Armed Occupation at Vodka Plant.

Two rival directors

backed by armed guards occupied different

wings of the company that makes

Stolichnaya vodka today, in a dispute for

control over one of Russia’s most

renowned distilleries. ABC News

The Surrealist Compliment Generator, e.g.: “An ocean-going tin of crosseyed mussels could never match the melodious burblings of

your sister’s husband.”

Democrats’ lecture to Hollywood angers industry leaders. The “Responsible Entertainment” provision in the “Valuing Our Families” section of the Democratic Platform, asking Hollywood to tone down its product, is another example of how the Democrats strategy to beat the Republicans is apparently to be better Republicans.

Alot that’s of interest in the New York Times tonight, as you’ll see from the blinks below. Jorn Barger is suggesting that unregistered users may have to use “http://channel.nytimes.com…” instead of “…www10.nytimes…” Since I’m registered with ’em, there’s no way for me to tell if “www10” is still working. Can somebody please let me know? Thanks…

Coke Wars, Texas Style

IBM’s Linux-powered wristwatch PDA: “…no ordinary wristwatches, however. On one hand, they’re bulkier, and the

rechargeable lithium-polymer battery lasts only two to four days. Yet the watches have as much

memory and storage space as an older desktop computer. In two years, IBM expects battery life to

improve to last several months…

About two-dozen of the prototypes have been created so far. The watches run on an ARM-based

EP7211 processor made by Cirrus Logic and have 8MB of memory to run programs and 8MB of flash

memory to substitute for a hard disk. The watches also include an infrared and wireless radio

connection and a touch-screen display. The watch can tell time and has a calendar and to-do list that

can remind the wearer of appointments…” A photo is here.

How Culture Molds Habits of Thought. Richard Nisbett’s work indicates that culture shapes not only the content of thought but manner of thinking — degree of tolerance for ambiguity, distribution of attention among foreground and context, linearity, categorization, induction vs. deduction, etc. While there is a long and venerable (although not mainstream) tradition of speculation that this is true, Nisbett’s work is apparently the first based on tighly-controlled empirical investigation. This New York Times article highlights one interesting implication —

When it came to interpreting events in the social world, the

Asians seemed similarly sensitive to context, and quicker

than the Americans to detect when people’s behavior was

determined by situational pressures.

Psychologists have long documented what they call the

fundamental attribution error, the tendency for people to

explain human behavior in terms of the traits of individual

actors, even when powerful situational forces are at work.

Told that a man has been instructed to give a speech

endorsing a particular presidential candidate, for example,

most people will still believe that the speaker believes what

he is saying.

Yet Asians, according to Dr. Nisbett and his colleagues, may

in some situations be less susceptible to such errors,

indicating that they do not describe a universal way of

thinking, but merely the way that Americans think.

Think, for example, about McCain’s endorsement of George W. last week at the convention.

A Nuclear War Feared Possible Over Kashmir Secret U.S. intelligence estimates after the Kargil incident lie behind President Clinton’s recent pronouncements that the Indian subcontinent is “the most dangerous place in the world.” Kargil showed that the bilateral presence of nuclear armaments has not acted as a deterrent against new conflicts. Analysts also warn that the expected expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal if the U.S. builds the National Missile Defense would add further momentum to the Indian-Pakistani arms race. The continuing demonstration of American contempt for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty also cripples U.S. plausibility in asking, as Clinton did when he recently addressed the Indian parliament, that the combatants abandon their nuclear arsenals. We’ve also lost leverage over Pakistan and probably nadvertently fueled its nuclear ambitions by failing to resume economic and military

assistance to Pakistan that Congress cut off in 1990 because

of the Pakistani nuclear program, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley. It appears that each country could deliver in the vicinity of twenty-five atomic weapons to the other’s population centers by bomber and/or missile. New York Times

Palm Introduces New Models. Hoping to become the must-have style accessory for the less-geeky fashion-conscious… New York Times

Big Apple Circus Cries Foul as Ringling Bros. Introduces a Competing Holiday Show

The skinny on the West Nile virus, and what to expect from it: ‘…the current frenzied focus on

West Nile will ebb eventually, and it will be added to the

growing list of diseases on the fringe – never as familiar as

flu or rabies or even meningitis, but something always to

consider when a bird dies, or an old man spikes a fever in

the summertime.

“It will become one of the diseases in America that we have

to watch for. And we should be getting

ready for the next one.” ‘ New York Times

Reading Glasses, as Inevitable as Death and Taxes. Or Are They?

“Finding a better fix for presbyopia is rapidly becoming the

Holy Grail of experimental ophthalmology, especially as

researchers and entrepreneurs begin to calculate the profits

that might accrue from curing an annoyance affecting every

single adult in the population.

But the basic disagreements as to why the process occurs

have meant that viable solutions are slow to emerge, and

are extremely controversial when they do.” New York Times

New Tactic in Physics: Hiding the Answer. Observer bias may turn out to be as much of a problem in particle physics as in the human sciences, and physicists are resorting to a version of the time-honored “double-blind” methodology to protect their objectivity. New York Times

“Cyberterrorists”? Are you listening? Here’s your roadmap. ZDNet

The Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12 and coincides with a moonset spectacle. “This year the bright, nearly-full Moon

will outshine the Perseids most of the night, but

for an hour between moonset and sunrise on

Saturday morning, star gazers could witness a

brief but beautiful meteor shower. The setting

Moon may put on a show of its own Saturday.

Wildfires and dust storms have filled parts of

our atmosphere with aerosols. A low-hanging Moon

seen through such dusty air can take on a

beautiful pink or orange hue.”