The New York Times weblogging article (see below) stimulated some lively jabbering among webloggers at Metafilter.

‘Historically speaking, the “ancient” rituals of the
Goddess movement are almost certainly bunk.’

In all probability, not a single element of the Wiccan story is
true. The evidence is overwhelming that Wicca is a distinctly
new religion, a 1950s concoction influenced by such things as
Masonic ritual and a late-nineteenth-century fascination with
the esoteric and the occult, and that various assumptions
informing the Wiccan view of history are deeply flawed.
Furthermore, scholars generally agree that there is no
indication, either archaeological or in the written record, that
any ancient people ever worshipped a single, archetypal
goddess — a conclusion that strikes at the heart of Wiccan
belief. The Atlantic

Cribbed from Jimwich: this spectacular photograph of an F/A-18C Hornet at the exact moment it breaks the sound barrier, passing through a gorgeous momentary egg-shaped cloud it creates in the process. A commentary on the photo explains how it was taken and what’s happening.

The Dubious Data 2000 Awards, “the ten silliest, most misleading stories of the New Millennium” from the Statistical Assessment Service. “…at least, we think it’s ten, and we’re pretty sure that the Millennium has already started…”

One of the giants, W. V. Quine, Philosopher Who Analyzed Language and Reality, Dies at 92 New York Times

Frequently Asked Questions about the “tetanizing beam weapon”, a nonlethal anti-personnel weapon. I collect rare weapons.

May I buy one of yours?

There are no finished units available now and will not be for about two years. Then you should ask one of our
licensed manufacturers rather than us, as we are exclusively a research corporation. Even then you could not
purchase a functional weapon because they will be sold only to law enforcement and military organizations.
However, in a few years you should be able to buy a design model.

[via Red Rock Eaters’ News Service]

A study comparing three decades of Queen Elizabeth’s annual Christmas speeches highlights the decline and fall of the Queen’s cut-glass accent, as The Times of London puts it. Her accent has “drifted down market towards the speech patterns of her subjects,” and marks the general blurring of British social class accent distinctions.

Choice of Rumsfeld Creates Solid Team for Missile Shield. Dubya’s choice for Pentagon chief shows me two things — that he’s fully committed to that dangerous and costly boondoggle, and that he continues to look to his father’s generation to compensate for his apparent self-preceived inadequacies as a leader. New York Times

Verizon to Face Tumor Suits? “… (A) U.S. lawyer who recently helped win $4.2 billion in damages
from the tobacco industry was planning to launch 10 claims against handset manufacturers, mobile
network operators and fixed-line phone companies” on behalf of brain tumor victims. Wired

A Millen(n)ial Mix-up. As New Year’s Eve approaches, Wired ponders not only the pervasive confusion about when the new millennium begins but the widespread misspelling of the word millennium. Take for example, the Hilton Millenium in New York City, a spokesperson for which says the use of the single ‘n’ was a deliberate attempt at visibility. Uh-huh. (The writer, searching the Wired News archives, found 11 articles where millennium was spelled at least once with a single ‘n’ in his own publication.) Some versions of the Microsoft Word spellchecker accept both versions. A spokesperson for the company denied that this was a bug, making motions instead in the direction of “captur(ing) cultural nuances in word use.”

Free Links, Only $50 Apiece. Some news sources have begun to charge a fee for others to link to their online articles; another fundamental challenge to the premise of the hyperlinked Web. Moreover, the online service these sites use to limit unapproved linking — iCopyright.com — also attempts to control what can be said about the online content in your link to it. And not only can you not say anything derogatory about the author or the publication in which the linked-to article appears; you cannot say anything derogatory about “any person…depicted in the content.” Plain and simple, if I linked for example to an Albuquerque Journal article about Dubya, I would have to fork over $50 for the privilege of remaining respectful about the illegitimate son — uh, I mean the President-elect. It appears that iCopyright.com started out to handle collecting licensing fres for reprinting and photocopying in return for a portion of these licensing revenues, but decided to tack on the HTML linkage fee arrangement as well. An Albuquerque Journal spokesperson denied being aware of the linkage fee arrangement and did not know if the newspaper would be enforcing it or if people who linked to their content without paying a fee would be in legal trouble. iCopyright.com, which says it represents more than 70 publishers and more than 300 publications, referred inquiries to its attorneys.

Legal commentators suggest that attempts to charge for linkage to online content would not stand up in court, not to mention the free speech restrictions of this particular arrangement. Although obtaining permission, and even paying a licensing fee, for the reuse of printed material (through photocopying) is an established precedent, it has been difficult to enforce restrictions on, say, academic redistribution of articles for a long time. I know from personal experience that that has been the mainstay of, for example, medical education for decades. In the hyperlinked world, let’s hope it’s even more difficult to enforce. And in this era of dot-com startups going belly-up with regularity, perhaps iCopyright.com will turn out to be an ill-planned scheme that efficiently founders even before putting someone through an expensive and time-consuming legal test case. Information just wants to be freer and freer, to paraphrase someone… Wired

New York Times review by Stephen Holden:‘Traffic’: Teeming Mural of a War Fought and Lost. ‘Hollywood has saved the best for last. On the last weekend
of the year comes what may turn out to be the most acclaimed
movie of the year: Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, an
updated, Americanized version of a 1989 British television
mini-series, Traffik. Soderbergh’s film, which has already
been named best picture of the year by the New York Film
Critics Circle, tackles the subject of America’s losing war
on drugs through multiple story lines and a multitude of
characters…

… “several,
interwoven thrillers, each with its own tense rhythm and
explosive payoff. What these stories add up to is something
grander and deeper than a virtuosic adventure film.” ‘