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?