Monthly Archives: July 2000
“A personality cult …has made Joyce what he never
was, in the name of a cause that is dubious in the
first place: the sustaining of the Joyce industry itself in its own attempt to refashion the modern novel
along the lines of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The
problem is that, to turn Joyce into a totem, the
industry has had to tell a lot of lies.
The lies began after the war, when the so-called New
Critics needed a modern novelist to represent their
art-for-art’s- sake views that made the pleasure-pain
of complexity and contradiction the height of
aesthetic experience.” New Statesman
“The
unique kind of hurt resulting from the rejection of ( an author’s) submitted
manuscript” is weighed by Canadian psychiatrist Vivian Rakoff. ‘Examples of writerly narcissism abound: It is the rare
author who does not flip first to his entry in the journal or newspaper,
or who does not stop to pause obsessively inside every bookstore,
anxiously searching for his book on display.
It has long been known that writers suffer from a much higher incidence
of mood disorders, including depression and mania, than other people.
The precise medical reason for this has never been adequately
explained. But Rakoff believes it is because writing is less a true
expression of the artist’s life (except in the case of the daily diarist)
than it is a “form of compensation and redress for denied satisfactions.” ‘
A story purportedly written by Gabriel García Márquez on how he is dying of cancer, published in an Italian magazine, prompted this reply from the author’s agent Carmen Balcells to a request for British publishing rights: “García Márquez is ashamed that this rubbish might be
considered as a text written by him. It has gone around the world and I
have no means of righting this usurpation of his name. It seems to proceed
from a Colombian actor whom I hope I will never run into or I will insult
him as he deserves.”
Assessment: Thabo Mbeki – Why has South Africa’s excellent president gone loco? by David Plotz
Mbeki faces a health catastrophe of
unimaginable proportions. The West keeps
haranguing him to buy drugs that he can’t afford,
without trying to find a solution that he can. For 58
years, he has never succumbed to desperation or
folly, no matter how dire the situation. If South
Africa has become so troubled that even the
unflappable Mbeki is coming unhinged, the world
should worry.
Slate
Circuses’ survival a tightrope act. Here’s more on the controversy over misuse of circus animals, which has reached the level of House Judiciary Committee hearings. It also seems that far fewer people are running away to join the circus and spend long, low-paid hours on the road. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Postmodern Nursing. The essayist contends that the nursing profession is still mired in not having found a way to integrate humanistic compassion and scientific rigor.
Retired Navy Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll voices his alarm, in an LA Times opinion piece, that We Are Taking a Detour From Deterrence.
The U.S. Senate is preparing to take a major step to abandon all pretense that U.S. nuclear
forces exist only to deter war. An amendment to the pending Defense Authorization Act for
2001 would lead to the development of a new nuclear weapon designed expressly for
fighting.The new weapon is to be a low-yield device with earth penetration capability, intended to
destroy deeply buried bunkers.“…Not only is the Senate’s action a throwback to those unlamented days of preparing to
prevail in nuclear war, but it also is a flagrant repudiation of a solemn pledge the United
States made in May at the Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York. We
joined with Britain, France, China and Russia in a commitment to accomplish the total
elimination of nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament.
Senator Paul Wellstone seeks State Dept. investigation of Colombian death squad activity tied to Colombian military. President Clinton last week signed the bill providing hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Colombian government counter-narcotics efforts. Wellstone has previously tried and failed to shift $225 million from this appropriation to domestic substance abuse rehabilitation efforts.
Human Rights Watch sees a pattern behind the recent Philadelphia police brutality case — of excessive police force in subduing suspects after high-speed chases. “Several officers in the Philadelphia videotape were clearly attempting to stop other officers
from hitting and kicking Jones. Those officers deserve recognition for behaving in a
professional manner, Human Rights Watch said.”
Animal Protection Institute meets Ringling Bros. Circus’ arrival in LA with thirty anti-circus billboards. “When you buy a ticket to the circus, the animals pay the price. People mistakenly believe
that animals aren’t mistreated in larger circuses like Ringling Bros.,” said Dena Jones,
Program Director for the Sacramento-based Animal Protection Institute. “Unnatural living
conditions, brutal training methods, and a stressful life of travel are common to all circuses,
regardless of size. We’re placing the billboards to remind people that the only humane
circuses are those that don’t use animals.”
Death without dignity. “…recent evidence suggests that attempts at
physician-assisted suicide often meet with unexpected
complications. What’s more, almost no one in the medical
community is doing anything about it…Doctors are apparently hungry for information. Steven Heilig,
director of the Bay Area Network of Ethics Committees, an
umbrella organization for the region’s hospital ethics
committees, recalls a meeting at which two physicians from
the Netherlands gave a presentation on the Dutch system of
physician-assisted suicide: ‘Someone asked a clinically
specific question — I think it was about dosage — and this sea
of pens suddenly emerged, poised to write down everything
they said.’ ” Salon
An interesting proposed solution to cybersquatting that seems to make sense. The Register
The useful Spike Report from the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review points us to the public relations nightmare surrounding a news photo of NY governor Christie Todd Whitman frisking a black suspect with glee during a 1996 ride-along with state police in Camden. The New York Times editorialized about her gaffe last week:
The man she frisked had apparently already been
searched by the troopers for weapons and drugs and then
handed over to the governor. The man had not been accused
of any crime.… the fact remains that the posed look of the photograph
and Mrs. Whitman’s smiling expression add up to the
appearance of a gratuitous insult. The controversy over the
photo may also help explain why Mrs. Whitman has had so
much trouble putting the political problem of racial profiling
by New Jersey state troopers behind her.
Richard Stallman likes this apocryphal letter to Dr Laura [via Gulfstream].
I mused the other day about getting a guest editor when I’m gone for parts unknown for three weeks at the end of the summer. Now I find, reading Rebekah Allen’s blorg (“Come for the nipple. Stay for the content”), that she’s tapped beebo.org‘s Michael Stillwell while she’s away in Madagascar. [Beebo does some useful weblog statistics and ratings, BTW.]
A thoughtful article on weblogging, and not just because, after the author interviewed me at length, his description is complimentary: “It’s just slightly hyperbolic to say his
weblog is akin to a newspaper edited by Oliver Sacks.” (And I had never mentioned to him that Sacks is one of my pleasures in life.) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Check Your Freedom at the Front Door: CNET’s “list of your top ten legal nonrights on the web.”
Check Your Freedom at the Front Door: CNET’s “list of your top ten legal nonrights on the web.”
Magnetic storm forecast following giant sunspot flare. “Colorful
lights could dance in the sky this
weekend, as a giant solar storm sends
charged particles crashing into the
Earth. Besides the bright northern
lights, the storm could threaten power
grids and radio transmissions.
A massive solar eruption took place
early Friday, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration reported.” I keep going out at the peak of these magnetic disturbances but have yet to see the coveted and magical aurora borealis.
Divorce online: Not exactly point, click and split, does this innovation ease the pain of a remorseless process or make easy impulse divorce that much closer? “People who want to petition for divorce can choose to log
on to the Internet, download – for a price – all the required
documents, fill them in and email them to the service’s
legal team.” BBC
Where are you if you haven’t noticed that these things are everywhere?
Computer game given adult rating. “In what could become a landmark case, as well
as a thorn in the side of video game developers
in North America, Mary-Louise McCausland,
British Columbia’s provincial film
commissioner, ruled yesterday that the PC
version of Soldier of Fortune is to be
considered an ‘adult film’ in her jurisdiction.
The ruling means that that game is subject to the
restrictions that come with that classification.
According to the board’s categories, an ‘adult film’ is
intended for ‘anyone 18 years of age or older.’ “
Le Monde‘s exhaustive primer on the Middle East and the “peace process”.
How would the Scopes Monkey Trial go today, Beliefnet asks on the 75th anniversary of the incendiary Bryan-Darrows contest.
R.I.P. F.M. Esfandiary, the futurist and “chronic optimist” who legally changed his name to FM2030 because of his
confidence that he would live to 100 (the year 2030) and beyond, has died at 69. Believing that immortality could be
achieved by replacing worn-out organs with synthetic substitutes and thus that age was irrelevant because a person might
have artificial body parts of many different ages–he had a hip that was only 2 years
old–he died Saturday in New York City of cancer of
the pancreas–one body part for which no substitute has been created and which he
recently denounced as “a stupid, dumb, wretched organ.” LATimes
Hate Speech or Free Speech?Albanian-language newspapers in Kosovo have taken to printing the names, photos and daily whereabouts of Serbs they believe to be war criminals. One such ‘celebrity’ disappeared and was found stabbed to death a week later. The UN’s interim administration for the region then began to crack down on the papers. Are they doing enough to protect Serbian civilians there? Brill’s Content
What Are We Doing in This Handbasket? Philippine Garbage Slide Toll Reaches 144. Perhaps 150 more are buried under the rubble. Typhoon rains had prompted a 2.5-acre collapse at a campsite of around 80,000 people who survive by climbing the mountain of gabage daily to scavenge for items of value.
A couple of important jury decisions today. Big Tobacco Ordered to Pay $145 Billion; how much chance is there that this won’t go without appeal? And Jury Finds U.S. Not to Blame in Waco Case. “Specifically, the jury said that evidence showed the ATF did not
fire indiscriminately during the initial raid, that the FBI did not
cause the fire when its tanks penetrated the compound walls
and did not violate orders by not having firefighters on hand.” Interestingly, however, the issue of whether FBI agents fired on Branch Davidians fleeing the burning compound was severed from the rest of the lawsuit and has not yet been decided, pending the recovery from surgery of the expert witness who had recreated the infamous FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) video some had claimed showed evidence of FBI gunfire.
On November 7, 1940, the first Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge collapsed due to wind-induced vibrations. Someone was fortunate enough to be filming at the time; many of you have probably seen the remarkable footage. Situated on the Tacoma Narrows in Puget Sound, near the city of Tacoma, Washington, the bridge had only been open for traffic a few
months. Well, they’ve almost done it again, this time with a pedestrian structure. London’s wobbly Millenium Bridge was closed on its opening weekend last month (before it frankly collapsed!). It seems that soldiers on the march know that they have to break step before crossing bridges to avoid a version of this problem. New Scientist
Children of the Night: Will Howling at the Moon Help Wolves to Breed?
“A wolf expert is howling at the moon around
a British stately home to encourage a pack of timber wolves to
breed.
As dusk falls at Lord Bath’s Longleat estate, Shaun Ellis creeps up on the eight-strong pack in
the wildlife sanctuary and imitates the noise of a lone wolf. Colleague Jan Williams plays
tapes of wolf pack noises.
The idea is to kid the pack into believing there are larger packs prowling around and make
them more competitive breeders.”
The Kinder Side of a Scorpion Sting. The venom inactivates cells’ immune functions and could become the basis for a new generation of immunosuppressive therapy to treat autoimmune disease and prevent transplant rejection, etc. And mosquitoes genetically engineered to produce scorpion venom (which has been found to be lethal to the malaria organism) could be released into the wild to supplant wild populations and prevent the spread of malaria. They tell us (of course) the bites of these modified mosquitoes won’t be worse…
Research Predicts Summer Doom for Northern Icecap. The receding north polar icecap could begin to completely melt each summer within some of our lifetimes. New York Times
The former Cat Stevens denied entry into Israel. The ex-musician who became a devout Sufi Muslim is on a list of undesireables since he supposedly gave large sums of money to Hamas when he last visited Israel in the late ’80’s. He was turned around after landing and attempting to debark in Israel Wednesday night at 2:30 a.m. Nando Times
At least five copies of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire bought by the
Salt Lake City Public Library end in a cliffhanger – the last 28 pages are missing. In news more pleasing to Potter fans, Lego plans Harry Potter toys. Arriving in late 2001, tied to the release of the first film from the books. Nando Times
Hubble sees star’s death throes
The Hubble Space Telescope has seen a
massive star, nearing the end of its life,
tearing apart the shell of surrounding material
it blew off 250,000 years previously. BBC
Automatic Media press release: Feed, Suck and alt.culture to band together as Automatic Media; Lycos takes 25% stake.
“It’s increasingly clear that Web publishing is moving away from the
single-title model towards content networks. Automatic
Media is backed by a powerful and unique combination of players
with complimentary strengths: Lycos’s huge worldwide reach,
Advance’s wealth of resources and experience in offline and online
media, and the creative vision of some of the true innovators of Web
content.”
Dancer’s mother sues ballet:
One day shy of the third anniversary of her daughter’s fatal collapse, the mother of Boston Ballet dancer Heidi
Guenther has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the ballet and its artistic director, charging that their pressure on
Guenther to lose weight had contributed to the 22-year-old’s death. National Post
What happened to America’s music? Europe’s got it. Recent European jazz albums suggest that the innovation in jazz is
coming from the Old World and not from America. “Almost without anybody noticing, European jazz,
regarded for years by the Americans with the same kind of tolerant smile they reserve for Japanese
baseball, seems poised to step to the forefront.” The Times (London)
Aux barricades! Row over French “hard-core ‘Thelma and Louise’ “: A film described as
“an unbroken series of extremely
crude sex scenes and of images of particular violence that may deeply
disturb certain spectators” was pulled from distribution by French government intervention after objections from family-value champions, despite its having a restrictive rating. French cinematic and cultural leaders have rallied to its defense.
Sony officially launched its Palm-based PDA – – or “personal
entertainment organiser”, as the company calls it — yesterday. With 8 MB RAM, an optional color screen, a bundled web browser and a slot for Sony memory sticks that will accept such peripherals as GPS and Bluetooth receivers. The Register
Celebrity Bigots. ‘So John Rocker played at Shea, and the fans booed him. By baiting the “hate hurler” (as Rocker was
dubbed by one tab), they got to feel superior, basking in their sympathy for the huddled masses on
the No. 7 line. But the morning after Rocker’s drubbing, many of these same defenders of diversity
tuned in to Don Imus, who never met an immigrant he didn’t mock. Another hate hurler? Nah, it’s just
the I-Man funning.’ Imus, Dr. Laura, Eminem…celebrity hate rules, and audiences by and large are soft on it. The Village Voice
New Mechanism Of Drug Resistance Found In Cancer Cells: Researchers showed that
“…solid and metastatic tumors
produce high levels of growth factors that protect the
tumors from the effects of anticancer drugs.
The inability of cancer drugs to destroy metastatic tumors – tumors that
have spread from the primary site – is the leading reason why cancer
therapy fails.
Clinical trials using the drug suramin to block the growth factors are
expected to begin late this summer in certain lung cancer patients.”
The Fifth Flavor/Elusive taste dimension can mean the difference between balance and blah. Chefs and scientists have recently realized that, in addition to sweet, sour, salty and bitter, there is an elusive fifth flavor, umami, whose taste receptors have recently been found. Umami is changing the way some of them approach food preparation. The quality of umami is apparently correlated with the amino acid L-glutamate; so the Asian cuisines are apparently really onto something when they add MSG (monosodium glutamate) to food.
Aging, curing and fermenting
enhance umami. So does ripeness. A
dry-aged steak has more umami than fresh
hamburger, to no one’s surprise. A ripe
nectarine has more measurable free
glutamates than an unripe one. And
two-year-old Parmigiano-Reggiano is
practically off the charts.Other common foods high in umami include
anchovies, the fish sauce used in Southeast
Asian cooking (nam pla in Thai, nuoc mam
in Vietnamese) and other fermented fish
products, fresh tomatoes, grapefruit (it has
more free glutamates than other citrus),
soy sauce, dried seaweed, cooked
potatoes, green tea, Gruyere cheese and
fresh clams
[via Looka!, which just celebrated its year’s anniversary]
You are being followed by Netscape/AOL every time you use the SmartDownload add-on or Netscape Navigator’s Search function. The information on what you download or search for is sent to Netscape to help build a profile on you.
Netscape is being cheeky. Whether it’s breaking privacy laws –
hmmm. It might be, but we see it more a question of whether you
can prove beyond reasonable doubt that Netscape is selling this
information. It certainly isn’t doing itself any favours by being a bit
insidious and not asking or telling people what it is doing. This
whole case (and this article) are as a result of that. But then you can
never teach a big company such ‘soft’ tactics. Never forget that big
companies couldn’t give a monkey’s about your rights unless it costs
them money.The resulting bad publicity from all this will most likely cause some
chances in the next Navigator version. Partly because of uproar but,
sadly, mostly because Microsoft will use the furore to sell Explorer. It
will also get those wanting to stick with Netscape to upgrade faster.
All publicity can be good publicity if you handle it right.
The Register [via RobotWisdom]
Is Machrihanish the new Area 51?
In Filming History: Question, Disbelieve, Defy. Oliver Stone continues to wave the banner of conspiracy theory.
Allow then, in our million-dollar-a-minute TV culture, a
little space and time for the contrarian in you, and
allow that paranoia in moderation, like red wine, is
healthy precisely because conspiracy does not sleep.
Our failure of perception is the reason we rarely see it.
Why? “Treason doth never prosper,” an English poet
once wrote. “What’s the reason? For if it prosper, none
dare call it treason.”
More sloppy security at federal laboratory, this time in Richland, Wash., leads to suspension of classified work at the facility. What, I wonder, is so crucial to national security at this site that focuses not on nuclear weapons design like Los Alamos, but environmental science?
Something I was reading mentioned that J.K. Rowling was being passed over this year for two of the most prestigious children’s book awards, the Carnegie and the Whitbread, so I decided to search for the current winners. Imagine my surprise when I hit upon this page linking to major children’s book awards. There are dozens of them! I’m going to be hardpressed to be impressed again, browsing for books for my children, when one of them catches my eye because of that goldleaf this-or-that-medal embossed on the cover.
First-person account of first documented case of cryogenic ingestion; soon to be a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine, reportedly.
Official Darwin Awards. The July newsletter is out. “They were both trained. The
manager and the customer told him not to, but he did it anyway.”
Cold Facts of Global Warming. New York Times op-ed piece captures what I’ve felt for a long time; that those denying global warming have their heads in the sand, and the sand is getting hotter and hotter.
Ambulances patrolled streets in southern Romania to pick up
some of the many individuals who fainted in temperatures
that were well over 100 degrees. Soldiers were deployed in
western Bulgaria to fight a major forest fire. At least 10
people were reported dead from the heat in Turkey. Intense
fires raged on a number of islands in the Aegean. And
wildfires in Italy consumed hundreds of acres of forest in the
southern Gargano region.No single weather event can be attributed to global
warming. But this is the kind of terrible weather that
scientists have long predicted would accompany the
warming of the planet. That warming is not only well under
way, it is accelerating.
Email Forwards. Archive of those chainletters and useless emails that your friends think they’re doing you a favor by forwarding to you.
Progressive Review: How Nader won. A dream.
Windows-Help.NET News: New V.92 Analog Modem Standard. If you’re using dial-up access via an analog modem, a new ITU standard will offer some improvements, which modems available in the fourth quarter of 2000 will implement:
An increase of more than 40% in the maximum data rate
towards the network (Upstream) to a new maximum of 48
kbit/s on the best connections (above the former 33.6 kbit/s
upload maximum – download speed remains at 56 kbit/s max)
Significantly quicker start-up times on recognized connections
The ability to put the modem ‘on-hold’ when the network
indicates that an incoming call is waiting
Upgrade if you do alot of uploading from your present modem and your analog phone line is clear enough to realize the maximum speed improvement.
Meta-content: Starting to think about the backcountry vacation I’m taking at the end of August, when this weblog will languish for two weeks. Worrying about losing loyal readership that’s been painstaking and slow to amass. Do you other webloggers out there see a decline when you take a vacation from blogging? Does anyone have a ‘bot that’ll go out across the web, find the interesting content I would’ve found if I’d been at the computer during that time, and keep weblog entries coming in my absence (grin)? Comments?
This is maddening. I’m going to repost this now, as I think I have a few more readers (grin) than when I originally put it up in April. So far I’ve gotten no responses. Can anyone enlighten, please?
The Infamous Eagles Joke: I’m ashamed to say I have returned to this “intelligence
test” at intervals since it was first emailed to me several weeks ago, and I still haven’t a
clue. If you get the joke, please let me know, thanks!
Addendum:Thanks to the reader who sent me the solution to this!
CNN Transcript – Burden of Proof 7-5-00: ‘Harry Potter’ Book Lawsuit: Legend of Rah and Muggles Author Claims Trademark Violations. Reading this transcript of an interview with author Nancy Stouffer, it appears her pitiful claim of trademark violation is a real stretch and she’s got some real “ambulance-chasing” attorneys. Here’s how she frames it:
Well, I think the biggest
problem here is a level playing field. My muggles are human characters, they
just small human characters who are non-magical people. J.K. Rowling’s are
full-sized human characters as well, and it creates a confusion that is too difficult
to overcome.
Their “muggles” are both non-magical, human characters??!! How blatant is that?? Then she goes on:
And there are other similarities. I have a “Larry Potter” character and she has a
“Harry Potter” character. And I think those are really the two, although there are
many other areas that we have problems with, those two major character
problems really cause the unfair trade for me, and the usages of my mark. It’s
almost impossible to overcome them when the marketplace is not only driven by
just published work, but also the derivative products, such as licensed products,
such as toys or any other ancillary products. So when you have a confusion like
that, there’s no way that I have a capability to market my properties.
Comes off sounding abit mercenary, doesn’t she?
But I’m having an interesting experience of the derivativeness of the Harry Potter books. As each one has come out, my now-6 y.o. son and I have read it aloud (we started Goblet of Fire last night), and in between we’ve been immersed in reading The Lord of the Rings. My son has been commenting upon the convergence between, on the one hand, Dumbledore, Lord Voldemort and the Dementors and, on the other, Gandalf, Sauron and the Ringwraiths. But perhaps it’s just the mobilization of the archetypes when you’re writing about the battle between good and evil in the context of wizards and servants of darkness?
Culture jamming update: In June, I posted a blink to the CokeSpotlight website, an Adbusters-Greenpeace joint effort
to put heat on Coca-Cola as one of the world’s worst commercial HFC
polluters. Today,Adbusters announced: “Victory! We’re sending our thanks and congratulations. The
jam paid off: Coca-Cola has committed to stop keeping drinks cool
while warming the planet with greenhouse gases.
From the moment it “went live,” CokeSpotlight was crowded with
visitors from around the world. You downloaded stickers and posters,
you signed your names to petitions and letters – and you won.”
Yahoo: X-Men I wouldn’t usually be interested in something like this but the film is directed by Bryan Singer, whose previous credits include The Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil. The director is again paired with Sir Ian McKellen, who gave a devastating performance in Apt Pupil — simple concept (the attempt to dominate evil corrupts an innocent) unforgettably and disturbingly executed. McKellen’s well-designed website posts personal reflections on the making of the X-film (as well as his involvement in the upcoming film of the Lord of the Rings!) . There’s a porrtrait of Bryan Singer and the new film in today’s Arts & Entertainment section of the New York Times, but so far no online link to the article. Part of what makes this potentially interesting is that Singer was never a fan of the X-Men comic books as a child and has no need to be reverent to the comic book tradition. So the movie is not likely to be an over-the-top caricature. I’m not expecting highbrow, but it should be fun.
Use your mosquito repellant this summer, wherever you live: West Nile virus causes an encephalitis for which there is no specific treatment and which seems to kill around 10% of those infected. Spread to humans by mosquitoes infected after biting birds which are a reservoir of the virus, the virus appeared in New York last year (either via an imported bird or, for you conspiracy buffs, released from an experimental protocol at Sloan Kettering) and a massive mosquito eradication effort has apparently not impacted on its persistence in New York area birds, where it was hoped that it would not survive a winter. Now researchers say that there are 77 species of migratory birds in North America capable of carrying the virus and that it has probably spread all over the continent by now. Experts project a Gulf Coast outbreak where migratory birds congregate. A finding of infected birds in a region could trigger targeted mosquito spraying to reduce risks of transmission to humans, but debates rage among public health officials about whether funding for extensive screening of wild birds would be “cost-effective”. For those who think the undisputed triumph of 20th century medicine was the control of microbial illness, if you haven’t been chastened over the last decade by AIDS, keep an eye on the ongoing outbreaks of often mysterious emerging infectious diseases.
Born with the munchies. Naturally-occurring cannabinoids have been detected in human and cow’s milk and their levels are highest the day after giving birth. Their function, and the evolutionary significance of human sensitivity to them and hence to cannabis, has been puzzling. Now, a biologist in Israel reports that the chemicals might be necessary to jumpstart feeding behavior in the newborn; when neonatal mice were treated with a cannabis blocker, they didn’t feed and didn’t survive, but when given enough THC to overcome the blockade, they developed normally. Many of you are not surprised, I suspect, by the notion that cannabis is necessary to survival…
Pass it on. A Canadian research team reports that an artificial extra chromosome manufactured to contain a specific gene can be incorporated into the genome of a mouse, passed on to its descendants, and remains active, with no apparent harm to the three generations so far studied. Speculation of course abounds about possible mind-boggling human implications. ‘Such techniques might soon make it possible to treat patients by loading their cells with extra chromosomes that are
purpose-built to produce a therapeutic protein and operate entirely independently of our natural chromosomes. It
might even be possible to treat genetic diseases with extra chromosomes that can themselves be inherited, though
this would mean challenging the taboo against “germline” gene therapy.’ The research team reporting this works for a Canadian biotech firm about to go public, so you can either (a) rush to buy in; or (b) take the whole thing with an enormous grain of salt.
New Scientist: Sudden increases in placental oxygen levels during the first trimester of pregnancy are a stressful event for the fetus and may cause some unexplained miscarriages; high doses of antioxidant vitamins are being studied as a possible preventive measure. But: how safe are they to the first trimester of fetal development?
GettingIt: A rant, not about “reality TV” but its critics: “…there’s really nothing to be
said about excrement, aside from the
occasional poop joke. So shut the fuck up. It
is stupid and redundant to scrutinize it at
length with your college-educated mind (or
even better, criticize it from a distance) and
declare that it smells bad. “
Think Tanks: the Rich Get Richer.
While this survey reveals that media show a greater reliance on think tanks than at the time of the last survey two years ago, the
constituencies representing a center/right debate have further cemented their positions as media-friendly analysts. In the survey of 1997,
conservative or right-leaning think tanks received 53 percent of all citations, 32 percent of citations went to centrist think tanks, and
only 16 percent of the citations went to progressive or left-leaning think tanks. The percentages for progressive or left-leaning think
tanks have declined slightly since then.
WTO/IMF Globalization Protests– comparing the coverage by mainstream and alternative media. Few surprises here: “…media critic Norman Solomon says the corporate globalization bias of
America’s mainstream news outlets makes them ill-positioned to shed light on the
underlying issues protesters raise. ”
oneworld.net: Internet Sapping Broadcast News Audience: Just as people lamented that broadcast news was supplanting print newspapers, there’s a rapid increase in the number of people going online for their news instead of sitting in front of the other box. But overall, the American appetite for news is declining, according to the Pew Research Center’s biennial survey of the national news
audience. [They should try weblogging; it’s certainly reinvigorated my news habits…]
Bumper stickers appear to be a dying means of self-expression; reasons include the lack of discrete bumpers on new cars; the prevalence of leasing; the moderation of baby boomers’ attitudes as they age; and fear of retribution in this age of road rage.
Controversy Shadows AIDS Summit. South African President Thabo Mbeki’s wrong-headed rejection of the expensive but effective protease inhibitors (which have been a revolutionary breakthrough in treatment of AIDS in the first world) even with subsidies from pharmaceutical manufacturers, and his reliance on advisors skeptical that HIV causes AIDS, sit squarely in the face of the onrushing South African AIDS epidemic. The opening of the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, the first time it occurs on the African continent or indeed in the developing world, is sure to highlight tensions in the face of impending tragedy. 95% of the world’s people with AIDS live in developing countries.
Ominous Start for Program to Insure Drugs for Elderly. Nevada has pioneered a drug prescription plan for the elderly similar to the one the US House of Representatives approved last month, but it appears to be going nowhere. ‘…a state assemblywoman who is
co-chairwoman of a task force monitoring use of the money,
said: “I have my doubts that an insurance company will be
able to offer meaningful drug benefits under this program. If
an insurance company does bid on it but the benefits are
paltry, senior citizens will be up in arms.” ‘
GettingIt: A rant, not about “reality TV” but its critics: “…there’s really nothing to be
said about excrement, aside from the
occasional poop joke. So shut the fuck up. It
is stupid and redundant to scrutinize it at
length with your college-educated mind (or
even better, criticize it from a distance) and
declare that it smells bad. “
Intifada redux? This appears to be a photo of Palestinian-American academic Edward Said throwing a stone at Israeli soldiers from across the south Lebanese border, apparently from the Jordan Times. [It is said to be an unreliable link so it might not open for you.] And Palestinian woman reportedly shot dead by Israeli troops. [Nando Times]
New front in the war against science :
“An underground of ‘dissident’ scientists and self-described experts publish their theories in newsletters and on the Web, exchanging ideas in a great battle
against ‘the temple of relativity.’ According to these critics, relativity is not only wrong, it’s an affront to common sense, and Einstein was
a cheat.” A number of fundamentalist, paranoid, prejudicial and otherwise hysterical trends seemingly converge here, but is there a non-lunatic fringe as well? [Salon] On a related topic, a less-than-lukewarm review of Michael Paterniti’s Driving Mr. Albert, in which a journalist and a pathologist take off on a cross-country encounter with America, the universe and themselves, carrying the preeminent scientific brain of the 20th century in the trunk.
Nando Times: Missile Test Fails: “The missile interceptor
the Pentagon is developing as the key component of a national missile defense not only missed
its intended target over the Pacific Ocean early Saturday, it didn’t even attempt to hit it….The $100 million test was the third to attempt an intercept, and the second to fail….It remained unclear Saturday whether the Pentagon still believed the missile defense project
was ready to move toward deployment.”
New Scientist: They’ve seen a ghost. Resonances caused by swarming electrons around atoms precisely placed in “quantum corrals” produce “ghost images” of the atoms at a distance. It’s like a quantum analogy to a whispering gallery. Because these structures, in essence, transmit information, they may become the basis of subatomic-scale circuitry.
Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence and Injuries In a random telephone survey in Washington in 1998 just reported in Morbidity and Mortality, >23% of females and >16% of males reported that they had been the victims of domestic battering during their lifetime. More than 90% of battered women, and ~50% of battered men, had experienced consequent injury.
Not only, some say, the biggest publishing event in the English-speaking world but, to others quoting Deuteronomy, an “abomination” full of character after character who “useth divination, or (is) an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.”
Nando Times: Controversial ardent proponent of drinking in moderation for alcoholics goes on trial for killing two while driving drunk. Reportedly she had had second thoughts about moderation before travelling wrong way down I-90 in Washington with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit and causing deaths of a father and 12-year-old daughter in head-on collision.
What would happen if, crazy as it might sound, a
newspaper published the correct numbers of a
lottery before the numbers were drawn?
The Sunday Times: The rise of tokophobia: Psychiatrists are reporting an increasing number of women, especially white middle class intelligent women, with a profound and sometimes disabling dread of childbirth. Some are so afraid of conceiving that they use several methods of contraception. “In some cases the women will not
even contemplate having sex for fear of falling
pregnant. And some who do become pregnant
will request a termination, or even try to induce
a miscarriage themselves…
Not Exactly It Came from Beneath the Sea, but close. [Discovery]
Google Search: “Foreign Accent Syndrome”. After a stroke or a blow to the head, people suddenly begin to speak with a foreign accent in this exceedingly rare, fascinating syndrome. In some cases the accent is that of their childhood origins decades before, but in other mysterious cases it appears to be one with which they’ve had no prior connection.
Something to Watch Over Me. You know those ankle bracelets convicts wear when they’re on house arrest or restrictive parole? Now you can slap one onto your child!
Publius Home Page. The original Publius was the pen name of the pseudonymously published Federalist Papers. The new Publius is a system developed by AT&T Lab researchers to evade potential censorship of web content and provide a “high degree of anonymity” to publishers. If I understand the explanation rightly, it works by encrypting a document and distributing its content among a number of servers who host random-looking shares of the document with no idea what they are hosting. The publishing process produces a special URL that readers use to retrieve a proportion of the shares of the document sufficient to reconstruct it. The underlying principle — of encrypting and distributing content among several servers — has previously been articulated among the “cypherpunk” movement, and other schemes to achieve this are also being tried, but the Publius system seems to be a more sophisticated implementation…if it works.
Suppressing the presence on the web of a Publius-published document would require securing the cooperation of the operators of however many servers the content had been divided among — difficult but not unthinkable, it would appear. So much for the C-h-u-r-c-h o-f S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y’s war on unsalutory web content, for example. Of course, the method could be used to disseminate undesirable content, such as child pornography or materials pirated or otherwise in violation of copyright — the price of freedom? Could this be a largely unstoppable way to bear witness to a repressive political regime, sort of a twenty-first century samizdat system? The Publius system will be given away for free when ready. The developers of the process are seeking Publius Server volunteers for a two-month live trial beginning at the end of July.
In the continuing saga of the anti-missile defense boondoggle, look at Slate‘s coverage of what’s happening “In Other Magazines”:
A superb article describes how the Pentagon is fixing an important
missile-defense test scheduled for July 7. In the
‘Potemkin’ test, the missile will travel at an
artificially low speed, will have only one lame
decoy, and will travel on a preset path that the
defense team already knows. The test’s success will
almost certainly ensure that the United States will
build and deploy a missile defense.
Is the Pentagon really calling this test “Potemkin”, or is the commentator in the quote above just evoking the phrase “Potemkin villages”?
French Prosecutor Investigates U.S. Global Listening System. More and more uncomfortable European attention is being turned on the once-secret Echelon system.
Advantage Williams: It’s Venus vs. Serena in Wimbleton semi-final match. I’m not a big tennis fan, but 
this is too nifty to miss.
Happy Birthday, Louis! WBUR’s Connection talk show host Christopher Lydon had an excellent interview with Wynton Marsalis on Louis Armstrong yesterday to commemorate the “official” hundredth anniversary of his birth. Marsalis gives interesting testimony on Satchmo considering he started out as a disbeliever and, asked to sum up Armstrong’s place in 20th century culture, ends up swearing that even a Picasso’s originality pales in comparison to Armstrong’s. Read polymath Lydon’s pithy essay introducing his subject and click on the link for streaming audio of the entire hour. [Yes,The Connection can be worthwhile even when it’s not devoting an hour to the weblogging phenomenon.. Bill McKibben wrote a telling portrait of this show and its host in The Atlantic Monthly last fall.]
Thanks once more to Jorn Barger for pointing to a thoughtful film critic with sensibility. The New York Press‘ Armond White reflects on the state of the cinema, and cinema audiences, so far in 2000, including the ten best films you’ve never seen. “So where does this leave movie culture right now? Suffering a post-Titanic diminution of intelligence with the likes
of Gladiator, The Patriot and The Perfect Storm–a Hollywood triptych of inanity. These movies are unimportant–no
matter how many itchy teens rush to see them. (Besides, how can Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson and George
Clooney compete with such real-life excitement and satisfaction as the April 22 liberation of Elian Gonzalez from
his Miami kidnappers?) The excellent movies listed above do more than thrill–they supply wonder and clarity. It’s
tragic to realize that most of them have disappeared from theaters, unlikely to be seen again except in the
diminished formats of home viewing. Though other good movies may yet come, so much beauty has already gone.
Hype culture leaves us bereft; knowing so will, hopefully, inspire your own moviegoing perseverance.”
Salon: The corruption of Col. James Hiett. “In two weeks, a retired Army colonel will stand for sentencing before Judge Edward Korman in the Cadman Plaza federal courthouse. The
colonel’s name has never been uttered on the Senate floor. You can rummage in vain for any mention of him in congressional committee testimony and reports.
Yet the case of Col. James Hiett, former commander of U.S. Army anti-drug advisors in Colombia, due to be sentenced in mid-July for covering up his
wife’s drug smuggling, has everything to do with the passage last week of more than $1 billion in military aid to Colombia. Hiett’s case offers dark hints of
what the United States is in for by turning the Colombian drug-war theater into a large-scale American military enterprise — and it reveals, too, some of the
costs of the drug war on America’s own streets.” Visions of being mired in Indochina make me think this is starting to sound like “deja vu all over again.”
Here Comes Comet Linear
Brightest comet in more than three years, Comet Linear is already visible with moderate-power binoculars and is expected to become a faint naked-eye
object similar in appearance to the Andromeda Nebula
as it glides by the Big Dipper this month.
Thank you Maurice Rickard, who also suspected that <a href=”http://world.std.com/~emg/2000_07_01_blog_archive.html # “>the Dalai Lama’s message (below) was a hoax, and pointed me to the scoop at the Urban Legends Reference Pages:
Much as we can’t help but grin at the thought of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin
Gyatso, head of state and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, pecking away at a computer keyboard
as he sends a chain glurge advising people to “approach love and cooking with reckless abandon”
winging its way around the Internet, we have to admit that this list has nothing to do with the Dalai
Lama.Neither this chain message nor its “Instructions for Life” originated with His Holiness. The “Instructions
for Life” are a truncated version of a much longer list that worked its way around the Internet in 1999 in
conjunction with an ASCII art representation of a “Nepalese Good Luck Tantra Totem.” (The list was also
sometimes identified as being a “modern Japanese good luck tantra.”)…The longer list is itself yet another truncation of a larger work, which in this case is Life’s Little Instruction
Book, by Jackson Brown and H. Jackson Brown, Jr. Perhaps the Dalai Lama isn’t concerned with
royalties (in a copyright sense, at least), but we suspect Messrs. Brown are, so finding something other
than a copyright violation to pass around with the goal of improving people’s lives would probably be in
order.
A New Income Source for Geeks. Many of you probably donate your unused CPU cycles to SETI@home or the like. Now, two companies want to buy them from you instead. [Wired]
An engaging experience in language and interface, the
Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus is an artistic exploration that
is also a learning tool. Through its dynamic interface, the
Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus alters our relationship with
language, creating poetry through user action, dynamic
typography, and design. The experience is rewarding from
both a linguistic and an aesthetic perspective. The Visual
Thesaurus was created using Plumb Design’s Thinkmap™
software.
What cowboys really wore [via Robot Wisdom]
Instructions for life circulating around the net, reputedly from the Dalai Lama, forwarded to me from a reader. What do you think? They almost sound abit too pat, like someone’s caricature of great Buddhist homilies. But maybe that’s just in the translation:
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve
great risk.2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
Respect for self
Respect for others and
Responsibility for all your actions
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful
stroke of luck.5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to
correct it.8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back,
you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current
situation. Don’t bring up the past.14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for
each other exceeds your need for each other.18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
The New York Observer: The enormous secrecy about the fourth Harry Potter book, as it turns out, was apparently because the book wasn’t even delivered to the publishers until — depending on whom you believe — February or mid-April. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is to be released July 8 at 12:01 a.m. Other tidbits from this article: J. K. Rowling is reputedly the third richest woman in the UK now; and the New York Times, possibly to prevent seeing five of her books in its fiction best-seller list, is starting a separate children’s fiction list.
