Life Is a Cabaret, And Death Is Conceptual Art :

In a show that pushes the boundaries of the controversial, a German doctor is displaying real cadavers. Skinned and dissected, the preserved bodies, which were donated by fully informed volunteers, are recomposed in abstract and representational forms for aesthetic effect…

But von Hagens’s “creations,” which are drawing huge crowds to a converted train station in East Berlin, are stirring an intense debate about the limits of expression and the dignity of the dead. And many find something deeply disturbing in this baroque intersection of science, art and entertainment, which invariably resonates with questions about a particular German responsibility to respect the dead. Washington Post

“I console myself with the thought that it
is far better to live in a world with too many books than too
few…” Humiliations: the books that book critics and literary journalists are embarrassed to admit they’ve never read.

The Internet’s public enema No. 1:

‘Rotten.com’s sole purpose is to “present the viewer with a truly unpleasant experience,” and its proprietor is doing a dandy job of that. If it involves bizarre
sex, gruesome death or the sordid side of celebrity, you will find it on this site. “End times are here!” crows Rotten.com, and after a gut-wrenching hour or
two perusing the hundreds of images … archived here, it’s hard not to
agree: We are one screwed-up species.

It’s horrible. And yet, the Net is fascinated. About 200,000 visitors come to Rotten.com every day. … But Rotten.com isn’t just a database of the disgusting; it’s also a venue for making a point about censorship, at least according to “Soylent,” the
pseudonymous proprietor of Rotten.com, whose highly graphic content has earned him enemies around the world. The site is currently being investigated by
Scotland Yard and the FBI for cannibalism. The German Family Ministry has threatened Soylent with legal action if he doesn’t find a way to shield minors
from his site. And then there’s the endless cease-and-desist letters that flood in from a long list of major corporations that object to the site.’ Salon

Browsing my referrer log, it turns out someone got to me by doing an AOLSearch on “clitoral regeneration”. FmH was the 12th of 38 results of that search, because of this article from my archives. Oops, now a “clitoral” search will probably point to the current (March ’01) page as well, and I may even rank higher on “clitoral regeneration” searches. Now, if we only knew what in the world they were really after… Another search that pointed to FmH was a Google query on “prisoner’s right to give interviews in India”; it pointed to one month’s archive in which I had several blinks with the word “prisoner” in them, and several (different) blinks referring to India.

The Disturbing Search Requests weblog, whose founders started out by monitoring their referrer log, is having a similar problem, reports the Village Voice: ‘…by spotlighting the freakiest of the freaky, Disturbing Search Requests has become so loaded with
hot-button search terms that it is itself pulling in plenty of traffic from confused search engines. The site
gets more than 1500 visitors a day, most of them more interested in “nude tennis” or “hairy armpits” than in
meta-Web humor.’

How Enlightened! China takes homosexuality off list of mental illnesses. “In a reversal of previous policy, psychiatrists have decided to stop
classifying homosexuality as a mental disease.

New guidelines to be issued next month by the Chinese Psychiatric
Association will drop all references to homosexuality as a pathological
condition…” Sydney Morning Herald

A Machine Called Z: “Under a ring of water in a sealed chamber in the
middle of the New Mexico desert lies the heart of a
machine that could change the world.” Guardian [thanks, Abby]

The Swoosh Stumbles: “Why is it so tough to find a pair of Air Force Ones?” The software system to zip the right shoes into the right stores, for which Nike plunked down millions, doesn’t work. One casualty has been Nike’s stock price, of little interest to me. The Industry Standard But shoe stampedes closed several malls around the country (here’s a report from the March 4th Sacramento Bee), in this age of consumerist depravity, when queued customers — some of whom had been camped out since 3:00 a.m. — were unable to get their $140 pair of newly-launched hot shoes in the right color. “I’ve never seen anything this crazy before. It’s not worth it. I’m happy I got them, but they shouldn’t be limited. Everyone should be able to have a
pair. My little nephew almost got run over, and some guys went diving over the counter and hurt the girl at the
cash register. That was uncalled for.”

Similar stampedes have occurred recently in Oakland and Cincinnati. And two months ago in New York, a
Brooklyn Foot Locker manager allegedly set fire to his store to cover up the fact that 446 pairs of new Nike Air
Jordan sneakers were missing from his inventory. The $125 shoes were not scheduled to be released until later
that month, but the manager had been peddling them from a shop three doors down the street, authorities said.

The Retro style Air Jordans that caused such a frenzy Saturday are selling for more than $200 on eBay; chat
rooms on the Internet are devoted to when and where the latest styles will arrive.

This in the face of a recent New Scientist report on how innately human it is to cooperate while waiting in line [not on the web, I think].

“Oh, Calm Down!” James Fallows: “Some economic downturns are worse than others. This is one of the good ones.” We’re not experiencing negative growth. A downturn won’t negate “an astonishing period of material progress.” The deep forces affecting the economy remain positive, not negative. And the layoffs have hit people best positioned to adapt to them. The Industry Standard

Ten Ways to Make Windows 98 Run Better. Bought that faster Windows machine but still unsatisfied with your processing performance? It’s likely that, unless you’re a dedicated tweaker who’s done all these things already, the culprit is the operating system, and that you’ll find at least one or two helpful hints in this story. Since it’s just a modified Win 98, the tips are useful for WinME as well.

Korn, Radice and Hawes’ Cannibal: The History of the People-Eaters reviewed:

I once met an academic who was convinced that
there never had been any genuine cannibalism,
anywhere, ever.

All such stories
were a racist,
imperialist
construction of the
“other”, she
explained. She’d
had to have been
put in a pot and
boiled till she was
done to convince
her otherwise.
Such disbelievers
are now in retreat,
the authors of this
television spin-off
say.

Indeed, they propose that “cannibalism as a
feature of human behaviour is something that
has taken place throughout history, in every
continent on our planet”. Eating people is
commendably multicultural, then.
Thisislondon

Star thinkers in ‘e-learning’ launch: Filmed lectures by twelve of the “world’s greatest thinkers” will be available to the public for a month before they become the foundation of a growing archive which universities will pay a fee to access, at Boxmind.com, which is apologetic about the need to charge money for the service. Licensees will also be able to record and archive their own faculties’ lectures in the same innovative format, which its founder describes as “the Internet library students have dreamed of”:

Because the lectures are not delivered by a live webcast
but by a broadcast of filmed material, users can stop the action
at any point and follow the extensive links on each page for
in-depth background information on specific points. The lectures
can also be rewound and examined line by line for weaknesses
in the argument.

The technology used for the site – www.boxmind.com – is as
inventive as the concept. Each lecture screen is split into four. In
the top left, a talking head delivers the lecture, while
synchronised slides run in the top right. In the bottom right there
is a synchronised transcript of the entire lecture – complete with
embedded footnotes – next to the relevant web links.

The initial twelve lecturers in the series, accessible here, are:

Richard Dawkins,
Fellow of New College, Oxford, and Charles Simonyi, professor
of the public understanding of science. Survival of
the Fittest – the Fittest What?

Niall Ferguson,
Professor of political and financial history, at Oxford. The Cash Nexus – Money and Power in the Modern World

Sir Martin Rees,
Astronomer Royal and Royal Society professor at Kings
College, Cambridge. Cosmic Evolution

Daniel Dennett,
Professor of philosophy, and director of the Center for Cognitive
Studies at Tufts University, Massachusetts.
Consciousness: More Like Fame Than Television

Peter Atkins,
SmithKline Beecham fellow and tutor in physical chemistry at
Lincoln College, Oxford. The Second Law

John Kay,
Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, and visiting professor of
economics at the London School of Economics.
The Foundations of Corporate Success

David Womersley,
Fellow and tutor in English literature and senior tutor of Jesus
College, Oxford. Tragedy and Individuality in
Othello

John Searle,
Mills professor of the philosophy of mind and language,
University of California at Berkeley.
Consciousness, Free Will and the Brain

Sir David Weatherall,
Regius professor of medicine at Oxford. The
Human Genome Project and the Future of Medical Practice

Ian Stewart,
Professor of mathematics at Warwick University.
Order and Chaos in Mathematics and Nature

Nicola Lacey,
Professor of criminal law at LSE. Criminal Law and
Modern Society

Steven Pinker,
Peter de Florez professor in the department of brain and
cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. The Ingredients of Language

I am interested in trying out this format, which sounds on the surface as if it is a great way to utilize web capabilities for disseminating information rather than trying to sell anything. I do wonder how much bandwidth a home user will need to view these without it being a frustrating experience. The Guardian

Some police see through killer’s lies. “Shown
videotapes of an interrogation of a murder suspect speaking a language
they didn’t understand, some British police officers consistently knew
when the man was lying and when he was telling the truth. Other officers
detected lies and truths about as well as if they had guessed, and some
detected lies less often than if they had guessed, report Aldert Vrij and
Samantha Mann, both psychologists at the University of Portsmouth in
England.

Their study, published in the March-April Applied Cognitive Psychology,
assesses, for the first time, people’s ability to size up a highly motivated
liar.” The study showed police officers a foreign videotape of a suspect denying a murder accusation during an interrogation; he later confessed to the crime. I’d be interested in interviews with the officers who could easily recognize a liar to see if they could articulate the nonverbal cues they use. Science News

New Files Tie U.S. to Deaths of Latin Leftists in 1970’s. “A
recently declassified State
Department document shows that
Latin American officers involved in
Operation Condor, the joint effort in
the 1970’s by right-wing
governments to crush left-wing
opposition, used an American communications installation to share
intelligence.” New York Times

Promise-Breaker  – George W. Bush retracts his foreign policy campaign pledges: “… isn’t it a tad
peculiar to shoot your mouth off about U.S. military readiness
first, and then assign fact-finders to verify?” Slate

Although I’m glad the upshot appears to be that there will not be a vast increase in military expenditure, I also appreciate someone’s pointing out that he campaigned in ignorance and/or dishonesty, taking nonviable positions to get elected by pandering to rightwing sentiment. And it’s worth noting that revising his position is less a matter of having “come to his senses” than a realpolitik recognition that an illegitimate and crippled administration presiding over a legislative branch and an electorate neatly split down the middle is (thankfully) not likely to accomplish anything sweeping. How he spins things in an ongoing attempt to save his hide in the face of this inherent ineptitude is likely to remain entertaining viewing for at least four years.

Drug’s Effect on Brain Is Extensive, Study Finds

Heavy users of
methamphetamine …
are doing more damage to their
brains than scientists had thought, according to the first study that
looked inside addicts’ brains nearly a year after they stopped using
the drug.

At least a quarter of a class of molecules that help people feel
pleasure and reward were knocked out by methamphetamine, the
study found. Some of the addicts’ brains resembled those of people
with early and mild Parkinson’s disease. But the biggest surprise is
that another brain region responsible for spatial perception and
sensation, which has never before been linked to methamphetamine
abuse, was hyperactive and showed signs of scarring. New York Times

Despite Blocks, Napster Users Can Still Get Protected Files. ‘…the system for restricting access to files
could only block files by a specific name; a misspelling, intentional
or unintentional, could stump the blocking software. Thus a user
looking for Metallica’s “Fade to Black” would not be able to get the
song, while one typing in “Fade 2 Black” would turn up numerous
entries…’ New York Times

“The most dangerous psychiatrist in America”? A Critic Takes On Psychiatric Dogma, Loudly. Dr. Sally Satel, in magazine articles, op-ed pieces in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and her Dec. 2000 book PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine, about which I previously blinked,

describes well-known public health researchers as “indoctrinologists,” accusing them of
promulgating a “social justice agenda” by focusing on racism and
poverty rather than health education and disease- fighting
strategies. She criticizes feminists for construing
wife-battering as a symptom of a patriarchal society. She argues that psychiatry is being co-opted by a culture of
“victimology,” which undermines personal responsibility and
ultimately damages patients. Dr. Satel shares office suites with such conservative luminaries as
Newt Gingrich, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Robert H. Bork in her tenure as a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Shrub sought her counsel on drug policy during his campaign and has reportedly invited her into his Administration. While, as a clinical psychiatrist, I find her views on increased personal responsibility among our patients and avoiding the medicalization of social ills superficially beguiling until you examine the public policy implications of voicing them loudly instead of patiently within our interactions with those we treat. New York Times

Yes, Size Matters: Gene-tweaking British evolutionary biologist believes that the genes that control body size also control longevity, and smaller is better. The Times of London

Press release: Juno Announces Virtual Supercomputer Project. “Distributed
computing facility to harness unused resources of Juno subscriber
base, with theoretical computing power of world’s fastest supercomputer.”

Australia Outlaws E-Mail Forwarding: ‘Outrageously strict Internet copyright laws which have just gone into
effect throughout Australia make it illegal to forward an e-mail memo
without the author’s permission, and could result in fines of $60,000
or five years in the slam, according to a story by the Aussie Sunday
Telegraph.

“It’s quite possible that the forwarding of an e-mail could be a
technical infringement of copyright,” an unnamed legal advisor to Oz
Attorney General Daryl Williams told the paper.

“E-mailing is a ‘communication’ under the Digital Agenda Act, and
so is putting something up on a Web site,” the source added.

This could rank as the world’s most copyright-friendly and
common-sense-hostile piece of legislation yet devised.’ The Register

After Three Strikes, Is La Niña Out? “La Niña-like conditions that have persisted in the
Pacific Ocean for three years might finally subside
this Fall. The change could pave the way for a weak
El Niño — and a surge of hydroelectricity for
power-starved California.” NASA