The American Library Association’s list of the Top 100 Banned or Challenged Books of 1990-1999

Artificial stupidity. Salon interviews techno-visionary Jaron Lanier who, at 38, has gone impressively sour on a computer-driven future. For one thing, he says that software is brittle and cannot keep up with ongoing advances in processing power. He views with contempt the half-baked stabs at artificial intelligence touted as the newest advances in most commercial software. His “One-half a manifesto” at The Edge provokes responses from luminary techno-heads: George Dyson, Freeman Dyson, Cliff Barney, Bruce Sterling, Rodney Brooks, Henry

Warwick, Kevin Kelly, Margaret Wertheim, John Baez, Lee Smolin, Stewart Brand,

Rodney Brooks,Lee Smolin, and Daniel Dennett.

A police officer in Long Island left a loaded gun lying around the school where he was conducting a security exercise. New York Daily News

Palestinian Demand to Probe Killings May Be Vetoed: “…The United States is poised to cast its veto against a UN draft resolution sponsored by the 114-

member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) calling for an international inquiry into the killings of over 45 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since

last week.

The resolution, which is expected to be taken up later this week, faces a possible US veto because Israel has made it clear it will not permit any

international investigation into the shootings.

The proposed investigation is also one of the demands made by Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat Wednesday at the Paris talks involving Israeli Prime

Minister Ehud Barak and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.”

I missed my chance to wish you a happy Mad Hatter Day yesterday.

Your world is crazier than you think:

We travel around by taking the juice from hundred-million-year-old rotten dinosaur food and exploding it in a metal can.

A “sports fanatic” is not someone who participates in sports, but someone who sits indoors on a beautiful day, drinking beer while

yelling at the picture on a little box. (Throw the ultimate football party: Forget the TV; just sit around eating and drinking with

friends.)

As much as we say we like to “get away from it all”, the more successful we are, the more we take it all with us when we go. (Take a

vacation with all the comforts of home: Just stay home!)

We’re so well-fed that we’re getting food with intentionally reduced nutritional content–so we can take the trouble to eat without

getting the benefit of doing so. (Enjoy the ultimate in fast-diet-food: Skip lunch.)

We’ve saved so much gift-giving for the Christmas season that it has entirely unbalanced the flow of cash and consumer goods

through the year. So merchants decided to start the season early to have something to do the rest of the year. (There’s now only one

major gift-giving holiday — but it lasts for five months. Surprise someone with a MadHatterDay present.)

…and it goes. Take a look around you, drop your assumptions about what must be proper and normal, and see how much of it is just silly.

Better yet, try to find something that does make sense.

Branded Journalism. Hybrid branded magazines published by companies to showcase their products or associated lifestyle — from Abercrombie and Fitch, Sony, Kinko’s etc. — are the latest obscenity blurring the boundaries between journalism and commercialism. ‘Increasingly, as Naomi

Klein shows in her blistering book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand

Bullies, companies see themselves as alternative providers of content.

They can now shape the environment in which their advertising is

delivered, enabling them to further reinforce their brands. The

magalog, Klein tells me, represents “a growing impatience in the

corporate world with the traditional role of the advertiser as the

commercial interrupter, intruding on ‘real’ culture. Now, the brand

wants to be the cultural infrastructure, not an add-on, or an interruption.

Magalogs are an important part of that: rather than associating

with a lifestyle, represented by Rolling Stone or the New Yorker,

magalogs allow the brand to be the lifestyle, their products the

essential accessories.” ‘

What Was Al Gore Thinking? – Guess the meaning of the vice president’s drawings.  Slate

Slate’s “Explainer”: Could a New President Ban RU-486?

Can a Girl Take RU-486 Without Telling Her Parents?

Will globalization make you happy? Foreign Policy

Men of Steel Feel Like 97-Pound Weaklings.

Why are men so much

more concerned

about their bodies today

than they were 50 years ago?

This was the question

Harrison G. Pope Jr., a

professor of psychiatry at

Harvard Medical School, and

two colleagues asked

themselves after noticing a

sharp increase in male gym

memberships, anabolic

steroid use and especially

body image disorders,

including muscle dysmorphia

(sometimes called

bigorexia), an illness

characterized by compulsive

exercising and the sufferer’s

irrational conviction that he

is weak and puny even

though he may be bulging

with muscle.

New York Times

UN Experts Say Ozone Depletion at Record Level. For the first time, the ozone hole has extended so far that populated areas of southern Chile and Argentina were uprotected from high ultraviolet radiation levels. Watch for crop failures in the coming growing season from irradiation of the emerging seedlings, and increased skin cancer in decades to come in the affected areas. Reuters

Thnigs Bite Back: Deadly touch: ‘Hospital superbugs thrive on sweat, say Danish researchers. They have found that some antibiotics “leak” out of the

body in sweat, and believe that bacteria on patients’ skin become resistant through unrelenting exposure to the

seeping drugs. Simple physical contact would then be enough to pass on the bugs.’ New Scientist

Things Bite Back (cont’d.): Sinister side of sunscreens. “The widespread use of sunscreens has been increasingly questioned by experts who say that it may not provide

protection against skin cancer because it encourages people to sunbathe for longer. Now there is evidence that a

substance called octyl methoxycinnamate (OMC), used as a UVB filter in 90 per cent of sunscreens worldwide, may

itself be toxic,” especially in reaction with sunlight. New Scientist