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Branwyn have started porting it to the web (which didn’t even exist when this project was gestated), it’s mostly a historical document or, as they put it aptly, “an artifact from a future past.”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.)

Jerry Groopman MD reviews Frank Vertosick’s Why We Hurt: the natural history of pain. “In 1979, while training for the

Boston marathon, I ruptured a

lumbar disc. I underwent two

failed operations and was left

disabled and in severe pain. It

took many months of arduous

physical therapy to be weaned

from pain medication and to

regain the ability to move about.

To this day, if I lift something

heavy without bending correctly,

or fail to support my muscles

when sitting in a soft chair, I am

laid low by back pain. It was,

therefore, with more than

academic interest, and some

trepidation, that I read ‘Why We

Hurt. To my surprise and delight,

Dr. Frank T. Vertosick Jr., a practicing neurosurgeon,

performs a feat of literary alchemy. He transmutes the

lugubrious subject of pain into a provocative and edifying

treatise that tightly engages the reader.” New York Times

The Whole World in our Hands: “James Lovelock’s Gaia theory inspired the Green

movement. But as fossil fuels begin, literally, to cost

the earth, he argues that nuclear power could save the

planet.” Guardian

Spin Magazine’s 100 Sleaziest Moments in the History of Rock. A rather tame example:

With his moccasins, Moroccan shirts, and impressive ‘fro, hippie deity

Jimi Hendrix seemed an unlikely candidate for gangster’s paradise. But in

the fall of 1969, he and his band Gypsys, Suns & Rainbows performed at

the opening of the tiny, reputedly Mob-owned Manhattan club Salvation

as a favor to the joint’s promoter – Hendrix’s coke dealer Bobby Woods.

After the gig, he and Woods took off to score some blow, hanging out

until morning. Late that evening, Woods was found murdered – a

gangland-style hit – and Hendrix was kidnapped by goons eager to grill

him about his ties to the pusherman. Hendrix’s enraged manager, Mike

Jeffery, quickly dispatched a few of his own well-connected brutes, who

sped to the funky Woodstock-area retreat where the guitarist was being

held. Jeffery’s boys were further up the Mafia food chain than Jimi’s

oppressors, who quickly fled the scene. Though Hendrix was reportedly

amused by the charade, rumors have persisted that the Mob may have

played a role in the odd circumstances surrounding his 1970 death. So

much for flower power.

Hmmm, second Jimi Hendrix post in a week…

Manufacturer, psychiatric group accused of overdiagnosing to sell Ritalin. “The American Psychiatric Association and the makers of the drug

Ritalin are encouraging overdiagnosis of behavioral problems in children to boost sales of the drug, according to two lawsuits filed this week.

Novartis Pharmaceutical Corp. and the psychiatric association promoted the belief that a large number of children need to take Ritalin for

attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the suits filed in New Jersey and California allege.” Nando Times My take on this, in a few words, is that the lawsuit is pure litigious nonsense. The medical evidence for the reality of ADHD as a brain dysfunction is incontrovertible, as is the positive impact of medication treatments. At the same time, it is overdiagnosed, but not because of any unholy conspiracy. There is an inherent cycle of fascination with faddish diagnoses and an unfortunate capacity for self-fulfilling prophecy to shape diagnosis of psychopathology among less careful clinicians.

Windows ME Bugged by Flaw. “Microsoft’s brand-new operating system, Windows ME already has one confirmed security bug.

The vulnerability allows malicious users to remotely shut down or force a reboot if the computer is running

the WebTV for Windows application.” Wired

GAC (Generic Artificial

Consciousness)

is “the world’s

first computer program to

attempt to learn from the world

wide community how to be

artificially conscious.” The knowledge base of the community of registered users fuels its AI by contributing to a database of mindpixels — “one-bit pieces of knowledge”. Now MIT’s Media Lab has gotten into the act. Wired

When Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Jim Higgins interviewed me over the phone for his July piece on weblogs, we discovered our shared involvement in adoption. He’s pointed me to Rainbow Kids, a self-described “online international adoption publication”. The current issue has a review article on the common medical problems encountered in children being adopted from abroad; and a celebratory personal adoption story from Higgins himself on the adoption of his daughter Zoe.

I was two weeks into fatherhood before I remembered that all babies were not Chinese. That’s

because I spent the first two weeks of February in a southeast China hotel with my wife Karen

and our new daughter Zoe, and 10 other American families and their new Chinese daughters. If

you want to imagine the atmosphere, think of your freshman year in a college dorm, only you’re

married, your dorm is as swanky as the Pfister Hotel, you’ve just been handed a tiny 10-month-old

swaddled in three hand-knit sweaters (even though it’s 60 degrees outside), and you’re surrounded

by 1.6 million Chinese people, many of whom haven’t seen an American in person before…

[So far in browsing their site though, I can’t find anything approximating our experience of adopting our daughter from the exotic state of …Maine.]

” I am Pilot Professr Y and we need you to

Save Earth! As you know, On September 1, 2020, Earth was surrounded by a sphere of

undetermined substance letting nothing through but light. The newly-established

World Government may have a hard time coping. We are here to help.

We are calling for Pilots to fly remote-control probes in order to map the beautiful yet

ominous macro-crystalline structure of the sphere. With this accomplished, we may

be able to produce a resonance pattern to crack the sphere and Save Earth! Watch

out for static though.”