Ringing disapproval. Thinkers like James Katz, communications professor at Rutgers, and David Karp, a Boston College sociologist, think they’ve figured out what’s so annoying about cell phone use in public. The phrase Katz uses is that it’s “like cutting up the park,” which I think is probably a reference to the seminal ecological article, Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968). The concept is somewhat analogous to Hardin’s, indeed. The idea is that the cell phone user is privatizing public space and indicating a disregard for others whose rights have been appropriated. It strikes me that this explains what, to a lesser extent (yes, around 50% less, because it’s just listening and not speaking) is similarly annoying about public walkman use.

Scientists control the content of dreams. However, the significance of the findings reported in this article are not really along the lines of “lucid dreaming” or anything like that. The exciting thing was the demonstration that patients with damage to the brain region called the hippocampus, who as a result have no short-term memory, nevertheless dreamed of their day’s experience. Arguably, this is one of the most direct confirmations of the role of the unconscious in shaping the content of dreams, which has recently come under fire.

Lennon Killer Had Hit List of Stars. Mark David Chapman continues to be a seriously disturbed and confused man, it seems, reading this report of his recent parole board hearing. New York Post

Do Horror Films Filter the Horrors of History? There could be no more concrete confirmation of the idea that horror films echo the fears of the day than the fact that Tom Savini, master of visceral gore as makeup artist for such films as Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th, served in Vietnam photographing corpses for the U.S. Army.

Israeli Left’s Ideals Take a Beating Amid Violence

“There is a deep crisis of conscience for the left in this country, for those of us

who were brought up believing that peace was possible, that we should pay the

price and that Arafat was our partner. The most severe

damage caused by recent events has been to the solidarity, commitment and belief

of the Israeli left in the peace process.” Los Angeles Times It’s been more painful to follow recent Middle East events than much else in the world; maybe naively, I thought at times that peace was within reach, and then to watch it fall so utterly apart, and the killings start again. However, some feel, at least in retrospect, that Israel never bargained in good faith. Read one Jewish leftist intellectual, Michael Lerner’s, anguished, apologetic appraisal of Israel’s failure in the peace process.