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