The bombing of the USS Cole has reinforced Republican campaign rhetoric about a re-infusion for the US military, as if any added amount of manpower or military hardware could stop this kind of attack. But the incident is also the occasion to question the wisdom of US ‘engagement’ policy, says the Christian Science Monitor‘s Cameron Barr.

The idea, warmly embraced by President Clinton, is that a government

should cozy up to its potential adversaries in the hope of winning them

over.

Indeed, Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh hardly seems a likely friend

of the United States. He is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s warmest

political supporter, his country has long been a home away from home

for a variety of militant groups, and his brand of politics is a good

distance short of fully democratic.

Isn’t isolationism always the refuge of some after a U.S. tragedy, or misadvanture, abroad?

Go ahead, lick your wounds. Beyond 2000

Culture, the non-issue: Has the anti-arts far-right lost the culture war against the “blasphemers and the pornographers”? Philadelphia Inquirer

Sit down and clap. It’s one of my pet peeves, and Stephen van Esch’s as well, that people give a wild standing ovation after any performance, no matter how mediocre. Why is this, and what is it doing to the arts? Spark

Former jazz piano cult figure Keith Jarrett is back from the frailty of a debilitating chronic illness. But does he have the chops to enchant jazz listeners anew, or will “sickly pallor” in his work become a “mark of heroism for the Jarrett cult”? New Statesman

NewsWatch blows the whistle on the Los Angeles Times’ struggle to start a drug scare.

A critical eye for detail. John Sutherland is an immensely popular literary critic — some thought that a contradiction in terms — who “examine(s), with forensic precision, neglected details and

apparent anomalies in classic novels and plays, and thus inject(s) new life into well-loved

literature. He has been instrumental in reviving the art of close reading at a time

when many literary academics use deconstruction and other arcane theory to place

themselves between readers and books, with the result that criticism becomes a

narcissistic end in itself, rather than a skill that deepens the pleasure of reading.”

Baby Girl Receives Arm From Twin who had died at birth. Reuters

Bizarre scenes from the “million Family March” in Washington, which involved only around several per cent of a million. Rev. Louis Farrakhan oversaw a Sun Myung Moon-like mass wedding ceremony. The Unification Church was a co-sponsor of the rally. He also didn’t come forth with any of the anti-Semitic or anti-white rhetoric for which he is renowned. And speaker after speaker urged attendees to get out and vote.

Why does an anti-depressant work for some people, but not others? One of the mysteries of psychopharmacology has been accounting for the two- to four-week latency of antidepressant response after a depressed patient starts taking the medication. A complicated cascade of neurochemical changes has to occur, resulting in altered brain functioning. Now a team of Toronto neurologists using positron emission tomography (PET scanning) have demonstrated a progressive sequence of changes in the brain function of patients in those weeks and the absence of those predictable changes in patients who will turn out to be nonresponders to the antidepressant studied, fluoxetine (Prozac). PET scanning visualizes levels of brain activity in various regions by imaging rate of glucose metabolism. The hippocampus, a “hot” region in current neuropsychiatric research on a variety of disorders, was one of the areas implicated.

The Fingerprint Mouse from Sejin America allows you to use a fingerprint to restrict access to a

computer system.’ Hey Neat!

Emerging Disease News: Ugandans Slap Quarantine on Ebola Virus Areas. A new outbreak over the last two weeks has killed 43, the WHO says. Ugandan authorities threaten those breaking the quarantine with death. The Ebola virus,

which first emerged in what was then Zaire in 1996, is a

hemorrhagic virus that causes patients to bleed to death

through every orifice — including the eyes and ears.

There is no vaccine and no known cure. It is spread through

contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids and can kill

within 48 hours.

One doctor said the symptoms were “like watching someone

dissolve before your eyes.”

Medical staff in Gulu Monday were clearly overwhelmed, but

even with the best treatment in the world, Ebola is usually

fatal. Some 793 people have died out of 1,100 cases recognized

by the WHO since 1996. Reuters

Court Says No House Vote for D.C.. Democratic principles fall prey to the letter of the law. The District of Columbia representative in Congress can’t vote just because the Constitution says that membership of the House “shall be

apportioned among the several states.”