“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a

song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose.

No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too

young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs

that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard

travelling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air & my last

drop of blood…”

—Woody Guthrie, who succumbed to Huntington’s Disease in New York on this date in 1967, at age 55.

“Cause sometimes you hear’em when the night times comes creeping

& you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping

& you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin’

& you can’t remember for the best of yer thinking

If that was you in the dream that was screaming

& you know that it’s something special you’re needin’

& you know that there’s no drug that’ll do for the healin’

& no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding…

—Bob Dylan, “Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie”

Where Is Your Junk Mail From? “Why do these things arrive? It’s not quite random,

and figuring out why you’re on the owl lovers’ mailing list is part of the fun.”

US Funds Yugoslav Politicians; Why Not Do the Same Here? The shock waves from the charges of Chinese influence-buying in the 1996 US presidential campaign have yet to settle, but such action pales in comparison with the millions of dollars we are funnelling into supporting foes of Milosevic’s Serbian regime. “What if other nations adopted a similar approach to help level the playing field for

candidates here in the United States? After all, the terrain for campaigns is

severely skewed by access to big money and mass media.” But of course we want the rest of the world to do as we say, not as we do. Do we lose the moral authority to decry wrongs done us when our actions are not unimpeachable?

Fall Television Preview 2000: ‘Ed’ and ‘Bette,’ Standing Out in a Surly Crowd . I’m including this not ‘cuz of any particular interest in the new TV season, but for the continuing pleasure I take in Washington Post critic Tom Shales’ entertaining, caustic wit. One reader wrote to differ with me, saying Shales loses credibility by skewering absolutely everything and appreciating nothing, so I’ll point out that he actually does like a couple of the shows he’s previewing, as the headline indicates. Me? I don’t think I’ll be watching much if any TV this fall, with Homicide long gone, the X-Files tiresome and irreparable, and nothing but nothing on the horizon looking enticing. Saves an enormous timesink!

An Acquired Taste Via The Spike Report: ‘Despite his image as a charisma-impaired policy wonk, Al Gore is “America’s

most lethally effective practitioner of high-stakes political debate,” says

James Fallows. Fallows examines

Gore’s performance in debates dating back to 1987, tracing a Michael

Corleone-style transformation from naive idealist to cold-blooded pragmatist.

After steadily improving his skills throughout the 90s, says Fallows, Gore

has become “the political combatant most likely to leave his victims feeling

not just defeated but battered…We can’t be sure about what will be best

about Al Gore if he becomes President,” writes Fallows. “But what will be

worst is probably closely connected to the way he has learned to destroy

opponents in debates.” ‘ The Atlantic Monthly

Warner to bow albums in DVD audio format

Baby Born As Donor Raises Ethical Debate. “To any stranger, Adam appears to be just another healthy baby

boy. But he is not just any baby.

Unlike most infants, Adam was selected from among six embryos during in vitro fertilization… The embryo that would become Adam was chosen specifically to ensure that a rare genetic

disease called Fanconi anemia would not be inherited. But the embryo was also chosen to be

a good transplant match for Adam’s 6-year-old sister, who does have the disease.” Reuters

Can gorillas and dolphins communicate? Koko the gorilla “talks” with humans. Several Atlantic bottlenose dolphins do as well. Now they’re all moving to Maui to see if the two species can communicate with each other via sign language over video links. CNN

More Germans switch their mobile phones off at the movie theater than during sex, a poll shows.

Supreme Court Declines to Review ‘Cheers’ Case

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the actors who played Norm and Cliff

on the hit television series “Cheers” to sue over the use of two

robots that the actors claim commercially exploited their

identities.” In this fascinating case, the legal principle of the “right to publicity” (in which celebrities retain the right to profit from their recognizeability) clashes with the copyright on the likenesses of the characters the actors played. Reuters

A Rule of Thumb That Unscrambles the Brain. ‘A new breed of animal,

dubbed the “sand

mouse,” has been added to

the annals of biological

science, and it has become

the subject of a scientific

challenge.

Last week Dr. John J.

Hopfield, a Princeton

professor known for seminal

discoveries in computer

science, biology and physics,

posed an unusual test to his

fellow scientists.

Dr. Hopfield challenged

them to discover a simple,

new computational principle

— a general rule of thumb —

for how the brain of this

creature works, using only

the power of deductive

reasoning and a set of facts

about the animal that Dr.

Hopfield and a former

student, Dr. Carlos Brody,

have posted on a Web site.’ New York Times

Women with Male Chromosomes Say Life is Good

Girls born with male

chromosomes can still grow up to be women with normal sex lives, according to new

research.

Women with the rare gene mutation known as Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome

(CAIS) contradict a basic difference between men and women: That men have xy

chromosomes and women have xx chromosomes.

Women with CAIS, however, have xy chromosomes and started out as boys while still

embryos, say medical scientists at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, which

pioneered research into the syndrome. But because of the gene mutation, their bodies don’t

recognize or use androgens, which are male hormones, like testosterone, that cause the

development of male characteristics. HealthScout