Sydney Morgue Investigated Over Corpse Experiments: ”virtually a body parts supermarket for medical researchers.” Reuters

Claire Field wins Harry Potter Web site case: “Warner Brothers has backed down on its legal threats against
15-year-old Claire Field – owner of the Web site
www.harrypotterguide.co.uk.

In a fax sent to Claire’s lawyer, Matthew Rippon of Prettys Solicitors,
Warner Brothers said that in view of the facts that Claire had
registered the URL in good faith and was not using it for commercial
means, there was no need for it to continue in its action.

Previously, Warner Brothers claimed that Claire’s site infringed its
trademark as it had the rights to the forthcoming Harry Potter film.” The Register

Schizophrenia ‘helped the ascent of man’. ‘Tiny mutations in our ancestors’ brain cells triggered mankind’s
takeover of the world 100,000 years ago. But these changes
also cursed our species to suffer from schizophrenia and
depression.

This is the controversial claim by biochemist David Horrobin in a
new book, The Madness of Adam & Eve: How schizophrenia
shaped humanity, to be published by Bantam Press next
month.

Horrobin – who is medical adviser to the Schizophrenia
Association of Great Britain – argues that the changes which
propelled humanity to its current global ascendancy were the
same as those which have left us vulnerable to mental disease.’ Horrobin lists families sharing great creativity and madness — Jung, Einstein, Joyce, etc. — and geniuses considered to be mentally imbalanced. I’d love to see his statistical reasoning, without which it feels like sampling bias to me. Most dicey, however, seems his assertion that the critical mutation involved the fat content of human neural tissue. He argues that the transition to an agriculturally-based diet altered the fat content of our food and left us vulnerable, as our hunter-gatherer ancestors hadn’t been. Although I haven’t read the book, and am arguing only with the blurb, there appear to be several problems with his thesis. First, he appears to lump together all major mental illnesses, not explaining their very real differences. Second, this doesn’t explain why some people get the illnesses and others do not; why no one has ever found the association between a high-fat diet and relative immunity to schizophrenia (or an inverse relationship between vulnerability to heart disease and mental illness…) his theory would seem to predict; or differences across populations with very differing diets. But, then again, until recently he was the managing director of a company promoting essential fatty acid natural dietary supplements. The Guardian

The rapper has a Ph.D. “Let’s take a look at the resume of Henry Biggs, aspiring rap
music artist:

Assistant dean of arts and sciences at Washington
University. Attended high school at Country Day. A doctorate
in romance linguistics with an emphasis on French and
Italian. Graduated cum laude from Harvard after studying
ancient Greek and Latin. Chaired the foreign languages
department at tiny Houghton College. Has been in the Big
Brother program for 17 years. Completed the Boston and
New York marathons and an Ironman triathlon. Swam the
English Channel.” StL Today

Politically Correct and the Arts “Those of us who believe there is a value difference between
playing a Brahms sonata and banging a dustbin lid should be acutely aware that such views are no
longer educationally acceptable.”

There’s lots to moan about nowadays so where have all the
protest singers gone? “The Falklands gave us Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding and Billy
Bragg’s Island of No Return. But the Kosovo conflict has
produced nary a B-side.” The Times of London

Pay for play “Why does radio
suck? Because most
stations play only
the songs the record
companies pay them
to. And things are
going to get worse.” Salon

Online Ads to Get Bigger: “Renewing their bid for the eyes and minds of consumers, a
panel representing the beleaguered online advertising
industry announced new guidelines Monday for bigger,
bolder ads on the World Wide Web. The new ad formats, supplementing the widespread and oft-criticized
banner ads appearing atop many Web sites, call for advertisements in
seven new shapes and sizes.” E&P Online

“Mothers still bear responsibility for most
of the world’s childcare, but when it
comes to bedtime stories they are simply not as well equipped as fathers.” Guardian-Observer

We’re all Irish now “What
is happening on 17 March: a multiethnic karaoke night? …
Don’t be an eejit. This isn’t your traditional St Patrick’s Day, a
day for Irish people to get all misty-eyed about all things Irish.
This is St Who’s Day, a day for everybody to ‘go Irish’ and give
it some praise, thanks and welly down the local pub.

Haven’t you heard? We’re all Irish now.” spiked-life

Weeds in disturbed areas may be source of more medically important compounds than plants in tropical rainforests. ‘The idea that tropical rainforests may hold the key to new medicines that can solve everything from AIDS to cancer has been around for some
time. Indeed, one study found that of the 95 plant species now used for prescription drugs, 39 originate in and around tropical forests.

Stepp, however, began to ask a simple question during his doctoral field work in the Mexican state of Chiapas and research with North American
tribes: Why would indigenous people walk miles to find medicinal plants if the plants were available on a roadside a few houses down? Working
with the Maya in Chiapas, Stepp found that, in fact, nearly all the medically important plants being used grow as weeds in disturbed areas not
far from their houses or villages.

“What we found is that people use what they have nearby, except on rare occasions,” said Stepp.’ [Although it predated my interest in ethnopharmacology, I did fieldworkwith the Highland Maya in Chiapas in the early ’70’s myself.]

Despite Sub Probe, Military Quietly Revives VIP Tours: “Five weeks after a U.S. submarine struck and sank a
Japanese trawler off Hawaii, the presence of 16 civilian VIPs on the craft remains a
point of controversy and a focus of an official Navy investigation.
But on Monday, a group of freshmen lawmakers from the U.S. House will
climb aboard a sub in Florida’s Port Everglades for eight hours of instruction and
excitement–just the sort of thing that had been planned for visitors on the sub
Greeneville before its deadly Feb. 9 collision.
The Distinguished Visitors Program has quietly come back because–bad
publicity or no–it’s simply too important to the military to give up.” LA Times

A Counterpunch essay on Freud, Zionism and Vienna by Palestinian-American academic Edward Said is, to start with, interesting because we get to hear his explanation of the famous news photo of him as a “rock-throwing terrorist.” I blinked to this photograph when it appeared in July, 2000. (The direct link to the photo is expired now.) Said was invited by the director of the Freud Institute and Museum in Vienna to deliver the renowned annual Freud lecture there in May 2001. He has a longstanding interest in Freud, who was an early anti-Zionist, Said explains, although advocated a Jewish state as European anti-Semitism grew with Hitler’s rise. Said planned to discuss non-European influences on and applicability of Freud’s basically Eurocentric views. But Said’s invitation was rescinded “because of the situation in the Middle East”. Requests by Said for further explanation went unanswered but the Institute director told the New York Times, as Said construes it, that the rock-throwing incident was the reason.

From J I M W I C h, tragic news that loggers in Michoacan, Mexico may have deliberately massacred up to 22 million monarch butterflies in their overwintering grounds, in order to regain access to the protected land. Links to news of the event, and background on the butterflies and their momentous annual migration, surely one of the miracles of nature. For those of you who are impatient for just the facts, here‘s CNN’s news article.

Who’s Feeling No Pain? “The latest trendy drugs are old-fashioned painkillers. They’re chic,
mellowing and way addictive.” Time I’m not a big fan of what passes for in-depth analysis at Time, which is sounding more and more like People, but they’re talking about a legitimate issue here. On the front lines I see that the degree of abuse of hydrocodone (Vicodin) and oxycodone (Percocet, Percodan, Oxycontin and others) has skyrocketed. While I believe firmly in adequate pain medicine prescribing, the range of chronic pain complaints for which physicians are doling out these “synthetic morphines” is astounding.

Controversy over ‘non-heart beating’ organ donors: “The possibility of a new source of organs for transplant is appealing
because it might alleviate a small part of the shortage of donor organs…. But the emergence of a form of organ donation where the donor’s
heartbeat and breathing have stopped but he is not brain dead unsettles
some ethicists and philosophers, and it has made the procedure
vulnerable to bad publicity.

Sometimes, families permit the patient to be whisked, still alive and still on
the ventilator, to the operating room for organ recovery. Only in the OR is
the ventilator removed, the heart and lungs stop, and the patient can be
declared dead. That borders on ‘ritualized surgical savagery,’ contends George Annas,
professor of health law at the Boston University School of Public Health.” Boston Globe

From J I M W I C h, tragic news that loggers in Michoacan, Mexico may have deliberately massacred up to 22 million monarch butterflies in their overwintering grounds, in order to regain access to the protected land. Links to news of the event, and background on the butterflies and their momentous annual migration, surely one of the miracles of nature. For those of you who are impatient for just the facts, here‘s CNN’s news article.

Detecting Chester Himes: “Absorbing biography of a misfit writer who reinvented the mystery genre.” Idiosyncratic, complex and conflicted, sometimes abstruse, outspoken expatriate crime writer who was a bestseller in France and some of whose titles you’ll recognize as minor films. SF Chronicle

Curve Ball: “The steep downward spiral of the stock markets, while bad news for Americans’ bank accounts, may actually be a good thing for their souls. …(T)here’s simply been too much money around lately for people to be happy.” The New Republic

“With an ally now in the White House, House Republicans yesterday opened a coordinated campaign to begin imposing new restrictions on abortion, starting with a bill that would impose penalties on people who harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.” Washington Post The strategy seems to be a war of attrition on opponents, starting with a move guaranteed to evoke maximum sympathy in a broad segment of the populace. (After all, who could oppose a measure responding to attacks on pregnant women!) If the opposition doesn’t draw a line in the sand, it appears certain a full constitutional challenge to a woman’s right to choose is in the offing. Let’s hope the Democratic leadership isn’t led to the slaughter singing the same old reconciliation and compromise song.

Palestinian intifada going mainstream. Probably because of Israel’s election of Sharon as well as the draconian isolation of Ramallah, a broader cross-section of Palestinian society is joining the mass protests. But even Palestinian observers are uncertain whether the intifada will move in a nonviolent direction or if belligerency will escalate. Christian Science Monitor

Lydon to reappear with a Web cast “Next Tuesday, nearly three weeks after WBUR-FM severed
ties with ”Connection” host Christopher Lydon and senior producer
Mary McGrath after a bitter contract deadlock, Lydon will resurrect the
popular show with a one-time, one-hour Web cast.” Update on the acrimonious Boston dispute that probably means the end of the most intelligent radio talk show ever, which I’ve blinked before. Boston Globe

Bush lets deadline pass on missile defense. “Pentagon officials said Friday the Bush
administration has let a March 16 deadline pass, without notifying Congress of
any intent to begin building a radar on Alaska’s Shemya island, making it
unlikely that construction of a national missile defense system can begin this
year.” CNN Wisdom or merely indecision?

Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot: “Last Saturday a comment was posted here by an anonymous reader that contained text that was
copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. They have since followed the DMCA and demanded
that we remove the comment. While Slashdot is an open forum and we encourage free discussion
and sharing of ideas, our lawyers have advised us that, considering all the details of this case, the comment
should come down….

This is the first time since we instituted our moderation system that a comment has had to be removed because of
its content, and believe me nobody is more broken hearted about it than me. It’s a bad precedent, and a blow
for the freedom of speech that we all share in this forum. But this simply doesn’t look like a case we can win…. We need to choose our battles and this isn’t one we want to have. …

Now there is the matter of this specific comment. It contained a text called “OT III”, part of what is known as the
Fishman Affidavit. This text is Copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. In compliance with the DMCA, we are
removing it from Slashdot. In its place we are putting non-copyrighted text: Links to websites about the church of
Scientology, as well as links to how you can contact your congressman about the DMCA.” Slashdot

The End of Science and Math? The Omega Man: Gregory Chaitin, a mathematical researcher at IBM, has discovered a number, Omega, that is uncomputable and demonstrates that it crops up all over mathematics and blows holes in the consistency of mathematical theory.

Chaitin has shown that there are an infinite number of
mathematical facts but, for the most part, they are unrelated
to each other and impossible to tie together with unifying
theorems. If mathematicians find any connections between
these facts, they do so by luck. “Most of mathematics is true
for no particular reason,” Chaitin says. “Maths is true by
accident.”

This is also bad news, for example, for physics. It implies, he shows, that ‘there can
never be a reliable “theory of everything”, neatly summarising
all the basic features of reality in one set of equations.’ In other words, he claims nothing less than that there are fundamental limits on what we can know. New Scientist
A Google search for <a href=”http://www.google.com/search?num=100?client=googlet&q=Gregory%20Chaitin
“>”Gregory Chaitin” provides further references, the text of some of his technical papers, and a pointer to his home page at IBM.

Now available, “Follow Me Here” teeshirts, mugs and mousepads, with a discreet little logo. Coming soon: baseball caps.

Researchers identify an enzyme that regulates the action of chronic cocaine. This work elucidates the biochemical basis of addiction and points to possible biochemical interventions. It may also point to a way of quantifying individual differences in genetic susceptibility to cocaine abuse. The press release, quite curiously, does not mention that principal researcher Greengard was a co-winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine. EurekAlert! And, in another story related to genetic susceptibility to substance addiction, researchers reported that the legendary Chinese weakness for opiates appears to exist. “Mutant genes associated with ‘pleasure and reward pathways’ in the brain make an unusually high proportion of Chinese susceptible to heroin or opium addiction, a two-year study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found. Researchers suspect that the Chinese love of gambling may also have a genetic component and are keen to begin blood tests on local gambling addicts.” The Telegraph UK

Sleeping dogs lend a paw to narcoleptics. While various etiologies for narcolepsy have been explored, some evidence points to the hypocretin neurotransmitter system. Deficiencies in hypocretin secretion or the receptors which detect it have correlated with narcoleptic symptoms. Narcoleptic poodles, Labradors, dachshunds and Dobermans have been shown to have a mutation in the gene coding for the hypocretin-receptor. Canine narcolepsy is considered a close analogue to the human malady. EurekAlert!

Deepest ever picture of the universe reveals new type of quasar “Astronomers have peered deeper into the universe than ever
before – and discovered a new type of quasar 12 billion light years away. The
joint venture between the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory and the
Very Large Telescope in Chile also found that giant black holes were far
more active in the early universe than they are today.” Physics Today

Seeing with your tongue. Because the density of touch receptors on the tongue is so great, mapping visual stimuli onto it with a “tongue display unit” has sufficient resolution that it may allow the visually impaired to navigate. New Scientist [via EurekAlert!]

Brazil ‘days away’ from eco-disaster.

Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras, says a giant oil rig damaged in explosions on Thursday is in danger of sinking and provoking a major environmental disaster, possibly within three days. The floating platform, the largest in the world, has 1.5 million litres of petrol and oil on board, much of which could spill into the sea if the structure collapses.

…The incident is the latest in a series of other accidents. The oil workers’ union says that over the last three years 32 people hired or subcontracted by Petrobras have died in a total of 99 accidents.

…oil industry analysts say that Petrobras and other Latin American state-run oil companies tend to be short of funds, with governments often extracting large revenues to pay for social and other programmes. BBC

First, direct observational evidence of a change in the Earth’s greenhouse effect between 1970 and 1997. “Previous studies in this area have depended on theoretical simulations because of the lack of data. However the Imperial team reached their
conclusions after analysing data collected by two different earth-orbiting spacecraft, in 1970 and 1997.

Comparison between the two data sets has unequivocally established that significant changes in greenhouse gas emissions from the Earth have
caused the change to the planet’s greenhouse effect over this time period.” EurekAlert!

Spelling of Languages Can Affect Dyslexia, Study Finds: “… new research shows that dyslexia–the most common learning disability in
the United States–arises from a problem in the brain that cuts across language
barriers, cultural borders and writing systems…
But the very character of certain written languages, including English and
French, makes the condition worse because their spelling is so dramatically at odds
with how words sound, the researchers discovered.” EurekAlert!

Entire packing depot staff found stoned after cannabis cake prank: “Workers in New Zealand were found crying by their
machines and wandering around stoned after unwittingly
eating birthday cake containing cannabis.” Ananova

Amygdala responses to facial expressions [Thomas KM et al, Biological Psychiatry, 15 February 2001, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 309-316(8)] “The amygdala plays a central role in the human response to affective or emotionally charged stimuli, particularly
fear-producing stimuli. We examined the specificity of the amygdala response to facial expressions in adults and
children (with fMRI)….Adults showed increased left amygdala activity for fearful
faces relative to neutral faces. This pattern was not observed in the children who showed greater amygdala activity with
neutral faces than with fearful faces. For the children,… boys but not
girls showed less activity with repeated exposure to the fearful faces.” [requires free registration]

A Night to Remember A roundup of research from animal and human studies supporting the theory that there’s a connection between sleep and memory consolidation, and the intriguing idea that there may be subjective experience — “dreaming’ — throughout the animal kingdom. The Scientist [requires free registration]

The Organization Kid: “A few months ago I went to
Princeton University to see what
the young people who are going
to be running our country in a
few decades are like. Faculty members
gave me the names of a few dozen
articulate students, and I sent them
e-mails, inviting them out to lunch or
dinner in small groups. I would go to
sleep in my hotel room at around
midnight each night, and when I
awoke, my mailbox would be full of
replies—sent at 1:15 a.m., 2:59 a.m.,
3:23 a.m.” Very little dating, no time for intellectual discussion outside classes and study, no involvement in ‘larger issues’, little insight into issues of morality or character, and not at all unhappy with the situation! The Atlantic

Annals of the Invasion of Privacy (cont’d.): Smile, You’re On Scan Camera “When football fans learned that their faces were scanned and compared to mugshots of common criminals at
this year’s Super Bowl, many were outraged. But they shouldn’t have been surprised.” Wired

Score one for the
evolutionists: Snake study boosts theory of natural selection.

The 140-year-old theory that animals mimic the appearance of poisonous cousins to improve their chances of
survival is widely accepted in
evolutionary circles but has never been conclusively proved. Now a simple but elegant study with decoy snakes provides empirical evidence. Nando Times

Gadget Wars: “A new breed of consumer-electronics device is emerging
from the computer industry, and with it a new sort of
consumer-electronics company…This fabled “convergence” of the analogue consumer-electronics
world with the digital world of computing has been a long time
coming. But unlike the simple substitution of, say, a digital
camcorder for an analogue one, the new products have
fundamentally different DNA from their predecessors. The new
wave of digital devices not only use PC technology and are
marketed as PC peripherals, but are often made by companies that
have their roots in the PC industry itself.” The Economist

The Censorware Project: Exposing the secrets of censorware since 1997. “The Censorware Project was formed by a group of writers and internet activists in late 1997. Our goal is to
bring to light information about censorware products which is, by its nature, hidden.

… Censorware typically works by blocking you from receiving information — or by
preventing you from seeing it once it’s received, which has the same effect. But
it’s also censorware that blocks data flow the other way, typically by X’ing out
parts of your email, or preventing you from posting to a discussion website…

We at the Censorware Project believe that this type of software is the greatest
single threat to free speech as we know it on the internet over the next decade.
We are committed to exposing the flaws of this misunderstood software and
working to encourage alternatives to censorship. ” [via Red Rock Eaters]

junkfaxes.org – Helping to Stop Illicit Junk Faxes “The transmission of unsolicited faxed advertisements has been illegal under U.S. Federal
law since 1991. In addition, many state laws also prohibit the practice.

The reason? It’s theft. Honest advertisers pay to get their message in front of prospective
customers. Junk faxers steal the resources of the recipients… fax paper, ink, personnel
costs, and the time that their equipment is tied up receiving ads instead of being available
for legitimate purposes.

… This web site has been established to disseminate information on various junk fax senders
as an aid to the recipients who wish to enforce the law by pursuing the remedies under
applicable state and federal laws, as well as the growing number of states’ attorney
generals and other government agencies who are stepping up enforcement efforts.”

The time is certainly right to reassert the sense behind the separation of church and state. Selection from the first chapter of Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore: The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness

Americans seem to fight about many silly things: whether a copy of the Ten Commandments can be posted in a city courthouse; whether a holiday display that
puts an image of the baby Jesus next to one of Frosty the Snowman violates the Constitution; whether fidgeting grade-schoolers may stand for a minute in
silent “spiritual” meditation before classes begin. Common sense might suggest that these are harmless practices whose actual damage is to trivialize religion.

Otherwise they threaten no one. Not children, who ignore them as the incomprehensible designs of absurd grown-ups. Not atheists, who may find them
hypocritical and vulgar but hardly intimidating. Not Buddhists and Muslims, who in these small areas of daily practice can demand equal access to the public
landscape. So why do they raise ideological storms?

The answer lies in what history has done to us. Some Americans have inherited extravagant hopes about what religion, specifically Christianity, may
accomplish in solving social problems through moral instruction. Others look to a different legacy, one that suggests how easily partisan religion in the hands of
a purported majority can become a dangerous form of intellectual and political tyranny. Both groups have become masters of hyperbolic language.
However, their quarrels are not about nothing. If Americans have learned to make constitutional mountains out of religious molehills, it is because crucial
principles may become endangered. The creche or the menorah on public property becomes the nose of the camel sneaking into the tent where Americans
have carefully enshrined the constitutional separation of church and state.

Should we be worried? The answer given in this book is yes, at least with respect to one area of ongoing controversy. The authors are concerned about current
pronouncements made by politically charged religious activists, what is called in journalistic parlance the religious right. Their crusade is an old one. Now a
prime target is abortion clinics. Before it was mail delivery on Sundays, or Catholic immigrants, or Darwinian biology in school curriculums. Whenever religion of
any kind casts itself as the one true faith and starts trying to arrange public policy accordingly, people who believe that they have a stake in free institutions,
whatever else might divide them politically, had better look out.

What follows, then, is a polemic. Since before the founding of the United States, European colonists in North America were arguing about the role of religion in
public and political life. Broadly speaking, two distinct traditions exist. We intend to lay out the case for one of them–what we call the party of the godless
Constitution and of godless politics. In brief, this position recognizes that the nation’s founders, both in writing the Constitution and in defending it in the
ratification debates, sought to separate the operations of government from any claim that human beings can know and follow divine direction in reaching
policy decisions. They did this despite their enormous respect for religion, their faith in divinely endowed human rights, and their belief that democracy
benefited from a moral citizenry who believed in God. The party we defend is based on a crucial intellectual connection, derived historically from both
religious and secular thinkers, between a godless Constitution and a God-fearing people.

We will call the other side in this debate that runs through American history the party of religious correctness. It maintains that the United States was established
as a Christian nation by Christian people, with the Christian religion assigned a central place in guiding the nation’s destiny. For those who adhered to this
party in the past, it followed that politicians and laws had to pass the test of furthering someone’s definition of a Christian public order. Recently some who
belong to this party have suggested that the stress upon “Christian” be downplayed in their political pronouncements. By referring more ecumenically to the
United States as a religious nation, they invite other religious traditions to join a family-values crusade launched originally by a particular form of Christian
faith. However, whether the present-day religious right has really moved beyond earlier pronouncements suggesting the forms of American government can
be entrusted only with a Christian people is, with respect to the issues raised in this book, beside the point. A shift in rhetorical strategy to widen political
appeal does not affect the substantive issues at stake.

The label “religious correctness” is pejorative and is obviously intended to turn the tables on those who imagine that the only danger to our free political
institutions lies in something they, pejoratively, call political correctness.

The Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University has online originals and English translations of Greek and Latin classics, English Renaissance text and other source material odds and ends. [via Red Rock Eaters]

“Is it any wonder they are bored, frustrated, angry, troubled and poorly educated
and that, occasionally, some of them engage in desperate acts of destruction? “ Thomas Szasz is still at it! With Friends Like These, Pity America’s Kids: “In words and deeds, young people today tell us that they do not like being
patronized, made to feel useless and baby-sat in day-care prisons called “schools.”
School administrators, teachers, child psychiatrists, child psychologists, social
workers, grief counselors, pharmaceutical companies and the many other
businesses that profit from the education racket are not the friends of children as
they proclaim. The economic and existential self-interests of these do-gooders are
inimical to real education and rational discipline.” LA Times

BYTE Feature – Hello FMD-ROM — Bye-Bye DVD? “If you want DVD-ROM because it’s better than
CD-ROM, wait until multi-layered FMD gets here… Constellation 3D’s
new FMD-ROM drives have the potential for 15x a
DVD’s capacity in the first generation — with
recordable disks, terabyte capacity, and also a
microdrive version to follow. ” That’s 1,000 gigabytes per disk. Byte

The Perfect Storm: Meteorologists at NOAA and elsewhere believe we are now entering a cycle of intensified mega-storms threatening our coasts. There may be an effect from global warming from the greenhouse effect, but there also seems to be an inherent 25-40 year storm cycle in the North Atlantic associated with a periodic rise in ocean temperature. So why are public officials ignoring the threat? Tompaine.com

Mysterious ice rings in Ontario and Quebec are baffling investigators tracking the
appearance of strange circles in ponds and fields across Canada.

Cold, hard facts about the frozen phenomena are scarce, making it too early to tell if the rings are
related to their better-known cousins, the crop circles that continue to turn up in farmers’ fields
worldwide, says a newly released report. National Post

James Fallows’ email exchange/interview with Christopher Hitchens about his recent book Unacknowledged Legislation and his argument that Henry Kissinger should be indicted as a war criminal. Atlantic Monthly

We’ve Still Got a Long Way to Go. The Europe researcher for the Women’s Rights
Division of Human Rights Watch comments in the Moscow Times about the nascent movement against domestic abuse in Russia.

Social ecology “seeks to fundamentally transform society to abolish the
nation-state and capitalism. As such it is integrally embedded in the
tradition of the left, especially the revolutionary libertarian left. Social
ecology calls for a decentralized, libertarian politics based on the
tradition of direct democracy, known as libertarian municipalism. It
proposes a face-to-face democracy that can potentially create an
institutional counterpower to the nation-state and capitalism, and
thereby lead to the creation of an ecological society.” Red Pepper In the ’70’s and ’80’s, particularly in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, a very similar-sounding bio-regionalist movement called for — and perhaps lived out — the devolution of the state, finding expression in Peter Berg’s Planet Drum (no, not the Mickey Hart project) and poet Gary Snyder’s thinking.

Observer review: Grammars of Creation by George Steiner: “In Grammars of Creation, he puts pressure on us to consider the
various nothingnesses we live with. Not only are our individual
lives haunted by our forthcoming absence, but every work of art –
and art, for Steiner, is at once our grand inquisitor and the best
way life has come up with of justifying itself – is ‘attended by a
two-fold shadow: that of its own possible or preferable
inexistence, and that of its disappearance’.”

Let’s Ditch Dixie  – The case for Northern secession:

‘You hear echoes of Southern nationalism
whenever Mississippi invokes “states’ rights” to justify flying
the Confederate flag over their capitols; or when the GOP’s
honorary Dixie chick Gale Norton mourns the defeat of the
South saying that “we lost too much”; or when John Ashcroft
praises Southern Partisan magazine for helping “set the
record straight” on the War Between the States.

This re-emergence of Confederate pride is merely the
symptom of a much deeper problem: The North and South
can no longer claim to be one nation. If you want proof, just
look at the electoral map from the last presidential election.

(T)he cultural
gap that pits NASCAR fans against PBS viewers continues to
widen. Ted Turner all but confirmed the balkanization of
America when he established a cable network exclusively for
the citizens of Dixie, serving up finger-lickin’ TV fare that
includes Andy Griffith reruns, the best of World
Championship Wrestling, CNN South, and slapstick movies
such as Dumb and Dumber (which, according to the president
of “Turner South,” gets unusually high ratings regionally).

The United States doesn’t have to refight the Civil War to set
matters right. Rather, North and South should simply follow
the example of the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Shake
hands, says it’s been real, and go their separate ways. And if
the South isn’t inclined to leave anytime soon, then we should
show them the door by seceding unilaterally. Because for all
the hue and cry of the South being a conquered people, it is
the North that increasingly finds itself under the dominion of
the Confederacy. ‘ Slate

Bush, in Reversal, Won’t Seek Cut in Emissions of Carbon Dioxide, says his earlier promise was a “mistake.” Trends are clear — he continues to pander to corporate interests, he continues to demonstrate that he doesn’t really understand the positions he takes, and he’s fully able to leave his cabinet officials — in this case EPA chief Christie Whitman — swinging in the breeze. And yet — this boggles the mind, although, by the dictum that a people get the ruler they deserve, it shouldn’t — the illegitimate son’s job approval rating is 60%, similar to that his father and Bill Clinton had early in their presidencies. It probably has something to do with the incredibly bald-faced bribery of his tax cut promises. Heartening, though, that in that poll, half of respondents recognized he’s not really in charge of what’s going on in his administration. And almost half of Americans, and more than three-quarters of African Americans, do not feel he’s their legitimate president. New York Times

The destruction of the Buddhas at Bamiyan had been reminding me of Sheldon Kopp’s book, If You See the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him. Just then, Jim Higgins sent me a pointer to Sheldon Kopp’s Escatological Laundry List. (“The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.”)

Higgins also writes:

The New York Review of Books online is carrying neurologist Oliver Sacks’ introduction to Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter’s Life with Autism, Clara Claiborne Park’s 2nd book about her daughter Jessy, a person with autism who has grown up (with much help from her parents) to be a talented artist. The NYRB package online also includes several pieces of Jessy Park’s artwork.

If you have followed Sacks, you know that autism is one of his special interests. True to form, he is interested not only in the limits of a person, but also the soul and the paradoxical gains that come from having a certain illness or disorder.

To my great pleasure, I discovered that Dr. Sacks has a personal website here, with goodies such as links to artwork by people Sacks has written about and links to interviews with Sacks or feature articles about him.

Adbusters’ Fools Festival: “On April 1st, party rules apply. Anarchy will be
enforced. Abby Hoffman proved, on the floor of
the New York Stock Exchange, that throwing
money at the problem works — when the
problem is conformity.

Let’s do it again — for real!

Let handfuls of dollar bills rain down on the
trading floor of your local stock exchange or,
failing that, shopping mall.

Are you fool enough to do it?” If you shower down $100 in small bills at your local Temple of Mammon and document the resulting mayhem on video, Adbusters will reimburse you your $100.

Hoaxbusters, a service of the Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC) of the U.S. Department of Energy. “In addition to describing hoaxes and chain letters found on the Internet, we will discuss how to recognize hoaxes, what to do about them, and some of the
history of hoaxes on the Internet.

Users are requested to please not spread chain letters and hoaxes by sending copies to everyone you know. Sending a copy of a cute message to one or two
friends is not a problem but sending an unconfirmed warning or plea to everyone you know with the request that they also send it to everyone they know
simply adds to the clutter already filling our mailboxes.” […but you knew that already, right?]

Napster Blocking Creates Dan Quayle Effect: “America doesn’t need to worry that Napster will teach children to steal, but thanks to
the RIAA, it will create a whole array of new vocabulary!” InfoAnarchy

Psychiatry in the Media: The Vampire, The Fisher King, and the Zaddik. I was delighted to find this essay by Dr. Ron Pies, who I know to be an insightful psychiatrist and who turns out to be an observant critic as well, in the latest Journal of Mundane Behavior. In essence, he says the media portrayal of psychiatrists is anything but mundane.

Picture of the imminent $10 paper cellphone. Made possible by a new technqiue allowing the printing of circuits on paper with magnetic ink, you buy it like a phone card and throw it away when its prepaid calling quota is used up.

Oscar winners to express thanks online. The producer of the televised Oscar awards show suggests that award recipients confine themselves to a 45-second acceptance speech. A list of all the people they want to thank would then be run on oscar.com under the winner’s picture. But, alas, this is a suggestion only, not a requirement… My question: would the price of the gowns come down any if they were only going to get onscreen for 45 sec.?

Teacher punishes child with firing squad: “A Spanish schoolteacher has been reported to the
police for conducting a mock firing squad in the
classroom.” Ananova

Russians approve the use of
bananas during sex. “The change in policy came after party members
decided the fruit could not transmit Aids.

Party officials decided to adopt the change in policy
after a heated debate over the practice. African
peoples have a long tradition of ritually deflowering
virgins using bananas, the party’s state session in
Vologda heard.” Ananova

The Human Body Shop Dozens of groups in industry and academia are… working on
techniques for fashioning new organs out of cells
from embryos, cadavers or patients themselves,
combined with special biomaterials. Most current
work in the commercial realm focuses on tissues, valves and other components of organs. Already, there are a handful of tissue-engineered products
on the market—skin, bone, and cartilage implants and patches—the first successes in a young
field. MIT Technology Review

Cult fear hits Bush plan to fund by faith: ‘George Bush’s plan to channel US government aid to
“faith-based” religious charities is being held back by the
fear that it could end up funding controversial groups such
as The Church of Scientology, Hare Krishna and the
Unification Church – the Moonies..

The initiative, launched with great fanfare at a White House
prayer breakfast in the president’s second week in office,
has stirred up a hornet’s nest of accusations across the
spectrum of religious groups and is being radically
redrafted.

The decision to delay its introduction was taken at the end
of last week after an unexpected war of words on the
religious right threatened to derail the entire scheme.’ Guardian

Boston Ballet lawsuit over anorexic death dismissed: “A judge has thrown out a wrongful death lawsuit brought against the Boston Ballet by a woman
who claimed her anorexic daughter died because ballet officials pressured her to remain thin.”

CNN obtain photo of Taliban destroying statues “The news that an international outcry had failed to save the
monuments, carved more than 1,500 years ago, came from the
Unesco director general, Koichiro Matsuura, whose special envoy,
the French diplomat Pierre Lafrance, confirmed that the statues
had been destroyed.” CNN

US Said To Export Torture Weapons. “Dozens of U.S. companies sell weapons and other
equipment used overseas for torture, Amnesty International said Monday,
calling for a ban on the sales.” APB News

Hot on the heels of the axe-in-the-head project comes the “I Can Eat Glass” Project, “the result of high technology in the hands of people who have no idea what to do with it.”

Handspring gets skinnier with its handheld. I previously discussed this upcoming PDA with excitement. Notch the excitement down by one now with this news that it’ll have a black and white screen, unlike Palm’s upcoming color successor to my Vx. ZDNet

St. John’s Wort Plus Prescriptions Equal Trouble. While this paper reports only on one particular type of interaction, it illustrates a general problem. Many patients don’t think it’s significant to tell their MDs about the over-the-counter medications or natural remedies they take, yet these can have significant and sometimes detrimental interactions with their prescribed drugs. And many physicians are neither interested in or knowledgeable enough to assess these effects.

Scientists Test Hallucinogens for Mental Ills New York Times

Thurmond’s Wife Is Insistent: No Service in Senate for Her. The deteriorating health of Strom Thurmond, at 98 the oldest member of the Senate, is a matter of intense political focus and expectancy because the Democratic governor of South Carolina would probably appoint a Democrat as his replacement, giving the Democrats a 51-49 majority. Thurmond, who is probably too enfeebled to do his job already but hangs in there, reportedly secretly offered the Governor his resignation if his wife would be appointed to complete his term, but she has just indicated her unwillingness to do so. New York Times

Jim Crace’s Layered Being Dead Wins Critics Circle Fiction Award New York Times This is on my rading list.

Even Without Evidence, String Theory Gains Influence “String theorists keep saying that
they’re succeeding. The rest of us can wonder whether they are walking along the road to
triumph or whether in 20 years they’ll realize that they were
walking into this enormous, beautiful, mathematically elegant cul-de-sac.”

String theory has constantly changed since it first emerged several decades
ago, and even its ardent adherents concede that they still do not understand
more than what Dr. Gross called “the tail of the tiger,” or a few suggestive
parts of what is believed to be a complete theory. Until recently the physical
crux of the theory was thought to be vibrating, 10-dimensional loops of string
roughly a billion trillion times smaller than a proton. Different modes of
vibration of the strings (made of what, no one is sure) represented different
particles in nature.

Now physicists believe the ultimate objects are 11-dimensional membranes.
Either way, the extra dimensions beyond the usual four would be curled up so
as to be nearly imperceptible. And because the vibrations would include the
graviton, the particle thought to transmit gravity, as well as particles involved
in the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism, string theory
offered the prospect of unifying physics.

But with that aesthetic attraction came deep problems. First, in the 1980’s, it
seemed that the strings had a basic inability to cope with known differences
between particles and their mirror images, and other such broad facts of
nature. But closer study showed that, contrary to all expectation, various
terms in the theory canceled each other, fixing the problem. New York Times

Inside Russia’s Hacking Culture: `Many of their peers in the Western world say Eastern Europe’s computer crackers and hackers are
the most skillful in the world — far superior to the so-called “script kiddies” who have gained a fair
amount of notoriety.

“We call Russia the Hackzone because there are so many of us here, and we are so good at what
we do,” said Igor Kovalyev, a self-described cracker living in Moscow. “Here hacking is a good job,
one of the few good jobs left.”

Kovalyev claims he is often hired to “have fun” with the websites and networks of his employer’s
competitors.

He is paid 3,000 rubles per job — about $104 American. It may not sound like much, but a college
professor gets paid about $150 per month.’

Wired

Stop being paranoid, Britain’s parents told. “Controversial book (Frank Furedi: Paranoid Parenting) says obsessive fears about children’s
safety are a bigger threat than bullies or paedophiles.” The Guardian

Shane MacGowan gets the drinks in. A sort of a God in Dublin, a paradigm of debauchery, he’s portrayed on the occasion of the publication of a sort of a memoir, A Drink with Shane MacGowan. Bono: ‘Shane is more together than people imagine,’ as the author of this interview goes to great pains to establish as well, to the great relief of all of us who expect more great things of him… The Guardian [via Robot Wisdom‘s ‘must-read’ category]

Taliban Kills Buddha: ‘…the fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas is a matter of who may control our notions of permanence; of who
will have the power that goes with defining the sacred…. The demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas is a flashpoint between two warring notions of permanence, two
irreconcilable considerations of the sacred. What we are witnessing now in Afghanistan is a charismatic
moment, one that does not give a damn for the permanence or the sacredness we find in the “world’s cultural
heritage.” ‘ But the joke is that it’s a textbook illustration of the central Buddhist truth of the impermanence of all things. Killing the Buddha

boing boing points to this hilarious offer of deity action figures at Jesus Christ Superstore.

Courtesy of Lake Effect, a magnificent image of space shuttle Columbia being ferried from California to Florida piggyback on its 747 carrier; and another one.

Aimster Pig Encoder: “As of Sunday March 4, 2001, at midnight, Napster began monitoring the file names that its
users put into the Napster database, for the purpose of blocking certain file names. This is a
serious invasion of your privacy as a Napster user. The file names on your hard drive are
your personal property and should not be monitored by anyone without your permission.
The Aimster Pig Encoder makes it more difficult for anyone to monitor the file names on
your computer. The Aimster Pig Encoder is very simple but effective. It takes each of the file names of the
mp3 files in your Napster directory and encodes the file names so that the name cannot be
easily monitored.”

90% of people don’t believe what they read on
the Web, but read the article anyway. The Register

“If you build it, they will come”?? Prodigy founder buys former Aryan Nations compound at Hayden lake, Idaho, plans to turn it into an anti-racism center. “Greg Carr has stepped in to rid Idaho of white supremacists.” The Register

The Debated Mind : Evolutionary Psychology Versus Ethnography ed. by Harvey Whitehouse. “This collection of articles questions how the human mind influences the content
and organization of culture. It pitches the arguments for innatism (proposed by
evolutionary psychologists) against ethnographic perspectives which question
the theories of evolutionary biology and cognitive science.”

The National Security Archive: “. . . combines a unique range of functions in one non governmental, non-profit institution.
The Archive is simultaneously a research institute on international affairs, a library and
archive of declassified U.S. documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, a
public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information
through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents in books, microfiche, and
electronic formats. The Archive’s approximately $1.8 million yearly budget comes from
publication revenues and from private philanthropists such as the Carnegie Corporation, the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. As a matter of
policy, the Archive receives no government funding.

The National Security Archive was founded in 1985 by a group of journalists and scholars
who had obtained documentation from the U.S. government under the Freedom of
Information Act and sought a centralized repository for these materials. Over the past
decade, the Archive has become the world’s largest non governmental library of declassified
documents. “

Foxwatch Ireland , not designed to please fans of the hunt.

“…this place,

if I could describe this
place, portray it, I’ve tried, I feel no
place, no place around me, there’s
no end to me, I don’t know what it
is, it isn’t flesh, it doesn’t end, it’s
like air…”

The Sunday Times of London profiles “Big Time” Cheney. ‘Bush, not realising a microphone was live, called a liberal reporter
a “major-league asshole”. Cheney agreed. “Big time,” he affirmed.
“Big Time” is now Bush’s private nickname for Cheney.

Participants in Oval Office meetings say Cheney is deferential to
Bush, but Big Time speaks for itself. Apart from selling the budget,
masterminding foreign policy and ensuring that old chums such as
Rumsfeld are back in the administration, Cheney, as Senate
president, will also cast tie-breaking votes in a chamber divided
50-50 between Republicans and Democrats. The late-night
television jokes are now about “President Cheney”. ‘

Pluto: Comet or Planet? It’s nothing recently learned about the object as much as what’s been recently learned about its neighborhood at the outer edge of the solar system that tempts some to downgrade its status. National Geographic

Spectacular Bodies: the art of anatomy: “Spanning 500 years of anatomical representation, the book examines the paintings, sculpture, diagrams, and
medical illustrations found at the intersection of art and science. From
Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp to 19th-century studies of
musculature to the grisly and gristly work of contemporary British artists, the
human figure has always been central to both fields.” Brill’s Content

Newspaper: Gore Might Have Won A ballot design that confused voters into chosing two
candidates cost Democrat Al Gore 6,607 votes in Palm Beach County,
The Palm Beach Post reported in its Sunday editions.

The newspaper counted more than 19,000 overvotes, or ballots on which more than one
vote was recorded for a presidential candidate. It concluded the net gain of votes for
Gore would have been 10 times more than he needed to erase Republican George W.
Bush’s slim margin of 537 votes in the state. AP [But we knew that already, didn’t we?]

Man Gets 99 Years for Killing Over Song.

A Texas man was sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing a musician who did
not know the song he requested, a prosecutor says.

Ramon Cabrera, 48, became angry with David Saenz, 57, because Saenz could not play “El Guajolote,” or “The
Turkey,” so he shot him in the head with a .38 caliber pistol, Assistant Nueces County District Attorney Mark Skurka
told Reuters on Friday.

“As a prosecutor, I’ve seen a lot of senseless killings, but this one — there’s just no way” to explain it, he said.

Shepherd Shot Dead, Sheep Blamed: “An Egyptian Bedouin shepherd was shot in the chest and killed on Thursday
when one of his flock jogged his loaded shotgun as he slept, police said.”

Remember the old wives’ tale about masturbation and blindness? Here’s the modern version. Reuters

Salad Psychology: “Are you shy? Think you’re smart? How you eat your
salad may give you away.”

Unlocking the brain’s potential Researchers may have identified a part of
the brain, which if switched off, can stimulate
“artistic genius”. The left anterior temporal lobe is damaged in demented patients who develop artistic talent and in savants with artistic abilities. When transcranial magnetic stimulation was used in normal volunteers to ‘turn off’ that brain region, a number of them temporarily developed ‘savant skills.’ Researchers speculate that a normally functioning left anterior temporal region suppresses access to more ‘primitive’ areas that do more unmediated processing of sensory data and numbers. BBC

Salad Psychology: “Are you shy? Think you’re smart? How you eat your
salad may give you away.”

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is a stereo view of astronaut Pete Conrad on the lunar surface. Got your red-green glasses handy? The link will only work today, as the APOD site posts a different image each day, but that’s no reason not to click on it tomorrow or thereafter…