I missed my blog‘s first birthday. I began posting on November 16, 1999 with a link to blogger.com, the discovery of which had goaded me into creating this thing. I won’t bore you with too much self-reflection here, except to say I’m grateful for your readership, support and involvement. Follow Me Here has always been a faithful reflection of what grabs me as I follow a number of interests on the web. I’m glad it interests you, and I think I’ve developed a more confident voice over the year from knowing that.

If it’s been in a low spot recently, it’s because despite myself I’ve found the drama of the election campaign more captivating than I ever thought I would; kept more in touch with the news than I ever had in previous election seasons; and started to reflect that in my postings here, despite having vowed at one point that you wouldn’t get much Presidential politics here, since I have usually found the political process bankrupt and meaningless and the outcomes of elections not to matter, or at least found it chic to maintain so.

In any case, it’ll all be over relatively soon, and Follow Me Here can get back to the usual routine:

social

commentary, criticism, cynicism,

conjunctions and conundrums.

Outrage. Recent scientific, technical

and healthcare developments.

Exciting artistic and cultural news.

Human pathos, whimsy, folly,

darkness and depravity.

I wanted to extend particular appreciation to several people for their crucial support during my first year — Abby Levine, Jorn Barger, David Brake, David Hartung, Jim Higgins, Matt Rossi and Chuck Taggart. No matter that some of you (webloggers who have found me worth pointing their readers toward) I’ve never met outside of cyberspace.

Her name was Candace. Two unlicensed Colorado therapists, their two assistants and the adoptive mother of a 10-year-old girl are charged with “child abuse resulting in death” after the troubled girl stopped breathing during a “rebirthing therapy” session.

Therapists curled Candace into the fetal position

inside a flannel sheet and pushed against her from

all sides.

She gasped for air. She begged them to stop.

She cried out that

she was dying.

They said go

ahead.

And then she did.

The Rocky Mountain News devoted an entire section to Candace’s death, including tracking down her birth mother in North Carolina six months after the tragedy to inform her of her daughter’s passing.

Why Gore (Probably) Lost. The pundits have been analyzing to death the question of why he didn’t do better. Three factors are often mentioned, to the point of becoming “received wisdom” already — his flatness of personality and discomfort with himself; his distancing himself from Clinton, crippling him in any attempt to run on his record; and his turn from centrism toward populism. In this essay, Jacob Weisberg is able to show how all of these relate to, and maybe emanate from, his complicated and ambivalent relationship with his late father (and Clinton, as a surrogate father figure). I think he’s on the mark.

Al Gore doesn’t deserve all the vilification that may be about

to be heaped on him. He has done a fine job as vice president

and really does deserve credit for many of the administration’s

accomplishments. Although the ineptitude of his campaign was

frustrating to his supporters, he tried to compensate for it by

working his heart out. Had Bush lost by so narrow a margin,

his defeat would have been attributable to laziness, a failing

Bush has far more control over than Gore has over his. And if

Gore is at fault, so are many of his aides, who we can expect

will soon be pointing the finger elsewhere. And so, too, is the

public, which failed to see through what are, in the scheme of

things, superficial faults to elect the more capable, intelligent,

and experienced man. Slate

Recycling your PC? IBM will take it. “Responding to what many see as one of

the biggest solid waste issues in decades, IBM

on Tuesday kicked off a computer recycling

program for consumers and small business. For

a $30 fee that includes shipping, buyers can

keep their old equipment — whether IBM made

them or not — out of landfills and send them

instead to a recycler. Environmentalists saw it

as a step forward, but urged IBM and other

companies to adopt free recycling.” MSNBC

Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts. Recent studies have shown that there is a specific ‘disgust center’ in our brains. Building on the observation that patients with Huntington’s Disease cannot recognize expressions of disgust on others’ faces and do not react with disgust to items or situations others usually find distasteful, the crucial brain locus has recently been established to be in the insular region of the cortex. Speculation is that this center originally evolved to help us recognize rotting food. ” ‘All animals have a sense of distaste,’ says psychologist Andrew

Calder. However, in humans it has been enhanced to give us a

centre for highlighting both disgusting things, and disgusting

acts. We need to be able to spot such behaviour because it

could threaten society unless rooted out quickly, he says.” Although the article does not make it clear, the crucial step in this inference by researchers has been the observation that patients in whom this brain region is damaged combine three behavioral deficits — not only do they not react to things that are repugnant but they fail to recognize the emotion of disgust in others and fail to react with the emotion of disgust to socially objectionable actions. Is this a biological basis for the sense of morality? Guardian

Men, if you value your life, stop shaving now. And other lucky escapes. Ananova

Overkill. ‘In the

morning paper, the town read disturbing allegations about a local

personality, followed in the afternoon by the news of his suicide. Readers

immediately flamed The Plain Dealer with angry phone calls, letters, and

e-mail. Rose hadn’t been charged with any crime, many noted, and by

making the investigation public, the newspaper had, in effect, killed him. The

paper had turned itself into a convenient outlet for residents to vent their

disbelief.

In response, The Plain Dealer became defensive and launched an often

harsh counterattack that at times seemed even more reflexive than its

readers’ reactions. In a series of editorials and columns, the paper reminded

readers that journalists are supposed to report facts–and that Rose was a

suspect. It is not the paper’s fault, editors said, if subjects of articles

choose to commit suicide. In answer to an e-mail message from Merle Pollis,

Rose’s best friend of 25 years, Douglas Clifton, The Plain Dealer‘s editor,

sent off a response that read, in part: “I know how I would react to a false

accusation of that sort. It would not have been to blow my brains out.” ‘Brill’s Content

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova

The Nazi on the Bestseller List. “German media giant Bertelsmann, still feverishly trying to make

people forget that it once marketed Hitler to the masses, is now

selling a Vermont professor’s regurgitation of the ideas of America’s

foremost living Hitler admirer, William Pierce, author of the Turner

Diaries.

Unable to find a publisher for his 420-page labor of love, University

of Vermont education professor Robert S. Griffin is peddling The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close

Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce for $8 per download on MightyWords.com, where it has the

immediate potential to reach millions of people.

The Web site is owned jointly, through a subsidiary, by Bertelsmann and Barnes & Noble. And Griffin’s

e-book has zoomed to No. 1 on the MightyWords bestseller list.

Griffin, in an interview with the Voice, insists he’s no mere publicist for Pierce, an ex-physicist whom Jewish

activists consider America’s most intellectual—and most dangerous—anti-Semite and racist.” Village Voice

Women are more violent, says study. A new study ‘challenges the long-standing view that

women are overwhelmingly the victims of aggression,…based on an analysis of 34,000 men and women by a British

academic. Women lash out more frequently than their

husbands or boyfriends, concludes John Archer, professor of

psychology at the University of Central Lancashire and

president of the International Society for Research on

Aggression.

Male violence remains a more serious phenomenon: men

proved more likely than women to injure their partners.

Female aggression tends to involve pushing, slapping and

hurling objects. Yet men made up nearly 40 per cent of the

victims in the cases that he studied – a figure much higher

than previously reported.

… Speaking last night, he said that female aggression

was greater in westernised women because they were

“economically emancipated” and therefore not afraid of ending

a relationship.

“Feminist writers say most of the acts against men are not

important but the same people have used the same surveys

to inflate the number of women who are attacked,” he said. “In

the past it would not even have been considered that women

are violent. My view is that you must base social policy on the

whole evidence.” ‘ Independent

Death row inmate nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Nando Times

World marvels at meteors. “Waves of fireballs brightened the skies over

the Middle East as the much-heralded Leonid

meteor shower swelled into the heaviest show

of shooting stars in 33 years.

Around the world, astronomers and amateur

stargazers gathered to watch the celestial light

show, which is unlikely to be matched for

decades.” BBC

“Wealth Porn”. “The media have almost totally overlooked the causal connections between the wealth boom and rising distress among the middle classes. The pieces that do report on middle-class financial distress often quote spokesmen for the personal responsibility movement who condemn financially-strapped middle-class families for their lack of discipline.” But, the author contends, as the rich get richer and are driven to more and more conspicuous consumption, they carry the rest of society along with them, and there are unacceptable costs to failing to spend on a par with others. Columbia Journalism Review

Main characters in the distressing but strangely appealing novels of Michel Houellebecq keep visiting shrinks and getting diagnosed with ‘Depressive Lucidity”. Life is “narrow, dark and acrid.” People barely connect, barely hold on. Suicide is ever-present. But then there’s the lucidity…. The New Republic

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova