Dept. of ‘Heely’ sightings: “I live in the Bay Area, northern
California. Saw my first heel-wheel about three weeks ago. This early
adopter was a boy about ten. Saw my second last Sunday. Another ten year
old boy. Both sighting were in malls. A new thing to ban.” Thanks, and keep those reports coming in. The pushpins are going up on the map.

Hot brains. Researchers in Hong Kong compared teenagers on an attentional taks, and found that the variable that correlated best with whether they did well o rmore poorly was whether they owned a mobile phone. Phone users did better, whether their phones were switched on or not during testing. Previous studies had suggested that cognitive functions are enhanced with exposure to microwave radiation at wavelengths similar to that emitted by cellular phones. But was it their phone use per se that enhanced the performance on this task, or merely some other factor — probably demographic or socioeconomic — that correlates with phone ownership? It would be interesting to see if the degree of performance enhancement in a large sample population correlated with the length of ownership or volume of use — some variable that might get at accumulated lifetime microwave flux — of a cellular phone. New Scientist

The first split second. A mindboggling rundown of ways to look back at the first 1/10^38 (that’s “one over ten to the thirty-eighth power”) second of the universe’s existence. New Scientist

How Secure Is Digital Hospital? A showcase all-digital hospital being built by Oracle and healthSouth in Alabama may have ‘major security flaws’ relative to its electronic medical records. Wired

The MIT Media Lab has created the concept of meme-mail, a way for readers of those frequently-forwarded pieces of “internet lore” we get in our inboxes so frequently to have accumulated anonymous data about who else has seen the message already. “We hope that by providing this information,
these messages will establish a stronger sense of their audience and community.” Here’s what the meme-mail FAQ, which is what the link above links to, answers the question, “Why are you supporting Internet chain letters? Aren’t these a waste of resources?”

We think frequently forwarded email has become an important grass roots way for individuals to circulate meaningful information to a wider audience.
Because messages are only forwarded widely when many people find them interesting, it actually employs a reasonably efficient, decentralized means of
resource allocation. MEMEmail enhances the decentralized nature of these messages by allowing people to get a sense of the messages’ audience. Previously,
this only happened when a centralized, mass medium like TV or a newspaper decided to report on the popularity of some piece of Internet lore.

Did anyone notice whether my post yesterday on E-Prime was itself written in E-Prime? An FmH reader, who writes for a living as a reporter himself, emailed me to say he’s written several articles in E-Prime, including one that can be found online, although his editor inserted an ‘is’ verb in that one and ruined the effect.

U.S. Won’t Follow Climate Treaty Provisions, Whitman Says. Yesterday, I mentioned the New Scientist editorial advising the rest of the world to get on with implementing the Kyoto accords without counting on the US. The editorial mentioned that it was probably too late for the US to get onboard with the accord because of the changeover in administration and the lagtime for Congressional approval of treaties. Now it’s clear that the US won’t even try. New York Times

At the White House, Parse-Fail Grading? Ari Fleischer is stacking up as one of the more disingenuous White House spokespeople in recent history, exerting aggressive spin and semantic hairsplitting to discredit accurate stories that paint the administration in a harsh light. Fleischer’s staff has also started calling the media to complain about photographs depicting the Illegitimate Son in a less than flattering way… which is going to keep him busy, since — recall that series of photos that came out during the campaign juxtaposing a series of his facial expressions with those of our primate cousins? — he continues to strike me as simian-looking every time his picture is taken. Washington Post

South Korea Cool to Europe’s Offer. Reportedly disappointed by a cool reception when he met with Dubya two weeks ago, South Korean president Kim may have signalled the EU that he would welcome their ministrations on behalf of the stalled reconciliation process with North Korea, but a South Korean spokesperson is now backing away from European offers to intercede. Dubya may have been irked by Kim’s standing firm about reservations about the NMD program; in any case, the Shrub appears to have expressed his stereotypical kneejerk skepticism about whether the Communist North could be trusted in the peace process. Attaboy, George, another sophisticated blow for world peace. I’ll bet the U.S. has placed pressure on Kim not to embarrass us publicly by going with the European, more conciliatory view. International Herald Tribune

This, and all foreign policy moves by the Shrub’s admiistration, have to be watched through the lens of the now-well-publicized divisions among his foreign policy team. New York Times Recall, at about the time we were all worried about the Ashworth nomination for Attorney General, I took note of analysts who suggested that Donald Rumsfeld’s accession to the Defense Dept. was really the one progressives should have tried to defeat. It appears that Rumsfeld is collecting a group of hardliners who scoff at Colin Powell’s more thoughtful and, literally, diplomatic — although by no means liberal — approach at the State Dept. Foreign policy theaters in which their doctrinal differences will be tested include engagement in the Balkans, the European rapid deployment force, arming the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein, reform of our sanctions program in Iraq, the destabilization of the arms race with Russia and to a lesser extent China by the national missile defense proposals, selling advanced weapons systems to Taiwan, and the above-mentioned Korean issues, where the Clinton administration proposed the North give up missile programs in return for our provision of several nuclear reactors. VP Cheney may well turn out to be a power broker in this internal conflict, and is assembling a powerful foreign policy team around himself as well. Analysts see him as tilting toward the Pentagon’s position. So far, where Condoleeza Rice situates herself in the hurly-burly is not clear. What’s a poor President to do? It ought to be entertaining to watch, at least … if it doesn’t get us all killed.

“Major League Baseball will begin charging fans to
listen to audio broadcasts of its games over the Internet , a stark
illustration of how content owners are trying to find business
models that work in the online medium.

The subscription plan, which will cost users $9.95 a season,
signals an end to the ability of fans to get radio feeds of
baseball games free on the Web… The decisions, from two of the three largest sports leagues in the
United States, signify that content providers think the Internet,
traditionally a medium for the free exchange of information, is
sufficiently mature for people to begin paying for valuable
services.” The Register

Indictment Charges Pair With Murder in Mauling. Recall this horrific case of a woman mauled to death by two attack dogs kept by the neighboring attorneys who, it turns out, were working for Aryan Brotherhood prison inmates breeding such dogs for a dog-fighting ring and/or to guard illicit methamphetamine-manufacturing operations. Not to mention the fact that the couple’s adoption of their inmate client was finalized just days after his dogs’ victim died. Sounds like a plot from Oz, but unfortunately all too real. New York Times

The psychoexgirlfriend.com site, which I found too pitiful and abit too cruel to blink to, has apparently captured the (too pitiful and abit too cruel?) imaginations of many people, according to The Register: ” The woman, who gets more and more hysterical as the messages
progress, also seems to have captured the imagination of
America’s youth. Students at Boston University have already
devised a drinking game that entails logging onto the site and
knocking back a shot every time they hear the unfortunate ex use the
F-word, spinthebottle.com reports.”

Surfers confused by ‘Dying Cam’ prank: ‘The prankster last week promised to show “a person dying live on
your computer”. But the inquisitive and sadistic elements of
cyberspace were this afternoon disappointed to find the following
statement on the site by Callahan in the place of the promised “Edge
Exhibit”:

“We are all dying. I am, you are (even as you read this)- all of us are.
A clock keeps track of what is lost ( you were viewing me, a person
dying of natural causes).

“I believe those who view life in such a way are less likely to waste
time. Life is a terminal illness. Time wears us all away…From the
moment of birth or before, depending on your own views, we begin
the process. Most never realize they are slowly progressing to the
edge, but we are. I believe in making the most of a day and enjoying
it to the best of your ability at the time.” The Register

“This is not a plea for homespun ‘family values’ and virtues. ‘Family values’ discourse may
actually contribute to our cultural apathy about marriage by obscuring the more radical, startling,
and unsettling characteristics of monogamous marriage.” Courtship today: the view from academia. Concerns about the emergence of ‘a new grammar of intimacy’ and the societal, and academic, lack of interest in the study of ‘pathways to marriage’.

The dynamics of initiating and developing close, sexually based relationships are a major
preoccupation of close-relationship theory. Articles and monographs cover a very wide range of
topics: “falling in love,” romantic love, attachment patterns, “love styles,” interracial and
interethnic dating, physical attractiveness (body shape, health status, hair length, height, voice
intonation), age preferences, jealousy, love triangles, dating infidelity, fatal attractions,
family-of-origin influences, socioeconomic status, self-disclosure processes, topic avoidance,
deceit, nonverbal signals, the use of humor, coping with peer and parental criticism, relationship
dissolution, and romance grieving processes.

This complex body of theories probing a baffling array of topics might appear to resist general
commentary and review, but certain common themes do emerge: Marriage is knocked off its
pedestal, and its purpose of child-rearing gets short shrift. And the transcendent ideal of love is
replaced by the “love styles” of individual selves seeking sexual satisfaction in episodic
relationships. Courtship, rather than leading to marriage, becomes just one damn relationship
after another. The Public Interest [via Guardian weblog]

Metaphysical Movies. He’s doubly cursed — a beef farmer in the UK, and a Ph. D. in phenomenological philosophy. But he’s made a self-financed short film, Krasny — with characterization and plot, no less (although they sound bizarre, involving an investigation into a strange cult) — that serves as a dense pedagogical tool to convey abstract philosophical concepts about perception, subjectivity and the relationship between mind and ‘external reality’. The essayist comments on the treatment of similar themes in The Matrix last year. The Philosophers’ Magazine