; many of the victims are older people with failing eyesight.

Peter the Penguin Wades Ashore After 600-Mile Swim: In what is claimed to be the largest wildlife evacuation in history, 20,000 jackass penguins were removed from their island nesting places off the western Cape Horn in South Africa three weeks ago, trucked across the country and released to swim home. This gave environmentalists time to clean up the penguins’ habitat after it was fouled by an oil slick from a sunken ship. Almost exactly six years earlier, an oil leak from another sunken ship decimated the same penguin population; some of the currently rescued birds wear tags from the rescue effort six years ago.

Expert Says Response to Bio Attacks Can Traumatize. A researcher who has studied a sample of emergency responses to threats of biological attack (most commonly, anonymous letters allegedly contaminated with anthrax) says the current hysteria is leading to overreaction. ‘In 27 of the 40 incidents Cole studied, people who might have been exposed to a toxin were

undressed, sometimes in public, or scrubbed with a solution containing bleach. In half of the

incidents, people were hospitalized or given antibiotics.

“Interviews with officials and victims indicated that many victims were psychologically or

physically traumatized. Some suffered allergic reactions to bleach,” Cole said.’

Researcher Urges Less Use of Anti-Bacteria Products

‘Ingredients in soaps and cleansers intended

to fight bacteria could promote the growth of drug-resistant

“superbugs” that might otherwise be kept in check with little

more than a vigorous scrub.

The efforts of humans to keep their bodies and the things they

touch bacteria-free are misguided, Tufts University

microbiologist Dr. Stuart Levy told the International Conference

on Emerging Infectious Diseases.’

Tattoos Trigger Muscle Wasting in Three Men

“In the July 18th issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, doctors

from Israel report on three cases in which young men who had

recently gotten tattoos began losing muscle in the surrounding

area. All had tattoos on the upper body and suffered the muscle

meltdown in their shoulders and arms. Two also had nerve

damage.

There was no other explanation for the mysterious muscle wasting, and unfortunately, the

damage is permanent, Dr. Israel Steiner of Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem told

Reuters Health. Exactly how a tattoo would trigger muscle atrophy is unclear, he said, but

the possibilities include injury from the needle, bad technique on the part of the tattoo

artist, or the pigment in the tattoo ink. Some research, he noted, has suggested tattoo

pigment contains potentially toxic compounds.”

China-Russia Pact Condemns U.S. Missile Shield Plan. It should come as no surprise that the U.S.’s stubborn insistence on forging ahead with the missile defense plan seems to be driving Russia and China closer. They issued a joint warning about the grave security consequences of U.S. persistence. ‘Missile threats cited by the United States as grounds for NMD

(were) “actually a ruse to cover its attempt to violate the ABM,”

said the Sino-Russian statement, referring to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic

Missile treaty.’ If we really want NMD to protect us against missile attacks from “rogue states” and not to garner a strategic imbalance against other nuclear powers, I still say that the best way to show the world that we’re not disingenuous would be to gift China and Russia with the technology (if we ever perfect it…).

Three Russian organized crime figures have been using the old phantom chicken scam to defraud banks of millions.

Put some gravity back in your life: A French experiment reveals that the tubulin-based cytoskeletons of most cells will not develop properly in weightless conditions. Serious dent in prospects for prolonged space missions, and Lord knows what it’d mean for fetal development under weightless conditions, if we ever get there. New Scientist

“A four-year old Indian girl has married a stray dog in a traditional Hindu service — and it wasn’t

a case of puppy love at first sight.

The bizarre ceremony was prompted by an astrologer who told

the girl’s father that the ceremony would transfer the evil

effects of the planet Saturn from the girl to the dog.

The girl, Anju, had suffered several illnesses and had fallen in ponds, fractured bones and

burnt her hand in the kitchen, the father, Subal Karmakar, said.

…Residents of the village, mostly illiterate, enjoyed the feast but ridiculed the ceremony.

‘He is superstitious, but why should I care if he wants to waste money and give us a feast? I

enjoyed the rice, meat, curd, lentil and sweets,’ said Fakir Chand Durlab, Karmakar’s

neighbor.”

Postal Inspectors On The Rampage: THE POSTAL JUSTICE PROJECT:

“This web-site is dedicated to all postal workers, past and present, who have been subjected to criminal harassment at the hands

of the postal inspectors. Also, if you know of a friend or relative who has made complaints about their employer, the U.S. Postal

Service, that you dismissed as crazy, this web-site is also for you.”

Web piracy is hitting Hollywood sooner than the studios thought. “Hollywood, your nightmare is here. Thanks to two

pieces of software — one ‘liberated’ from Microsoft

Corp. by a global underground of video buffs and

computer hackers — high-quality digital movies,

available on a variety of Web sites, can be stored in 10%

to 20% of the space that had been required just six

months ago. That means that PC users with high-speed

DSL or cable-modem connections can download a

full-length movie such as “The Matrix” in an hour or two

from a spreading network of illicit Web sites. The entire

film can fit on a single CD or be stored on the

computer’s hard drive.” MSNBC

eCRUSH – “Got a secret crush? Find out if your crush likes you back without the risk of rejection.”