Endangered Species: Time To Apply The Brakes Before We Go Over The Cliff. A Guardian/UK editorial: ‘The new “red list” of endangered species, published this week,

confirms that the diversity of life on the planet faces its greatest threat since the

catastrophe which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.’

The Doomsday Argument. “99

percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one

of our hominid ancestors. In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed

the “Doomsday argument,” a statistical way to judge when we might join them. If

humans were to survive a long time and spread through the galaxy, then the

total number of people who will ever live might number in the trillions. By

pure odds, it’s unlikely that we would be among the very first hundredth of a

percent of all those people. Or turn the argument around: How likely is it that

this generation will be the one unlucky one? Something like one fifth of all

the people who have ever lived are alive today. The odds of being one of the

people to witness doomsday are highest when there is the largest number of

witnesses around— so now is not such an improbable time.” Discover

Berkeley professor of linguistics John McWhorter, apparently brought to outcry from his experience of the inferior quality of work done by black students he taught at Cornell, Stanford and Berkeley, risks lynching by other African-Americans for passages like this from his new book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America:

…the time has come for us to reconceive the black college

professor who sits in the trendy new restaurant emoting

about how oppressed he is between forkfuls of gourmet

pasta, his free hand alternating languidly between his

six-dollar glass of cabernet and his white significant

other’s knee under the table, and [who is] about to catch

a twenty dollar shuttle to the airport the next morning to fly to a conference where

he will meet dozens of African Americans just like him, most of whom got special

attention on their job searches because of their color, and most of whose research

has been funded by universities that bend over backwards to shower grants upon as

much minority-oriented research as possible. Okay, four years ago this professor

was driving through a white neighborhood in his Honda Accord and a policeman

pulled him over on a drug check. But why, if ‘Success Runs in Our Veins,’ if we

survived centuries of slavery, if we are so wonderful, does that episode negate the

victory and richness of the rest of this professor’s life? What kind of oppression is

this?

McWhorter appears to courageously confront what he characterizes as the victimhood built into American black culture, rejecting both the “congenital dumbness” argument of Jensenism and the Bell Curve, and the forgiving noblesse oblige explanations of liberals which demand no responsibility from African Americans for countering their oppression. New York Observer

The Spike Report alerts us to the reports in both the New York Daily News and the New York Times of an apparition of the Virgin Mary on a cracked living room window of a home in Perth Amboy NJ. Believers are flocking to catch a glimpse. The two papers have different slants on this, and there’s quite a distinction between the photos which they choose to accompany their reports.

This whole Neal Pollack hubhub feels like a smarmy inside joke foisted on the rest of us. Makes sense Dave Eggers is involved. Getting It In related news, the Voice Literary Supplement reports on the explosion of literary journals into adventurous book publishing. (Pollack is Eggers’ McSweeney’s first book offering.)

Wacky uses for common products. The compiler uses brand names for each product, and obtains the manufacturers’ permission before he describes an offbeat use, so don’t expect anything kinky.

Child organ stockpile prompts inquiry, surgeon being sought for “…an indignity of human remains…” BBC

The Guardian weblog pointed me to this delightful little fiction by Margaret Gray on life’s frequently asked questions. The Blue Moon Review

Ecstasy variant kills six in Florida. “The deaths were attributed to tablets that in addition

to the usual ecstasy ingredients also contained either

PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine) or PMMA

(paramethoxymethamphetamine).” These are powerful stimulants that, in the amounts used to adulterate the MDMA (Ecstasy), have massively elevated body temperature. MSNBC

Snake charmers push for Olympics. A 3,000-strong Indian coalition’s answer to what it feels is the Olympics’ bias toward sports in which American and European athletes excel — make snake charming an Olympic sport. BBC

More zero-tolerance inanity: an 11 y.o. girl in suburban Atlanta received a 10-day school suspension because the 10″ chain on her Tweety bird wallet is construed as a potential weapon. ‘A spokesman for (the school

district) said: “These items have been used in the past

as weapons. A chain like the one in question can have

any number of devices attached to it and it becomes a

very dangerous weapon.” ‘

Ventura says he knows what it is to be black. Party bias like race bias, he says. Pioneer Planet

Lost wallet washes up four years later, intact. [via Obscure Store]

The Hanging Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz

More Jimi Hendrix-related news, and this item is pretty bizarre.

U.S. Approves Abortion Pill After 12-Year Battle. I’m wondering if part of the FDA’s timing involves an Administration attempt to assist the Gore campaign by highlighting Dubya’s predictable disagreement with the decision (indeed, he did speak out against it). This ought to give Gore the edge in the women’s vote. The abortion issue has been on the back burner in this campaign until now. Thsi wouldn’t be the first thing the Clinton Administration has done to help it’s own; keeping home heating oil prices down this winter by releasing some of the strategic oil reserves is another obvious example.

Sorry to be so inarticulate, but all I can say is that I wish they would finally just give it a rest. AP

Verizon Backs Ban on Hand-Held Car Phones. In a major turnabout, the nation’s largest cellular provider says it would favor legislation mandating hands-free communication for vehicular cellular users. Critics say it is not the handling of the device but the distracting absorption in conversation that poses the hazard. I have to admit I make calls — hands-free — while driving, and I have to agree that at times I have come to my senses to realize I’ve been driving without any conscious attention while engaged in a conversation…

The dumbing-down of the American palate continues. Health and Cheese: Am I Bleu? The FDA threatens to ban raw milk cheeses — made from unpasteurized milk — if tests show that harmful bacteria can survive the aging process that creates them. Soon the only cheeses you might be able to buy in the US would be the interchangeable pasty ones. Oh, and cheese whiz… Speaking of cheese, what would you do if you were out somewhere and the person of your dreams touched you lightly on the shoulder, smiled deeply and asked you, “So, what cheese are you?” Find out here…This is me, as it turns out: “St. Paulin is a round, semi-soft cheese from France. It has a thin leathery rind, and is a

yellow/orange colour. It has a creamy, butter-like taste, and was originally made by Trappist

monks.”

Subversive No More. ‘Ireland’s censor has cleared the film of James

Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses for cinema release — 33 years

after it was banned.

The film, directed by U.S. film-maker Joseph Strick, was refused a certificate in 1967 after

the censor of the time deemed it ‘subversive to public morality.” Reuters

Totally tropical Tokyo. “Tokyo is becoming tropical. But heat from buildings and cars rather than global climate change is mostly to blame,

say Japanese meteorologists. Torrential rain has wreaked havoc in the city, prompting Japan’s Environment Agency

to plan a city-scale experiment to tackle the problem.

Warm, humid air rises from Tokyo during the day, forming water-laden cumulonimbus clouds as it cools, says

Fumiaki Fujibe of the Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba Science City, 70 kilometres east of Tokyo. These

clouds cause torrential rain and thunderstorms in the early evening–as in the tropics.”

Wistful Whizzers: ‘Being “pee-shy” was interfering with

his career choices, his social life and his peace of mind. So he

sought therapy — and found that he shared the problem with an

estimated 7 percent of the population (17 million people). “It’s

probably second only to the fear of public speaking,” he

reports happily, adding, “It was silly that I wouldn’t open up to

anybody about it. I thought I was choosing not to give this

disorder any ability to control me — when in fact I was giving

it total control.”

Once coyly termed “bashful bladder,” difficulty urinating in

public is now dubbed paruresis, or avoidant paruresis (AP),

and it’s fast emerging from the water closet.’ St Louis Riverfront Times

You’re an excellent host. “Parasites can castrate their hosts, take

over their minds and short out their DNA. They can turn

healthy organisms into the living dead. And they can be

found anywhere — in our legs, our brains, our intestines, our

kitty litter.

Science writer Carl Zimmer’s new book, Parasite Rex:

Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous

Creatures, introduces readers to some of nature’s most

sinister characters: nematodes that cause blindness, worms

that swell up a scrotum until it fills a wheelbarrow,

60-foot-long tapeworms and deadly creatures so tiny they

hitchhike on the back of a fly.” Salon

A Hot-Button Issue. “The presidential campaign has

stopped talking about nuclear

defense because married women, the

critical swing voters, aren’t supposed

to be interested. (Our motto: If it

hasn’t come up on Regis it can’t be all

that important.)

Look, we’re not going to be satisfied

with six weeks of prescription drug coverage and dragging

Dick Cheney to kindergarten show-and- tell sessions. We are

thinking people. We ponder the big stuff…

You’re ready to talk weaponry, and you probably already

know more than you think. Check your nuclear I.Q. New York Times

Researchers Trace Roots of Vivid Memories, “…have found that calling up vivid

memories—the face of a loved one

or the chords of a favorite

song—activates regions of the

brain responsible for processing

sensory experiences. When a

person recalls a vivid memory,

some of the sensory regions of the

brain responsible for etching the

original memory are reactivated.”

Here’s a summary by Ian Pitchford, the moderator of the excellent evolutionary psychology mailing list, of the extensive discussion thus far on that listserv of the controversy ripping through American anthropology and related disciplines about James Neel, the Yanomami and measles vaccine. Links to further discussion. I blinked the BBC’s coverage of the issue below.

Slate‘s Ad Report Card column considers the offensive Nike ad everybody’s buzzing about. The ad’s been pulled, but you can click on links here to view it in Quicktime or the Windows Media Player. The columnist’s take: it’s not nearly as bad as everybody made it out to be. My take: Everybody wants to know how Nike could risk advertising budget on such a colossal flop. But Nike is thriving on the buzz, negative as it is. They knew exactly what they were doing. And see? I’m doing involuntary Nike advertising by discussing it here…

Michael Kinsley: Every politician’s favorite verbal tic: “…

when a

pol begins every third sentence with the word frankly,

what are we supposed to assume about the other two?” Slate

“Here’s a theory: (FBI Director) Louis Freeh has

photographs of key Republican

congressmen in compromising

positions with young boys.

What else could explain his J.

Edgar Hoover-esque immunity

on Capitol Hill?” The thesis is that Republicans bypass criticism of Freeh — e.g. for the pursuit of Wen Ho Lee — to get at Janet Reno at every opportunity. Because, since Watergate, the FBI has been insulated structurally from the Administration (the FBI director serves a ten-year term and can only be removed for cause), Freeh has been free to “cultivate his Republican paymasters”, in particular charming Sens. Orrin Hatch and Arlen Spector, using “leaks” to publicize FBI conflicts with Reno and the Dept. of Justice to use them for political gain.

Freeh’s invincibility depends heavily on Reno’s weakness. A

different attorney general might not have tolerated such

contrariness from the FBI. But Reno dislikes conflict, is

uninterested in political gamesmanship, and is willing to play

fall gal in cases embarrassing to the DOJ and the FBI. She

doesn’t want to alienate Freeh—they reportedly have a very

cordial private relationship. And unlike Freeh, she lacks a

power base on Capitol Hill, because she has never cultivated

legislators. Republicans have made Freeh her foil: Reno’s lack

of support and perceived incompetence make him gleam.

Freeh and his FBI profit from their alliance with the Hill and

the press. They escape interference by the AG and the

president, and they increase their budget. But the country pays

a price. The FBI has become a congressional tool. As the Lee

probe suggests, agents may be more inclined to pursue

investigations that interest Hill legislators. And the FBI now

functions as a congressional bludgeon against an unpopular

attorney general.

Slate

How the New York Times helped railroad Wen Ho Lee. “Its reporters relied on slim evidence, quick conclusions and

loyalty to sources with an ax to grind. Too bad the paper of

record learned nothing from its role in Whitewater.” Salon

Male Couples Could Conceive Child?

‘Male couples could in future conceive their

own children, a leading British scientist, Calum MacKellar, a lecturer in bioethics and biochemistry at

Edinburgh University, said … A healthy egg of a woman would be emptied of its genetic material and then chromosomes

from a sperm could be inserted, creating a sort of a male egg. Then you could fertilize this male egg with sperm from another man.

A surrogate mother would then be needed to bring to full term a child conceived in the

laboratory using the egg nucleus transfer technique.’

The lonely death of a reclusive witch. San Francisco Examiner

An Introduction to Crime Scene Recontruction for the Criminal Profiler

CogPrints: Cognitive Sciences EPrint Archive. “Welcome to CogPrints, an electronic archive for papers in any area of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics, and many areas of

Computer Science (e.g., artificial intelligence, robotics, vison, learning, speech, neural networks), Philosophy (e.g., mind,

language, knowledge, science, logic), Biology (e.g., ethology, behavioral ecology, sociobiology, behaviour genetics, evolutionary

theory), Medicine (e.g., Psychiatry, Neurology, human genetics, Imaging), Anthropology (e.g., primatology, cognitive ethnology,

archeology, paleontology), as well as any other portions of the physical, social and mathematical sciences that are pertinent to the

study of cognition.”

I’ll take Manhattan. British writer Anthony Holden writes of the vibrancy of the New York literary scene that has him moving there to escape London’s stodginess.

It’s not just that Britain, viewed from a real

democracy, more than ever exudes its

lethal combination of self-satisfaction and

backward thinking: still dithering

xenophobically about Europe (for me, its

only hope of any future as even a

wannabe world power); keeping 92

hereditary peers, for pity’s sake, not to

mention that pantomime horse of a

monarchy; blowing a billion pounds’ worth

of schools and hospitals on that hollow,

doomed, vainglorious Dome; grumbling

nationalistically about immigrants when

they are the pulsating lifeblood of my

adopted homeland, its raison d’ tre . No,

for me, it’s also that the intellectual,

cultural and literary life of the Eastern

seaboard is (like the language) more alive,

more alert, much feistier than the primping

and preening of London’s cosy circle of

back-patting glitterati. Viewed from here

after a month back in Britain, the old

country seems more than ever like some

overgrown, nose-in-air, single-sex Pall

Mall club, whose pettifogging rules it is so

rejuvenating to escape. The Observer

This article ends with small blurbs on prominent “Brits who love the US” and “Yanks who love the UK.” Salman Rushdie has thumbed his nose at London’s narrowness in favor of the Manhattan high life as well, prompting a firestorm of British literary umbrage for his apparent lack of gratitude for the support and shelter he received in the face of the Islamic fatwa against him.

Several months ago, I blinked to an article about American artists visiting London bemoaning the stultification of the U. S. arts scene in comparison to the liveliness they found in London. Go figure.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Living inside the looking glass: initially a struggle, but after awhile the brain adapts perfectly.

University of Maryland researchers create a new pathway for sight by ‘rewiring’ the brain in animal study. ‘By surgically “rewiring” the brains of newborn hamsters, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the

University of Montreal have shown that they can create new brain circuits that take over the functions of damaged ones. The

researchers found that the hamsters could still see visual patterns even after key areas of the brain devoted to sight had been

removed. In some cases, the researchers demonstrated that the animals were using the hearing regions of the brain to see.

Although it is not yet possible to create new neural pathways in humans, the research raises the possibility that a similar

technique might one day be used to treat brain damage in people.’

A third of U.S. schools don’t teach evolution, according to a recent study

in the journal Nature.

Putative most ancient sculpture in the world is found in the Golan Heights. Independent

Marauding monkeys pelt vehicles on Interstate in Virginia, and angry monkeys halt traffic in Assam, India, after a baby monkey was hit by a car on a busy street.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Despair, Inc.: “Unfathomable incompetence…

Legendary miscalculation… Pitiable

misfortune… Almost stupifying hubris.” Portraits of burnout, doubt, idiocy, futility and pessimism to counter the empty-headed pronouncements of the motivational catchphrase industry.

The selling of “sanity”: American Gallery of Psychiatric Art. Reprints of ads for psychiatric medications from 1960 to the present. Many are now household names. If you scroll through the gallery, you’ll notice a sea change: after 1994 all the ads feature the face of relief — sound sleep, smiling relaxed faces — whereas previous ads emphasize the distress and terror of the psychiatric symptoms the medications are advertised as treating.

A “nightmarish story – a real

anthropological heart of darkness“.’ BBC

A New Republic editorial argues that The Olympics should be abolished both because they erase the moral distinctions between regimes of all stripes and because their founding spirit of amateurism has gone totally defunct.

In a sense, it’s too bad that the Olympics are being held

in Sydney and not Beijing, the early favorite. Were they

being held in China, the moral farce that the Olympics

today represent would be plain to see. Promoted to

foster “friendship, peace, and solidarity,” the games

now subvert the ideals of freedom and human rights on

which any meaningful international solidarity must be

based. Designed as a tribute to human excellence, the

Olympics are now a testament to human greed. On

October 1, the Olympic flame will be extinguished in

Sydney. Let’s never light it again.

Dubya: Afro-Americans should vote for me because, I swear to God, I really like you. Forget the past. The New Republic

I’ve been looking for the download of the Palm OS 3.5 upgrade since it began to appear in new Palm devices in February. Now it’s finally coming, and Palm argues that it is such a major upgrade that you’re going to have to pay to download it. The Register

Christopher Hitchens: Why Dubya Can’t Read.

I kicked myself hard when I read the profile of

Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month’s Vanity Fair. All those jokes and cartoons

and websites about his gaffes, bungles and malapropisms? We’ve been unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is

obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. Numerous experts and friends of the dynasty give Sheehy their

considered verdict to this effect.

The symptoms and clues have been staring us in the face for some time. Early in the campaign, Bush said that he did indeed

crack the odd book and was even at that moment absorbed by James Chace’s biography of Dean Acheson. But when asked to

report anything that was in the damn volume, the governor pulled up an empty net. His brother Neil is an admitted dyslexic.

His mother has long been a patron of various foundations and charities associated with dyslexia. How plain it all now seems.

So Bush is dyslexic. Should we compassionately temper our contempt, be ashamed of having such politically incorrect fun with someone with a disability? No, as Hitchens points out; his own chief of staff has noted that Dubya’s atttention span seems no longer than fifteen minutes. What does this make, for example, of his assertion that he personally reviewed the clemency petition of more than a hundred of Texas’ condemned prisoners? Can someone cripplingly dyslexic, even if nonverbal IQ is inflated in compensation (as I have often seen to be the case, but which Hitchens [and I] doubt is the case in Bush’s case), do the President’s job? The Nation

Do you recognize this blurb, commonly used by email spammers?

“This message is sent in compliance with the new email bill S. 1618.

Section 301, Paragraph (a) (2) (C) of S. 1618 states that further

transmissions to you by the sender of this email may be stopped at

no cost to you by sending a reply to this email address with the

word ‘remove’ in the subject line.”

This quotation refers to an amendment that Sens. Frank Murkowski and

Bob Torricelli added to S. 1618, a bill whose primary purpose was to

prohibit slamming, the practice of fraudulently changing a customer’s

long-distance provider. But guess what: the bill never became a law.

Libyan Hotel Dilemma for U.S. Delegates. U.S. representatives to the IMF-World Bank meetings in Prague face penalties if they stop for a drink or a snack at a neighboring hotel owned by a Libyan. Although the U.N. has lifted the economic embargo against Libya after it turned over the two Lockerbie bombing suspects for trial, the U.S. maintains its sanctions. The U.S. embassy in Prague has issued a warning to the U.S. delegates about compliance. Reuters

A small French Riviera town has issued a decree banning death to anyone who does not have a burial plot in the town cemetery. One-third of the town’s population is over 65. “I issued the decree yesterday hoping for official attention,” (the mayor) said Thursday. “No

one has died since then and I hope it stays that way.” Reuters

World’s Loneliest Bird may soon find relief.

Authorities in Michigan describe oddest case of racial harassment they’ve ever encountered.

Annals of the Age of (Online) Depravity: Man Accused of Ordering Woman to Molest Kids. “A local man is facing up to 20

years in prison for allegedly ordering a woman in Pennsylvania to

send him online pictures of her having sex with her 7-year-old

daughter and 10-year-old son, authorities said today… Searle told investigators that he might have directed his girlfriend to have sex with people

who have the same names as her children, but that he was not referring to her children, the

affidavit said.”

The world may be awe of the Sydney Olympics, but foreigners have

been left dumbfounded by our Vegemite culture, writes Paul Sheehan. Sydney Morning Herald

“The Second Coming will happen because we will make it happen…Our

intention is to clone Jesus, utilizing techniques pioneered at the Roslin Institute in

Scotland [birthplace of Dolly, the lovable sheep], by taking an incorrupt cell from

one of the many Holy Relics of Jesus’ blood and body that are preserved

throughout the world, extracting its DNA, and inserting it into an unfertilized

human egg…The fertilized egg, now the zygote of Jesus Christ, will be implanted

into the womb of a young virginal woman (who has volunteered of her own

accord), who will then bring the baby Jesus to term in a second Virgin Birth.”

Palm Virus Hits, But Don’t Worry. First real self-replicating and -propagating virus hits Palm OS. It apparently overwrites the beginning of Palm executables. It doesn’t appear to do anything particularly malicious except to reproduce itself. A technical description of the virus is available at the F-Scure virus description database and F-Secure says a fix is coming soon. ‘Til then, practice safe synch. Wired

Thousands Sign Up to Sell Votes. “Boasting of the more than 6,000 Americans who have signed up to auction off their

presidential votes to the highest bidder — illegal activity under the laws of every state in

the union — Voteauction is now detailing its plans to begin an outreach campaign.

Using its “Voter Empowerment Kits” and “Action Teams,” the company claims in a press

release that it can reach more potential customers and facilitate voter fraud without the

intervention of an online middleman.” The going rate to buy a vote appears to be around $20. Is it unscrupulous profiteering at its worst, or an anarchist goof on the system? Wired

Kraft recalls Taco Bell shells with biotech corn. “Philip Morris Cos.’ Kraft Foods unit said on Friday it is voluntarily recalling all Taco Bell Home Originals taco shells sold in U.S. grocery

stores nationwide because samples contained an unapproved variety of gene-modified corn.

Tests performed by an independent laboratory found, in certain samples, the presence of a variety of gene-modified corn that Kraft had not specified for the product and

which is not approved by U.S. regulators for use in food, Kraft said….

Kraft’s willingness to incur the expense of a recall despite no evidence the product is unsafe demonstrates U.S. companies are becoming increasingly sensitive to

consumers’ heightened awareness about food safety, said food industry consultant Willard Bishop. ” Reuters

Aryan Nations compound forfeited to satisfy $6.3m judgment against Richard Butler and his followers, about which I blinked below. They also lost the rights to continued use of the name “Aryan Nations”. AP

Environmental-Safety Tests Are ‘Falsified’. “The federal

authorities said today that

thousands of environmental safety

tests conducted at Superfund

locations, landfills and other hazardous

waste sites from 1994 to 1997 will

have to be repeated because the

company that performed the tests

falsified the results…Federal prosecutors announced today that 13 former

employees of the London-based company, Intertek Testing

Services, had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Dallas

and charged with up to 30 counts of fraud and lying to the

government. Prosecutors said that the test results were

falsified to save the company time and money….The test results mean that some sites thought to be safe

from carcinogens and other contaminants might hold harmful

materials, the federal authorities said, though they

emphasized that none of the sites so far retested had been

found to be a health hazard.” New York Times

States With No Death Penalty Share Lower Homicide Rates. “The

Times found that during the

last 20 years, the homicide

rate in states with the death

penalty has been 48 percent

to 101 percent higher than in

states without the death

penalty.” This pretty much deals a fatal blow to the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent; but you knew that already, didn’t you? New York Times

A Question on Music Piracy. “Will Napster’s novel claim that its users are protected by the

Audio Home Recording Act carry the day? Probably not, said

several lawyers and law professors who are experts in

Internet law and copyright infringement.” New York Times

As the publisher’s sampler

proclaims, “They aren’t just books — they’re `joints.’ ” Coming Soon: Paperbacks That Sound Like Hip-Hop. “The novels are geared directly and unashamedly to

black urban youths and are meant to be more than just reads.

They are the literary equivalent of hip-hop videos, using the

language and metaphor and rhythms of hip-hop, its sex and

violence, only in prose rather than lyrics and beats. Indeed,

each novel comes packaged with a Def Jam CD…” New York Times

Germ theory of obesity gains weight. Salon

West Nile Virus declared an epidemic in Israel. Probably spread by birds stopping over on their migration routes between Europe and Africa. 15% of tested Israeli population have antibodies against WNV, indicating a history of exposure. All wild birds tested in Israeli national parks carry the antibodies, according to health officials. NYPost

Sealed Evidence Against Clinton Called ‘Terrible

if True’. Scandal-sheet-style suggestions by a Washington Post reporter based on information from private investigators who worked on the Paula Jones case.

“In his book Baker says that the independent counsel’s office

investigated 21 women linked to Clinton… (Private) investigators hired by Jones’

legal team told NewsMax.com last year that one of the

allegations they were investigating at the close of the Jones

case involved the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl by

then-Governor Clinton at a cocaine party…”

Why Not Sue Big Entertainment? “What Big Entertainment has done to

America’s children makes what Big Tobacco has done pale by

comparison.” Opinion piece by George Mason University professor of economics Walter Williams.

City-by-city Grid of Local Actions for the “S 26 International Day of Action”, 9/26/00, the latest planned outbreak of the anti-globalization “movement.”

I asked whether that “air rage” passenger who died after restrained by other passengers really represented a threat. People have written with what strike me as both thoughtful and kneejerk responses. The former mostly reflect on when they were perceived — or misperceived — as scary and threatening by others when they were distraught. The latter were mostly along the lines of projections of what the unfortunate young man could’ve done if not prevented — e.g., depressurize the cabin by his actions — or assumptions about what he had done — hurt other passengers. (“Shit yeah, he was dangerous!”) This all confirms my point. While, of course, neither those who wrote responses to me nor I know anything about what really happened up there, and we’re not likely to, he might still be alive (and everyone safe) if his fellow passengers had tempered reacting from their own fears with a grasp of the situation from his panic-stricken viewpoint and realized that, when someone scares us, it is often a reflection of how scared they themselves feel at the time. I just wanted to suggest that he, or someone in his position the next time, might not really need to be subdued quite so vehemently at such a time. My work with the psychiatrically ill has alot to do with sensitivity to the stigmatization and negative reactions they suffer from those around them.

Annals of the Age of Depravity (cont’d.): Baby Dies After Being Left In Car. The father says it was only when he went to pick up his 5-month old daughter at day care at the end of the day and was told she had never arrived that morning that he realized that he had forgotten to drop her off and had left her in the car all day, where she had died.

You are what you eat. “A mother’s diet in the first few days after conception could determine the health of her unborn child for life, say

British researchers. An embryo sets its growth rate according to its environment–a process known as programming. If a mother is

malnourished, for instance, the embryo grows more slowly, which leads to low birthweight. Babies that are born

small are more susceptible to diabetes, high blood pressure and strokes in later life.

Now a team led by Tom Fleming of the University of Southampton suggests that programming may take place in the

four or five days following fertilisation, before the embryo even implants in the womb.” New Scientist

Gulf War syndrome may lead to Parkinson’s; more immediately, evidence of neurological dysfunction in Gulf War veterans but not matched controls suggests the syndrome may have an organic, neurological cause rather than being merely a psychological reaction to traumatization, as has been previously claimed. The promising imaging technique, magnetic resonance spectrometry, contributes evidence.

New class of antibiotic may fight drug resistance. Or, more likely, select for bacteria resistant to them (as have all other classes of antibiotics…) Reuters

I loved this (courtesy of Random Walks). The Microsoft keyboard:
(If you Mac users out there need an explanation of what’s funny here, write me…)

Amazon Dumps Yahoo at expiration of three-year partnership. Barnesandnoble rushes in to supplant Amazon as a Yahoo “premier merchant.” Wired

Trophy Photos Betray Israeli Police Abuse.

JERUSALEM, Sept. 18 – After they had finished pummeling their three Palestinian detainees, finished smashing them with their fists, elbows and boots, slamming their heads against a stone wall, forcing them to swallow their own blood and cursing their mothers and sisters, the young Israeli policemen did an unusual thing: Using a disposable camera, they took photographs of themselves with their victims, holding their heads by the hair like hunting trophies.

The three Palestinian detainees apparently did nothing to provoke this attack except to present their identity ards at a border checkpoint. The israeli border police apologize for the incident and underscore its rarity. Human rights workers beg to differ. But all in all, after an initial outcry there’s been remarkably little discussion or indignation in Israel about such brutalization. Washington Post

“Somehow the Bud Light ad in which a man is shot from a cannon into an elephant’s anus seems a model of tasteful cleverness by comparison”: NBC’s Summer Games Coverage “… is so packaged and overproduced as well as after-the-fact that by the time it reaches American TV screens it seems remote in the worst sense of the word. The hours and hours of features and profiles NBC has produced about participating athletes include footage from previous Olympic Games, and this blurs right into the new material, all of it becoming a seamless and wearying smear. Everything new looks old again.” Critic Tom Shales is one of my favorite curmudgeons, and I usually agree with him, as I do here. He’s got several other important complaints about the NBC coverage as well. Read on. My biggest objection is that, to judge from the NBC coverage I’ve watched, it would appear that only six or eight nations are competing. Weren’t the Olympics supposed to be about more than the superpowers? Washington Post

Free TiVo if you can write well. Geek.com

If there anyone who hasn’t yet seen this awe-inspiring photograph from the Montana wildfires, be there now. [via Robot Wisdom]

Another one of those Amazing Journey stories.

Jenny Diski in The Observer: “Now I understand what Kierkegaard was on about. The

leap of faith is not

towards God, but

love and housing.”

The Sunday Times of London reviews J.G. Ballard’s new one, Super Cannes.

The

Ballardian law of the universe runs

thus: every idealistic attempt by human

society to organise itself into

progressive or “higher” forms will,

inevitably, precipitate catastrophe.

Interesting catastrophe, of course.

The high-rise block degenerates into a jungle; the motorway

system (as in Crash) becomes a 70mph, high-tech killing

ground; the leisure city of the future (as in Cocaine Nights)

decays into Sodom by the Med. Plan a housing estate such as

Paulsgrove in Portsmouth and you are writing a programme for

lynch law….

An engaging feature in Ballard’s fiction is his cavalier

indifference to the laws that hobble lesser writers (who else

would introduce Elizabeth Taylor into a novel in which the hero

is called J G Ballard?).

And the Guardian-Observer’s reviewer says: “…vintage Ballard, a gripping blend of

stylised thriller and fantastic imaginings rendered in deceptively

bland, unruffled prose. One of its virtues lies simply in its

compulsive readability; as the story unfolds, the reader is

engaged at the level of pure plot…”

Lingua Franca: Celebrating Ten Years. In honor of its tenth anniversary, the “Review of Academic Life” collects ten of its “all-time favorite articles, as well as special thematic archives — labor

and tenure, post Cold-War politics, gender and sexuality, theory

and its discontents, and academic computing.

More bad news for Amazon. “The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of Amazon’s first

affiliates from back in 1996, severed its affiliate relationship.

Junkbusters did the same. Both cited Amazon’s new privacy policy — which outlines when customer information

can be shared but basically admits to considering customer information

as a business asset — as the reason for their departure from the affiliates

program.” Geek.com

More bad news for Amazon. “The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of Amazon’s first

affiliates from back in 1996, severed its affiliate relationship.

Junkbusters did the same. Both cited Amazon’s new privacy policy — which outlines when customer information

can be shared but basically admits to considering customer information

as a business asset — as the reason for their departure from the affiliates

program.” Geek.com

More bad news for Amazon. “The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of Amazon’s first

affiliates from back in 1996, severed its affiliate relationship.

Junkbusters did the same. Both cited Amazon’s new privacy policy — which outlines when customer information

can be shared but basically admits to considering customer information

as a business asset — as the reason for their departure from the affiliates

program.” Geek.com

Just saw Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog. Has anyone ever run across a downloadable version of the Hagekure: the way of the samurai?

Nationalgeographic.com is getting dispatches from a group of archaeologists who report they’ve discovered evidence of the Biblical flood, when the rising Mediterranean broke through to what is now the Black Sea.

Jorg Heider and his Austrian Freedom party are not the only ultra-nationalist proto-fascist force in European politics. Support is growing in Belgium for Filip Dewinter and his far Right Vlaams Blok party, “Our People First” teeshirts and all. The Times of London

A Litmus Test for Romantics. If you can’t figure out if a relationship is right, give your partner — or potential partner — a book. Do they care enough to read it? What does their reaction indicate about whether their sensibilities are on track? But be careful — they might be vetting you based on what book it is you’ve chosen for your examination… New York Times

The Observer | Life | Barbara Ellen | On sex and violence: “A recent study revealed that for many

men getting disproportionally emotional

over sport is their way of dealing with real

difficulties in their lives. Tell women

something we don’t know. Most of us

know how it feels to be emotional

wallpaper, while the man in our life

obsesses and grieves over an unfair

penalty. The same seems to be true of

men who react strongly to movies. It’s not

the case that real life isn’t good enough,

more that their real selves don’t seem

good enough. Or, for that matter, bad

enough.”

Autopsy finds passengers killed man in ‘air rage’ case: “A man who attacked other passengers and pounded on the

cockpit door during a Southwest Airlines flight in August was killed by other passengers, not by a heart attack as originally believed, an autopsy

has concluded.

However, the U.S. Attorney’s office is not filing any criminal charges, saying Jonathan Burton’s Aug. 11 death was merely an act of self-defense

by frightened passengers.” I had found the original news reports of a putative “heart attack” in a 19 year-old unlikely (although not impossible); this version strikes me as quite tragic, since my take on the young man is that he was probably acutely psychiatrically disturbed. Did he really represent a critical threat? Nando Times

More questions than answers after Internet researchers’ conference: “The Association of Internet Researchers’ inaugural conference ended Sunday with more questions than answers about the Internet’s impact on

social interactions and relationships.” Nando Times

Resistant germs thrive in day care. “For years, doctors and

parents alike have been aware that children who

attend day care centers are more likely to catch

colds and other infections due to their close

proximity to other youngsters. But now,

researchers here report that a more insidious

danger may lurk in these facilities: They can

serve as ideal breeding grounds for

antibiotic-resistant infections.” MSNBC

More bad news for Amazon. “The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), one of Amazon’s first

affiliates from back in 1996, severed its affiliate relationship.

Junkbusters did the same. Both cited Amazon’s new privacy policy — which outlines when customer information

can be shared but basically admits to considering customer information

as a business asset — as the reason for their departure from the affiliates

program.” Geek.com

Beyond Cyberpunk! The Web Version. The Beyond Cyberpunk hypercard stack for the Mac was the roadmap to the cyberculture of the early ’90’s. I was jealous of those using Mac OS who had access to it. Now, when Peter Sugarman and Gareth Branwyn have started porting it to the web (which didn’t even exist when this project was gestated), it’s mostly a historical document or, as they put it aptly, “an artifact from a future past.” (They promised it was a work in progress to which they would be adding, but the introductory page has a 1998 copyright, so I don’t know if it’s still being updated.)