In case you were wondering, there was nothing routine about Friday’s US airstrike against Baghdad, despite Dubya’s repeatedly billing it that way. Washington Post analysts see it as signalling a get-tough approach to Baghdad. But why? Having used the bankruptcy of the Clinton administration’s Iraq policy as a campaign point, some suggest Dubya and his handlers feel they have to follow through. I think we’re going to be seeing many policy decisions being made with a view toward little more than establishing the illegitimate son’s credibility on the front pages. As The New York Times puts it, Dubya is “giving
notice that he may be new to this, but he doesn’t plan to
show it.” Of course, he’s also signalling a diffidence about multilateralism. Except for Britain, which supported or, some say, even pushed the airstrike, there appears to have been a swaggering disregard for the reactions of the rest of the world, including our allies.

“The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.” — Dwight
Eisenhower

“Women really do lead men on for the first few minutes after
they meet – but without knowing it, says an Austrian scientist… Even when
women find the man unappealing, they do not send clear
rejection signals to begin with, the researchers found.

Women chat happily, send
sexually explicit signals
and encourage the man’s
attention, even if they
have absolutely no
interest in him. This gives
a woman time to assess a
man, says Grammer,
essential in human
courtship, since pairing off
is much riskier for the
female. The only time
women were negative at
all was when a man talked too much.” New Scientist

Thrown Off the Scent: “If humans are using smell to find a good partner for reproduction,
and the pill is turning things upside down, then there could be
serious consequences.” Guardian

The Greatest Hacks of All Time Wired

It’s not all in the genes. From the estimable science writer Matt Ridley: “All over the world, therapists this week reported a wave of panic and depression as
word spread that the human species has only 30,000 genes. People wept openly in
the street, humiliated by the thought that we have only twice as many genes as
flies and worms, and barely more than cress.

Not since Copernicus demoted our planet to a satellite of the Sun, or Darwin
demoted our species to a branch of the ape family, has there been such a pitiless
reminder that there is nothing special about us. Hardly more complex than cress!

If the quantity of our genes is humiliating, the quality does not seem to offer much
reassurance. Scientists reported this week that about 60 per cent of our genes were
direct copies of ones used by flies, worms, yeast and bacteria: themes invented by
our common ancestors and used ever since.” The Age

Men Show Feelings In Lower Left Quadrant Of Face: “When it comes to men, women and emotion, pet theories abound on
whether one sex is more emotional or inhibited than the other.

But since such notions are rarely backed by data, University of Florida
researchers turned to computer technology to quantify gender differences in
one component of emotional expression — how it is revealed by the face.

They discovered that although men and women are equally expressive, men
display most of their joy, disgust or other sentiments in the lower left
quadrant of their face. Women, on the other hand, show their emotions
across their entire countenance.” UniSci

Ian Frazier:Tomorrow’s Bird: soon it’s going to be all crows,all the time. “Since May, I’ve been working for the crows, and so far it’s the best job I ever had.” Doubletake

Kansas Enters the 19th Century New York Times

What’s in a Name? FBI takes the teeth out of Carnivore’s name: ‘The FBI has dressed its online wolf in sheep’s clothing, changing the name of its
controversial e-mail surveillance system, known to this point as Carnivore.

Carnivore now goes by the less beastly moniker of DCS1000, drawn from the work it does as a
“digital collection system.” The investigative agency built the tool to monitor the Internet
communications of suspects under its surveillance, but the system, housed on computers at
Internet service providers, also can collect e-mail messages from people who are not part of an
FBI probe.’ CNet.com

A Metafilter poster kicked off a thread about what blog to take to a desert island if you could only have one. Thanks to all those who thought of FmH. A number of other weblogs unfamiliar to me were up there on respondents’ lips. I’m going now to check out, for example, Dr Menlo, bluishorange.com, Calebos, and An Entirely Other Day.

Study Probes Dyslexia Troubles. An fMRI study visualizes deficits in the left inferior parietal lobe, establishing biological underpinning to this learning disability that is said to affect an estimated 15% of the population (although, in my opinion, is vastly overdiagnosed).

Is Windows XP for you? ‘…(F)or Microsoft chief software architect Bill Gates to call Windows XP a “major Windows
release,” which he did again this week, is disingenuous, in my opinion. It might be major, in
terms of how many marketing dollars Microsoft plans to spend on the product, but
feature-wise, this is a minor upgrade to Windows Me and Windows 2000 Professional.

Perhaps Gates feels he is justified in calling Windows XP “major” because Microsoft is taking
a major gamble with XP to help rejuvenate the PC market.’ ZDNet And WinXP to include pirate music terminator. As the wag writing the news item notes: “Think of it. An operating system designed to lose data!” The Register

Love Clogs the Digital Pipes

Three-Wheeling Driving Days at a Dead End. “Britain’s last three-wheeled car rolled off the assembly line, bringing to
a close 65 years of motoring tradition that has been the butt of endless jokes.

The Reliant Robin, a uniquely British concoction of fiberglass and lateral instability that
brought motoring pleasure to thousands, finally succumbed to a new generation of
inexpensive four-wheel microcars.”

Study Ties Obesity to Soda Pure fruit juice intake was also
tracked, but that did not account for the effect, the study
said. New York Times

Ecstasy & Agony: A 34-year-old with progressive Parkinson’s Disease discovers that MDMA (Ecstasy) has an astonishing effect on his body, relieving his Parkinson’s symptoms. This observation challenges the medical community and pharmacological Calvinists everywhere and is now being studied in hopes of generating new treatment options for Parkinson’s Disease. BBC And Tamara Straus thinks the drug’s cultural significance may be far greater; wondering if Ecstasy isn’t the drug of the millenium, “a postmodern cure in
a pill, that… eases spiritual emptiness and rancorous
individualism; … a chemical salve for
everything from alienation and depression to the
lack of spirituality and community.” AlterNet

In this age of the illegitimate son, The Consortium wants to remind you of what has been called by some the dirtiest political trick ever, the October 1980 coup by which the campaign of Reagan and the elder Bush allegedly sabotaged President Carter’s Iran hostage release negotiations and arguably stole that fall’s Presidential election from him.

Howstuffworks.com’s “How Hoverboards Will Work”. The Airboard is the first commercially-marketed hoverboard scooter. And you can click here for complete instructions on making your own simple hoverboard. “Children should ask for their parents’ permission before attempting to build a hovercraft on their own.”

Conason says the Media’s Clinton Obsession Is Giving Bush a
Free Pass. “That era of bipartisan good feeling promised by George W.
Bush didn’t last long, did it? Three weeks after their leader
took up residence in the White House, Mr. Bush’s friends,
appointees and media claque are in hot,
barking pursuit of the prior occupants.

With the President’s mild demurral,
Republican politicians and Washington
talking heads have displayed little interest in any topic besides
their obsession with bringing down the Clintons. Phony charges
about illicit gifts and office vandalism proliferated, along with
valid complaints about inappropriate pardons and excessive
rental costs. In the reporting of these latest “scandals,” few
distinctions were made between facts and fantasies, or between
the serious and the trivial.” The New York Observer

On the other hand, Jacob Weisberg thinks Bill Clinton, Chump, is getting what he deserves for not learning from his mistakes. “What does come a bit closer to making sense of the Rich
pardon is one of Bill Clinton’s less legendary character flaws:
gullibility. Clinton is, to be sure, a brilliant man and a shrewd
politician with a keen sense of where the interests of others lie.
But throughout his career, he has often shown himself to be a
poor judge of character. A naturally trusting fellow with a
deep craving for approval, Bill Clinton is, to be blunt, a bit of
a sucker. More precisely, he’s an easy mark for a certain type
of hustler. Once convinced that someone is his friend, Clinton
drops his guard and ignores crucial signals of intended
exploitation. After it becomes clear that such a friend has
taken advantage of his trust, Clinton feels bitterly betrayed.
But he’s hardly savvier the next time someone with dubious
motives shows up at his doorstep. ” Slate

Beyond the Bar Code: “Within a few years, unobtrusive tags on retail products will send radio signals to their
manufacturers, collecting a wealth of information about consumer habits—and also raising
privacy concerns.” MIT Technology Review

Biblical strongman was plagued by mental illness, says UCSD psychiatrist Eric Altschuler, who finds he demonstrated six out of the seven cardinal criteria for antisocial personality disorder. As a clinical psychiatrist myself, I hate these constant attention-getting attempts to retrospectively diagnose historical, artistic and spiritual figures with mental illnesses. You might think it’s just an innocent intellectual pastime of my colleagues, but the sensationalistic publicity about these pronouncements perpetuates an irresponsible image that diagnosis can be done at a distance from “surface” features in the absence of access to reports of the subject’s experience. More than that, it “feathers the bed” of the field by pushing the envelope of pathological explanations of extraordinary talents or exploits. New Scientist

Brain Regions Impaired by Alcoholism Identified By fMRI Studies in Young Adult, Female Alcoholics. While neuropsychological testing of which cognitive functions are impaired in long-term alcohol abuse had previously zeroed in on the right frontal and parietal regions, this study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate in real-time the malfunctioning of specific brain regions involved. Among other findings, the functional deficits persisted even in the three of the ten women scanned who had been abstinent from alcohol for at least six months. Women apepar to be as sensitive to the adverse effects of alcohol as men even with shorter exposure.

Our friends electric. ‘One in eight people find
computer glitches more
vexing than the break
up of a relationship, a
recent survey on
“office rage” found.

Advocates of “affective
computing” say this
problem stems from the
gulf between
touchy-feely
humankind and cold,
aloof technology.’ They propose computer interfaces and robotic applications that respond to the user’s emotional states. BBC

Scores to attend priest’s ritual Pokemon burning ceremony: “Pokemon magazines and dolls are to be ritually burnt in
Mexico because of their alleged evil influence on children.” Ananova

Sub had civilians at controls. This is no news to anyone anymore. What appeared originally to be a tragic unfortunate accident starts to reek of coverup and ineptitude, US military might at its musclebound worst killing schoolchildren and other innocents. The Navy’s spokesperson certainly ‘doth protest too much’ in the form of denying perseveratively that the civilians at the controls could have had any effect. What troubles me, in the coverage I’ve read of this, is that no one is offering an explanation of, and apparently no reporters are digging for, exactly who these civilians are and why they were being given such a little-boy-with-his-big-toy fantasy treat. Seattle Times
Addendum: While I still haven’t heard this in the American press, the BBC reports that, as I suspected, this was a reward for large Navy donors, in this case to the restoration of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri, ironically the site of the signing of the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII. Apparently, these patronage perqs have not been that uncommon.

McDonald’s Hit by Spitting Email Hoax: A broadly-circulated email states that a South African TV show has footage of McDonald’s workers “spitting on white people’s hamburgers when ordered”, but the TV show denies it:

“An urban legend relating to a well-known hamburger fast-food chain
is currently circulating in SA. This false rumour states that Carte
Blanche has captured hidden camera visuals of the fast-food chain’s
employees allegedly mishandling food meant for customers,” the
Carte Blanche Website states today.

“The programme does not have such footage in its possession.
Should we acquire such footage, we will be the first to broadcast it.”

A source reports McD’s took a 20% revenue hit as a result of the news, but company representatives denied that the email had had any effect. The Register

Looking for Mr. Nader. Nader has been conspicuous in his absence since election day. He says he’s been busy wrapping up his campaign in accordance with Federal Election Commission regulations, but it appears that’s just a pretext. He’s apparently receiving conflicting counsel about whether he’d be helped or hindered by a critical stance toward the Democrats now, in light of his being viewed by some liberals as a “spoiler.” And Nader has an ambiguous relationship with Greens as well. In These Times

Never go skiing with a mobile phone… at least not in avalanche country. If your phone is on when buried with you, it’ll disrupt the signal your avalanche beacon is putting out and prevent you from being located.

Google buys Deja.com. I share in Jorn Barger‘s elation at this, which might be lost on anyone who is not a veteran of Usenet newsgroups.

But here’s the bad news one day later:

Message to Google: Usenet is a few useful conversations, hidden
by lots of noise. Duh.

In recent years Deja had tried to orientate the archive to being the
centrepiece of a shopping channel, with a number of tacky
manoeuvres such as inserting adverts into postings. But they’d
never (almost, but not quite) managed to break the main Usenet
archive overnight, which is effectively what Google has done. You’d
almost think Google wants to be thought of as a bunch of
come-lately, VC-flushed hooligans with no inkling of the history or
the culture of the Internet.

Something as simple as maintaining the Deja interface – Google
acquired the software as part of the deal – while signalling a change
of front-end and soliciting user input, could have avoided this PR
disaster for Google. The Register [via Robot Wisdom]

Joe Conason: Put Ye No Faith in Bush’s Ministers. “It seems likely that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives will soon become a highly effective patronage scheme…” and some of the beneficiaries are none too savory characters. New York Observer

The debut issue of the Harvard Journal of Convergence, on the policy challenges of “the information and communications technology revolution.”

The New Yorker Goes Digital, but there’s not much online, at least yet. Slate

NEAR Space Probe Lands On Asteroid: “The NEAR spacecraft touched down on
the barren, rocky surface of Eros, successfully
completing history’s first landing on an
asteroid.” Click for images of the touchdown.

Three Strikes And Not Out for Suicidal Man. This story appears in Reuters’ “Oddly Enough” section, but to psychiatric professionals it is not odd at all for someone to repeatedly attempt suicide and fail. Many patients make what we call “low-lethality” or “high-rescue-potential” attempts for a variety of reasons including attention-seeking, ambivalence about ending their life, sadistic urges toward caregivers or family, or to manipulate themselves into psychiatric facilities. Others may be so impaired by their mental illness that, fully intending to die, they are hapless in their attempt. Nevertheless, they are a danger to themselves. What amazes me about this news story is that the man was apparently not hospitalized until after his fourth attempt, which might mean — although not knowing more details of the case makes it difficult to know — that he was not taken seriously. This is a dangerous message to give to a suicidal or quasi-suicidal patient who might respond to the perceived doubt or rejection with renewed attempts.

New Book, Lawsuit Allege IBM Hid Nazi-Era Past. Of course, the perpetration of atrocities expands to utilize the efficiencies of the information processing capacity available to it. But to what extent was IBM a willing accomplice to the Nazi regime? Germany was its second-ranked sales territory despite an international ban on trade with the Third Reich.

The attorney pursuing the lawsuit, and the author of the book (which , curiously enough, was substantially based on corporate correspondence IBM made available through academic research libraries) both assert that IBM’s database technology made possible the cross-indexing of names, addreses, genealogical data and bank accounts without which the Holocaust would have been far less efficient. But are we imposing our obsession with the pervasive effects of technology on modern life on an era that does not warrant it? Historians by and large have yet to weigh in on the issues raised by the book, partially because its content was kept secret until publication.

New Insights Into the Novel? Try Reading 300. The author of this essay embarks on a five-month reading marathon in order to be a judge for the National Book Awards, with a sense of indulgence in illicit pleasures and unexpected dividends as well. When she was finished, she felt she had learned so much about bad fiction-writing that she discarded 200 pages of her own unfinished manuscript. New York Times

Court Orders Modified Napster Injunction: “By swapping music files
online, the 61 million
clients of Napster Inc. are
making unfair use of
copyrighted material, a
federal appeals court ruled
today, in a decision that
could allow a judge to shut
down the service.

The court did not order
Napster to shut down
immediately, but the
company warned that the
decision could ultimately
lead to its closure.” The judge, recognizing that this findings might lead to a last-minute user rush on the Napster site, advised that there be rapid action on a preliminary injunction, though. New York Times. Napster is still alive — but
just barely. “A three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled for the recording industry on virtually
every point of law at issue. Napster users, said the court, are
infringing on recording industry copyrights, Napster has a
responsiblity to halt that infringement and a preliminary
injunction shutting down Napster is not just “warranted but
required.”

However, the court also ruled that the injunction must be
modified before it is fully upheld by the appellate court.
Specifically, the court is requiring that Napster be notified in
advance that it is in violation of copyright in particular
cases, and if Napster refuses to bar transmission of the songs
across the Napster network, it will then be in violation —
and will be shut down.” Salon Here are reactions from industry pundits. Several mention that this will invigorate the file-sharing endeavor by bringing the issue back into public awareness and spurring developers correcting Napster’s shortcomings. Salon A page here puts you one click away from an opensource Napster server, various Napster clients and — most important in the soon-dawning post-Napster era — other sharing protocols that are alternatives to Napster. There are twenty-five of them listed here from Gnutella and the now-defunct Scour Exchange to some no one’s ever heard of.

Camille Paglia: ‘We’re Getting Clinton Now as He Really Is.’ ‘The media dropped
the ball on the Monica Lewinsky thing in so many ways.
Everyone acted as if it was just a momentary slip with
Monica. Give me a break! There were women going in
and out of that White House. Now I’m enjoying myself
so much with Denise Rich and her 42-inch bust. It’s like
“Temptation Island.” It’s going to be a whole running
series. “Bill Clinton’s Sexual Adventures.” How many
ways can Bill Clinton now embarrass his wife?’ Newsweek

Caste marks survive India’s killer quake: “There’s one
structure that can’t be shaken in India,
even by a killer earthquake — the caste
system.” CNN [via Rebecca’s Pocket]

Peaceful Apes Can’t Escape Congo’s War. The bonobo is one of the world’s rarest apes–a relatively
unknown, chimp-like species whose sole habitat is a patch of dense jungle in the Democratic Republic of Congo through which runs the front line of the Congolese civil war. The existence of this species came to the attention of zoologists only around 70 years ago. They are described as “relaxed, friendly,
female-dominated and far more interested in sex than in fighting
or brute competition.” Experts fear the bonobos — whose numbers were estimated at around 100,000 in 1980 but are believed to be as low as 10,000 now — are being poached
to near extinction for their meat; as a Belgian conservationist explains, “The armies
on all sides don’t get regular rations, so they eat the wildlife,
including bonobos. And now everybody in the forests have
access to automatic rifles, even the refugees.” ‘Bush meat’ is a delicacy too in Kinshasa. Now a makeshift orphanage struggles to save the species against dire odds.

“My friends think this is a crazy, dirty job. I tell them that bonobos
are just like us. They even are better than us. They are
peaceful. They don’t make wars.” Chicago Tribune

Guardian Unlimited moodmatcher: “(W)e’re so smart we can tell what mood you’re
in and what would make you feel better. Simply do our test and
we’ll find you some poetry to soothe your mood.”

Then there’s Robs Amazing Poem Generator, which makes a poem-like thing out of the content of any webpage whose URL you feed it. Here’s what it came up with from FmH. It’s not as great a syntax-parser as it needs to be, though…

Follow Me Here

mailing list,
messages

to ailments before

the brand new.

Scientist

9:document.write ;

Going to buy a

monochromatic

record and what are believed those who

will be allowed to construct

a state of salty

water holes in trenchant opposition to a little,

relief for the web and

copyrights are not treat the vicinity of Ariel:

history

offers a discrepancy

of finer granularity.

Another maven describes a carbon is my guestbook.

Or being a halftruth is

not only a

carbon sink, locking away carbon is

mylettersareonfire@hotmail.

Miromi’s sketchblog

Moral maze: “Greenpeace vows not to disrupt trials of the GM
rice that prevents blindness in poor countries…
The announcement, at the BioVision conference on
biotechnology in Lyon, France, signals a significant softening in
Greenpeace’s trenchant opposition to GM food.” New Scientist

BSE spreads: “Two Thais are reported to have the human
form of mad cow disease, the first outside
Europe if confirmed.” New Scientist

The Notional Missile Defence site solicited e-mails contributing
notions on how to construct a missile defence system, then wrote to apologize to contributors: “A
one-character error in a one-line computer script at an
Internet service provider sent all your messages to South
Africa–fortunately, and very strangely, to someone known to
NMD,” the NMD message says. “You’ll get an answer as soon
as the person there returns from their travels and sends your
message back. Or you can now visit http://www.nmd.org.uk.”

The message continues: “Of course, the hundred-million-line
computer programs on which the competing National Missile
Defence scheme would rely will contain no errors at all. Oh
no.”

Interesting email address of the month at Wordsmith.org, originators of the word-a-day list. This month’s Email Address of the Month, for example, is mylettersareonfire@hotmail.com. Click on the link for a complete list.

The Biology of Skin Color: ‘Some theories
advanced before the 1970s tended to be racist, and others were
less than convincing. White skin, for example, was reported to
be more resistant to cold weather, although groups like the Inuit
are both dark and particularly resistant to cold. After the 1970s,
when researchers were presumably more aware of the
controversy such studies could kick up, there was very little
work at all. “It’s one of these things everybody notices,”
(anthropologist Nina) Jablonski says, “but nobody wants to talk about.” ‘ Discover

An Astronomical Alphabet [from Abby]

Genome Map Could Change Mental Care. A new paper in Science by two preeminent psychiatrists, Eric Nestler and Peter McGuffin, waxes enthusiastic about the value sequencing the human genome will have for the treatment of mental illness, drug addiction and even deviant behavior… but don’t hold your breath, IMHO. This rush to jump onto the bandwagon of biogenetic determinism ignores the fact that psychiatry is still mired in the dark ages of arguing nature-versus-nurture in the etiology and treatment approach to most disorders. Furthermore, it’s not likely to be soon that we begin sequencing individuals’ genetic sequences as a routine clinical tool paid for by health insurance as opposed to research grants.

A unified theory of cognisance by curt cloninger, drawing upon semiotics (Eco), neuropsychology (Cytowic), Van Morrison, Olivia Tremor Control, and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. Spark

Human genome helpless in the face of chocolate EurekAlert!

Men Are Crazy for Women Who Are, Too New York Times

McVeigh Wants Execution Broadcast. The official answer — not on your life. Our Puritanism about not allowing public viewing of executions makes further hypocrisy of the claim that capital punishment is a socially acceptable sanction, doesn’t it?

But in McVeigh’s case, I am persistently nagged by the idea that he’s angling for martyrdom in the militia movement. They’ve already got their own national holiday in Patriot’s Day, the anniversary of both the denouement at Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing. Some suggsted that McVeigh’s timing in rejecting further appeals of his death sentence and asking that an execution date be set was an attempt to get put to death on that date as well.

“I wake up at night in a cold sweat thinking about this”, says Marsha Ivins: Cosmic Construction Worker. ‘The future of NASA’s $60 billion International Space Station
construction project now rests squarely on the shoulders of a diminutive American astronaut
facing “a sequential series of miracles.” ‘

Painkiller Makes It Big on Black Market. The DOJ is becoming concerned about the extent of diversion of Oxycontin (the time-release version of the narcotic analgesic oxycodone) into the street trade. The appeal of this drug is familiar to me from seeing the high proportion of drug-abusing patients admitted to my psychiatric hospital who have found a way to arrange to have this drug prescribed for them legitimately, far out of proportion to their pain-control requirements.

Smokers Denied Transplants at Australian Hospital: ‘Surgeons at The Alfred Hospital here are demanding that
smokers stop the habit before undergoing major heart and lung surgery, according to a
report by the Australian daily newspaper The Age and other media services. The reported
ban has raised a storm of controversy in Australia.

The hospital says asking lung and heart transplant recipients to give up smoking is done as a
way to define who is most likely to do well after a transplant.

“The scarcity of organ availability obliges the Hospital to ensure that the best outcome
from the ‘gift of life’ of an organ donation occurs,” according to a statement from the
hospital.’ Reuters

I must say that, at first blush, I find this appealing but it’s clearly the start of a slippery slope. Where should the line be drawn about controlling lifestyle contributions to ailments before you’ll be allowed to receive effective therapy?

Genome Map Could Change Mental Care. A new paper in Science by two preeminent psychiatrists, Eric Nestler and Peter McGuffin, waxes enthusiastic about the value sequencing the human genome will have for the treatment of mental illness, drug addiction and even deviant behavior… but don’t hold your breath, IMHO. This rush to jump onto the bandwagon of biogenetic determinism ignores the fact that psychiatry is still mired in the dark ages of arguing nature-versus-nurture in the etiology and treatment approach to most disorders. Furthermore, it’s not likely to be soon that we begin sequencing individuals’ genetic sequences as a routine clinical tool paid for by health insurance as opposed to research grants.

Stop the FTAA. The next stop on the anti-globalization protest circuit is Quebec City’s Summit of the Americas, April 20-22, where thirty-four countries (the Western Hemisphere excluding Cuba) will be negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an “expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)” formulated and negotiated behind closed doors with the business sector fist-in-glove with government representatives. “It will be a resistance based on one No and many Yeses. No to corporate greed, violence, exploitation and irresponsibility. Yes to real democracy, human rights, peace and equity.”

Man returns armored truck money: “A man suspected of walking off with more than 125 pounds of cash that
fell out an armored truck returned all $640,000, still wrapped in
plastic, to authorities Friday.” CNN

Giuliani Internalized: “The next mayor will inherit a city where the left is
dead, capitalism is embraced and residents have made
their peace with bourgeois values. But then you never
really believed those squeegee guys had rights, now
did you?” New York Times Magazine

Gays in the British Military: Ask, Tell and Then Move On. The UK moves toward the future while the US moves toward the rear. New York Times

Researchers Say New Drug Could Reduce Sepsis Deaths: “The drug, a genetically engineered version of a natural
substance from human cells called activated protein C, will
be marketed under the brand name Zovant if it is approved.
Experts predicted that Zovant would be very expensive, but
a spokesman for Lilly declined to discuss the price.

The drug is not an antibiotic, and does not treat the
underlying infections that lead to sepsis. Instead, it quells
inflammation and abnormalities in blood clotting, which
contribute to the high death rates of 30 percent to 50
percent among patients who contract sepsis.” New York Times

Cockburn and St.Clair: “…And now the bloodbath will begin…” The Crimes of Ariel: “Sharon’s history offers a monochromatic
record of moral corruption, with a documented record of war crimes
going back to the early 1950s.” Counterpunch

When Local ISPs Go National, All Customers Get Is Grief. My dialup access is through one of the nation’s oldest independent ISPs, the World at Software Tool and Die around the corner from my house in Brookline, MA. Certainly belongs on someone’s best-kept secrets list: never a busy signal, optimal speed, prompt competent technical assistance, constant quality improvement… I dread the day they’re bought out. Now if they’d only partner with someone to offer DSL with the same quality…

Sleeping Illness Drug in Production. “A U.S. company has agreed to supply a cure for
the deadly sleeping sickness disease for free to poor African
villages because the drug has another, moneymaking use –
reducing women’s facial hair.” AP

The devil has always been in the dance: “The idea of uncontrolled, wild dancing as something dangerous
stays with us: the club must be licensed for entertainment; the
rave strictly policed. The idea of people enjoying themselves,
whirling like banshees out of control is deeply unsettling to
authority. Uncontrolled passion must be restrained.

Yet in the not-so-distant past, hundreds of thousands of people
took part in frenzied outdoor orgies and wild displays of dancing
that lasted for weeks. People would dance themselves into a
state of elation, tearing off their clothes, laughing, weeping and
having sex with strangers.” The Guardian

Beckett Reels: The Beckett-on-Film Project is finished and the 19 films will be screened this week in repertory in Dublin. What would Beckett have thought of them, as the garrulous playwright who embraced the possibilities of 20th century media, wrote his plays not only as texts but entire theatrical events, and was not shy about citing deviations from his intent? Irish Times

Going to Extremes: Challenging films win in both the dramatic and documentary categories at Sundance.

Powered by a fierce, compelling
performance by Ryan Gosling, the
smart, provocative Believer was an
unexpected but popular choice for the
top prize. Written as well as directed
by (Henry) Bean and based on a true story
that’s been on his mind for 25 years,
this is an intensely verbal and discomforting character study about a young
Orthodox Jew who becomes a violent neo-Nazi only to find that it as difficult to live
without his Judaism as it is to live with it.

“The only reason I was willing to submit this film to Sundance was because I
thought we’d never get in,” Bean said in accepting the award Saturday night. “To
have won something is incredible.”

The intimate, moving Southern Comfort, which filmmaker (Kate) Davis shot on a
digital camera, often with herself as her only crew, involves us in the life of Robert
Eads, a 52-year-old female-to-male transsexual who, his impeccably masculine
presence notwithstanding, is both dying of ovarian cancer and falling in love with
a male-to-female transsexual named Lola Cola.
A truly mind-bending film, disorienting in the best possible way, Southern
Comfort not only gives us a caring, accepting look at a rarely examined world, it
also expands our sense of what human sexuality can encompass. “Being a man
or being a woman has nothing to do with your genitalia,” Eads says. “It’s what’s in
your mind or in your heart.” LA Times

The fine line between action and ignorance: Should we be inspired by or scornful of those who walk out?

I am always intrigued by people who walk out of things. Out of movies, out of plays,
out of concerts and out of operas. They often seem like jack-in-the-boxes with hair
triggers to me: one long monologue, one bar of atonal music, one four-letter word,
one nude body, one dream sequence and they’re on their feet. They operate on equal
parts impatience, outrage and confidence. And for some reason, there’s something
about their grim, affronted posture as they sidle through the darkness between knees
and seatbacks that makes me think of George W. Bush. The Globe and Mail

“Is Nothing Sacred?” Dept.: For Hire: Phony Talk Radio Calls: ‘A controversial new service is providing professional
callers for radio stations that feel ordinary phone-in
listeners are not lively enough.

Stations that use the professional callers rarely identify
them as ringers – which is apparently part of the appeal
of “Callers On Demand,” one of several programming
services offered by Manhattan-based United Stations, a
syndication company partly owned by TV veteran Dick
Clark.’ New York Post

The Best of 2001 “Here’s a challenge: You have an unlimited travel budget
and time to attend the top cultural events
in the Western world in 2001.
But what are they?” The Globe and Mail

Stories About Things: the artist, Ira Altschiller, wrote in response to last week’s post about the innateness of belief and delusion to point me to this work of his about “the way the objects around us embed the stories of our lives.

The stories, like the images, are improvisational.”

Thawing Mars: “Artificial greenhouse gases that are bad news on Earth
could provide the means to make Mars a more
comfortable place for humans to live.”

Feds Say Fidel Is Hacker Threat “Admiral Tom Wilson, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, says the 74-year-old
communist dictator may be preparing a cyberattack against the United States.” Wired

Dick Jokes For Women: Lionel Tiger tells you why he doesn’t like The Vagina Monologues, and why you shouldn’t either. New York Press

“We will never bring back the dodo”: cloning extinct species probably won’t work, informed scientist discerns. BBC [via Robot Wisdom]

Several fascinating tidbits in the latest issue of New Scientist:

Learning fast. Within one animal generation, prey animals learn to be wary again of predators such as bear and wolves after the predators have been reintroduced into a habitat. This should have policy implications in the debates about reintroduction. It is still not clear how the prey animnals learn about the predators. For example, this fascinating fact. while wolves are silent and stealthy while hunting moose, mother moose who have lost calves to wolf predation become hypervigilant to wolf howls they have never heard in conjunction with a hunt. New Scientist

Push-button pleasure: Malpositioned electrode being implanted in a pain patient’s spinal cord induced an orgasm, and gave the surgeon the inspiration to patent a push-button orgasmotron. He’s quick to add that the device will be programmed to limit its use… but how much? New Scientist

Name that tune: “Sing a half-forgotten song to your computer
and it will name it, thanks to new software.” New Scientist

Momentous magnetism. The ability to more accurately measure the magnetic moment of a subatomic particle called the muon reveals a discrepancy of several parts in a billion from the value predicted by current theoretical physics (the “Standard Model”) , and a theory falls. Explaining this requires more than the six quarks, six leptons and twelve bosons of the Standard Model and may require positing a slew of new particles, such as those predicted by an alternate theory called supersymmetry. New Scientist

Darth Rumsfeld: Is Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense the Bush cabinet appointment progressive activists should’ve been spending their time organizing against? The press has largely welcomed his reentry to the executive branch as an eminence grise, but both his defense policy and his politicking are chilling to some analysts. And if they were bad for us in the ’70’s, they’re even worse for us in the ’00’s.

…(I)f history is any
indicator, there’s likely to be some friction between Rumsfeld and the new secretary of state, Colin
Powell. During the Ford administration, Rumsfeld masterfully neutralized many political and
policy rivals, creating a national-security advisory chain that ran from himself to Cheney to Ford,
with the once-mighty Kissinger cut down to size.

For George W. Bush, an administration without Colin Powell was unthinkable. But Powell is
viewed with suspicion by many on the right, over everything from Iraq policy to missile defense.
He has an appeal and a constituency broader than either Bush’s or Cheney’s. “On both
counts–politics and policy–Powell scares them a little,” says a senior Republican operative close
to the Bush White House. “They wanted someone committed to missile defense and who can go
toe-to-toe with Powell,” who is not known to be an enthusiastic supporter of an expansive NMD
program. The American Prospect

Nimble fingers: “Modern man may have out-competed his
Neanderthal cousins by having a finer touch, according to studies of ancient hand
fossils.

The research shows that while Neanderthals’ hands were good
for banging flints with rocks, early humans possessed hands
more adept at using handled instruments like hammers.” New Scientist

A game called suicide. “Teacher and author Jane Katch talks about the value — and
necessity — of violent play.” Salon

Why are girls growing up so fast? “According to scientists who have been investigating the case,
the biological effect of oestrogens… lurking in the
environment may well be the reason why (girls) in
industrialised countries of the West are going into puberty at
an increasingly early age. But other researchers reject the
notion, and say that better nutrition and obesity are to blame.
Still more researchers suggest the declining age of sexual
maturity is the result of having a cold and distant father, or a
stepfather, or a depressed mother. A stressful home has also
been blamed, and so too has lack of adolescent exercise, as
well as child abuse, stress and media images.” Independent

Fight to show the ‘true’ Jacqueline du Pre . I just saw the riveting Hilary and Jackie the other night, based on Hilary du Pre’s memoir of her sister Jacqueline, passionate prodigy cellist who was stricken with multiple sclerosis at the height of her career. Friends of the musician felt she did not fare too well in the film’s portrayal as a spoiled prima donna, but I thought it was more an attempt to show her intensely ambivalent and tortured relationship to her talent and the unreality of the celebrity status it brought her. Emily Watson’s superb performance as Jacqueline, the absorbing complexity of the relationship of the two sisters, and not the least the sumptuousness of the music throughout the film make it quite rewarding. Now her admirers hope to correct what they call the distortions of the portrayal with a new documentary The Real Jacqueline du Pre. I look forward to its availability in the U.S., but far more important will be setting out to collect some du Pre on CD tomorrow… Sydney Morning Herald

Dan Hartung, in today’s Lake Effect posting, muses: “Okay, today’s White House gunman lived on Tyler Ave.
near the corner of Tippecanoe Dr., with Tecumseh Lane
nearby. Tippecanoe, of course, was the nickname of
William Henry “Tippecanoe” Harrison, who fought a battle
with Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh…” Dan and I wonder if this has anything to do with Tecumseh’s Curse, about which I wrote here some time ago. Recall that this relates to the death in office of the U.S. President elected every twentieth year since Harrison in 1840, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan.

‘After a day of listening to Washington pundits praise the 90-year-old
Ronald Reagan as a “hero” — a verdict delivered with no discernible
dissent — we have decided to repost three past articles about the 40th
U.S. president: his real deeds and his real legacy.’ Consortium News And in Rehearsals for a Lead Role, the Washington Post writer proclaims that “Ronald Reagan was a liberal, an actor, a labor chief — but some unscripted plot twists forged a new character.”

Still, there persists the caricature of Reagan as a B-movie actor who used the talents he honed on soundstages in Burbank to attain high office where he stumbled into the end of the Cold War. Even his conservative supporters have perpetuated this view. Reagan national security adviser Robert McFarlane once remarked, “He knows so little and accomplishes so much.”

But a close review of the historical record, and recent interviews with those who knew Reagan best during the 1940s and ’50s, show a man profoundly affected by his experiences as a movie star and six-term president of the Screen Actors Guild. He emerges as a complex individual who — through what he once described as intense “philosophical combat” — changed his political ideology. Contrary to assertions (which Reagan himself often encouraged) that he became a Republican because the Democratic Party abandoned him, Reagan actually went from being a staunch liberal who participated in Communist front groups to a stalwart anti-communist because of his firsthand experiences dealing with Communist Party members. Washington Post

“They ain’t alright just because they’re white.” “I’ve been involved in the so-called ‘right-wing’ for a number of years
now, but when I step back and look at our so-called movement, especially
more recently, I can’t help saying to myself, ‘Why am I surrounded by so
many misfits?’ “

How much of Blade Runner
has come true? “A new UN report suggests 1982’s rather bleak Blade Runner
may be in danger of proving all too accurate.” BBC

Clinton and Gore Clashed Over Blame for Election. Sources describe “uncommonly blunt language.” Gore blames Clinton’s sexual embarrassments for his loss, Clinton’s rejoinder is about Gore’s failing to run on the strength of the economy. Perpetuating or healing the crippling split down the middle of the Democratic Party? Washington Post

When Straight Means Weird and Psychosis is Normal. “Given the cultural overlapping of transgression and conformity, what
does it mean to be ethical anymore?” Britannica.com

Melting Arctic Permafrost May Accelerate Global Warming. ‘Global warming may be set to accelerate as rising temperatures in the
Arctic melt the permafrost causing it to release greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere, a United Nations scientist warned today. An estimated 14
per cent of the world’s carbon is stored in Arctic lands.

Svein Tveitdal, director of a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
center in Norway that monitors the region, reported that rising Arctic
temperatures are melting the solid structure of frozen soil known as
permafrost and releasing heat trapping greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.

“Permafrost has acted as a carbon sink, locking away carbon and other
greenhouse gases like methane, for thousands of years,” Tveitdal told a
meeting of the United Nation’s Governing Council in Nairobi.’ Environmental News Service

Terrorism Watch: Greek Mythology? “The clock is ticking toward potential bloody disaster at the Athens
Games in 2004, the worst since the massacre of Israeli athletes at the
Munich Games in 1972. The International Olympic Committee is aware of
the danger but wants to keep it out of the public eye, as it tried to do
with drugs and corruption.”

Poking Holes in the Theory of ‘Broken Windows’. James Q.Wilson’s influential theory, popularized in a 1982 Atlantic Monthly
article, suggests that a zero-tolerance policy toward “neighborhood disorder” — physical decay and nuisance crime — is an effective way to bring down the overall crime rate. Police Chief William Bratton made a name for himself with his own implementation of this in New York City, and it has been credited for the much-ballyhooed dropping crime statistics of the last decade. But the “broken windows” theory appears to be based on specious reasoning and a dearth of empirical evidence, say critics from sociology, criminology and political science. (Among other things, the basic research design errors of confusing correlation with causation and failing to control for confounding variables play a hand here. ) The NYPD’s “order maintenance” program may be doing as much harm as good. Critics see “broken windows” as ‘a harmful, conservative philosophy masquerading as pragmatic and progressive public policy.’ Chronicle of Higher Education

Is the Shrub’s White House vacillating wildly on policy in controversial areas, e.g. between this and <a href=”http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010207/ts/bush_aids_dc_2.html
“>this position on closing the National AIDS Office? Or does the right
hand just not know what the right
hand is doing? Put it together with the story about Dubya demonstrating his lack of understanding of the nuances of the executive order he had signed about restricting funding for foreign abortion advocacy, and you wonder if anybody’s home at the White House and who’s running the show.

New Wild Camel Found on Chinese Nuclear Test Site. “A new species of camel that has adapted to survive on salt water has
been discovered in a remote region of salty sand dunes on the edge of
the Tibetan mountains. The wild camels were found in the middle of the
inhospitable and dangerous Kum Tagh sand dunes in China’s Xinjiang
province, north of Tibet…. The area in which they live was used by China for nuclear weapons
testing and has been, since 1955, off limits to people, allowing the
unique wild camels to survive. Since 1996 when tests were ended, miners
and hunters have been sowing land mines around the camels’ salty water
holes to take them for meat.” Environment News Service

Chance would be a fine thing: ”Walk into a research department in Cambridge, MIT or Stanford
nowadays,’ says Mike Lynch, Britain’s leading software entrepreneur and
a devout Bayesian, ‘and you will meet people who will tell you that
Bayes is more important than Marx and Einstein put together.’

For a quarter of a millennium Bayes’s theorem, or Bayes’s rule as it is
sometimes called, enjoyed a limited and mostly discredited role in
statistical mathematics. Recently, however, with the advent of cheap and
available computers, its influence has rapidly spread beyond the dull
grind of statistics to become something akin to a philosophical
movement, with an almost theological appeal. Yet it’s not a system of
belief so much as a means of measuring belief.’ Telegraph
<a href=”http://www.google.com/search?num=100?client=googlet&q=Bayes%27s%20theorem%2C%20or%20Bayes%27s%20rule
“>Here is the result of a Google search on “Bayes’s Theorem or Bayes’s Rule”.

Cameroon Attempts to Avert Natural Gas Disaster. Did you follow this mysterious and disastrous catastrophe in 1986? Hundreds living in a 25 km radius of this lake, Lake Nyos, died mysteriously and suddenly. At first it was hypothesized that there’d been a release of volcanic gas, but it’s been determined that it was a high concentration of CO2 dissolved in the lake water which suddenly let loose when the lake’s stratification was disturbed by seasonal weather changes; people and animals were suffocated by the cloud of CO2. Now that the cause has been figured out, CO2 levels are being constantly monitored and are again rising ominously. An international team has just completed the first of a projected five “degassing columns” which siphon up the CO2-rich bottom layer of water and release its dissolved gas in a controlled fashion. I wonder if the local inhabitants appreciate the nature of the threat under which they live and the effort being engineered on their behalf. Environmental News Service

Little relief for desperate citizens being driven round the bend : The Australian view of the state of things in New York revolves around the impossibility of finding a clean public toilet. “Restaurateurs complain that people order up big, use the lavatory and then do a runner before the appetisers arrive…. Desperate people have gone so far as to buy and actually drink New York coffee, which has a taste and consistency akin to warm sump oil, simply in order to use a cafe’s restroom.” New York budgeted $5 million last year to put in 100 public toilets. Not to gloat, but in contrast I just heard a news report that my hometown Boston has set aside $2 million for just eight — count ’em, eight — new public restrooms downtown; that breaks down to five times the cost per head (pun intended). Apparently, these are so expensive because they’re going to be totally self-cleaning, somehow or other. Sydney Morning Herald

Emerging Disease News: Woman in Canada Does Not Have Ebola, But Unknown Virus. It’s only a matter of time, though, it seems to me, before the virus is imported into North America. And other viral hemorrhagic fevers,some of them unknown as this unfortunate woman’s appears to be, are equally gruesome. Reuters