Wood s lot also pointed me to this Guardian essay — Pete May on turning into your dad — and pulled this quote: ” It is a weird and far
from pleasant feeling, this cross-generational migration of souls.” A striking metaphor, but it grabbed me also because my loose association was to the absorbing, if abit uneven, novel I’m reading. David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten spins a web with its structure of nine individual narrators, drawn with skillful characterization and sharp clear prose, scattered to nine disparate corners of the world but connected by serendipity. A masterful and lyrical chapter which I could not help feeling throughout my reading can — and perhaps should — be read independently ‘describes’ the journey of a transmigrating soul in Mongolia struggling to understand its place in the world, its relationship with its succession of human hosts, and the meaning of their humanness. Of course, one reviewer castigates Mitchell as “a bit heavy on the supernatural hooey.” Interestingly, that reviewer too observes that the Mongolian chapter could stand alone.

CIA Declassifies Documents on Hitler, Other Nazis: “There were the Nazis the United States
wanted to try as criminals, and there were
other Nazis it wanted to try out as employees.
Some 10,000 pages of declassified CIA
documents made public Friday reveal a
wartime agency tracking Nazis as deadly enemies, and a postwar
organization hiring newfound ‘friends’ to spy.”

Court Orders Hospital to Release Man. The man, who suffered head injuries in an April 2000 accident, was released from a Bombay hospital by court order after his family alleged that the hospital was keeping him only because they could not pay his bill. The hospital contends that he still requires hospital treatment. Reuters

Citing Declining Membership, a Leader Disbands His Militia: ‘The leader of a paramilitary group in northern
Michigan said today that the group was disbanding because
membership had plummeted and it no longer had any members with enough
military experience to lead training exercises in the woods.

The leader… attributed the dwindling membership to the election of President Bush.
“Across the nation, there is a satisfaction among patriots with the way things are
going,” he said.’ New York Times

Thousands sign Web petition against Alaska wolf hunt. “Alaska’s wolf wars have
hit cyberspace with the listing of an online petition opposing a Web site auction for a guided wolf hunt
near Denali National Park and Preserve.

The hunt, offered on eBay by outfitter Brent Keith of Healy, Alaska, is a fund-raiser for rock star Ted
Nugent’s Kamp for Kids, a program that gets kids out of urban areas, away from drugs and crime, and
into the woods to learn how to bowhunt.” The petition is here, if you’re so inclined. When I looked today, it had 9,196 of a target 10,000 signatures.

Strom in the Balance: “It may be hard sometimes to escape the impression that the Senate chamber
resembles the fossil-strewn reading room of some Ivy League club, occupied by
alumni from before the Depression, men with rich lives behind them and no place
else to go. But it is equally hard to escape the judgment of which institution does
better at capitalizing on their experience. Offering excellent health care, the
stimulating presence of young people, a range of activities from simple to
complex and relevancy, the Senate is the most effective nursing home in the
world, which no doubt helps explain why Thurmond has lived so long.” New York Times

Parents’ Sexual Orientation Matters, Study Finds: “USC sociologists Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey examined 21 studies on the subject dating back
to 1980 and found that children of lesbians and gays are more likely to depart from traditional
gender roles than children of heterosexual couples. Their findings were published in the American
Sociological Review.

In an interview on Friday, Biblarz said that the study found that information on the subject had
previously been stifled and the differences played down.”

Gene Therapy Restores Vision in Dog: “Using gene therapy, scientists have restored vision
in dogs with a version of a rare disease that blinds human infants. The
work may lead to treatments for several genetic forms of blindness.” AP

Exorcising the Homunculus: There’s No One Behind the Curtain. A neuroscience perspective from a research associate at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition in Pittsburgh on the localization of will. “What emerges is a general story in which the frontal cortex sends actively maintained control signals to much of the rest of the
brain. The nature of these signals is selected primarily by circuits in the limbic system, based on predictions of reward. The control
signals maintained in working memory, along with conflict-related processing in the anterior cingulate, give rise to the selection of
appropriate actions for the current situation.” Free Inquiry

Baby Not Crawling? Reason Seems to Be Less Tummy Time. “(P)ediatricians …are noticing more and more
babies who are not lifting their heads when
they used to, who are not turning over and
who are not crawling at 6 to 8 months,
when popular baby books say they should.

Developmental specialists say they think they know why babies are acting this
way: it is an entirely benign, but unexpected and unintended, consequence of a
public health campaign to teach parents to put babies to sleep on their backs to
prevent sudden infant death syndrome.

An increasing number of babies never crawl at all, pediatricians say, going
directly from sitting to toddling. And they are seeing more parents … who are worried that something is wrong.” New York Times

We Fear, Therefore We Make. “The genesis of culture is fear, argues Hungarian
sociologist Elemér Hankiss in Fears and Symbols: An Introduction to the
Study of Western Civilization , and
in order to prove his thesis, he examines an array of
human symbols, behaviors and other cultural
phenomena as manifestations of how people cope with
what frightens them.” Central Europe Review

100 Down, Only 1361 to Go: In Early Battles, Bush Learns Need for Compromises. Li’l George has given himself high marks at the hundred-day milepost, and has been praised for moderation and compromising on such issues as taxation and spending. New York Times But, hello, could it be more a function of having less legitimacy and mandate than any other sitting President and realizing that he may have a hard time getting through any of the polemical (and polarizing) policy he promised in an unsuccessful attempt to court his electoral constituency? Incidentally, as I predicted, he’s using his intellectual limitations as an asset, endearing himself to a public relieved rather than concerned at having a lightweight in office.

Adbusters: Fools Festival: “On April 1st 2001, legions of fools in ten
different countries descended on their local
malls and let money rain down on the heads of
the shell-shocked. The resulting pandemonium
was a boon to the foolish at heart and proved
that throwing money at the problem works –
when the problem is conformity!

Way to go fools!”

The Decline and Fall (cont’d.): 6 Red Cross Aid Workers Are Slain in Congo. The accelerating phenomenon of murders by combatants of humanitarian aid workers represents to me the height of barbarity and evidence that the thin shreds of humanity left in the world are fraying further. “The attack, which apparently occurred early Thursday
afternoon, claimed the greatest number of the neutral
organization’s workers since a December 1996 massacre in
which six hospital staff were brutally slain in Chechnya. Three
Red Cross workers were murdered in the central African country
of Burundi the same year…

The latest incident, Geneva officials said, may well be linked to
the proliferation of undisciplined military forces that do not
respect the traditional Red Cross role. In 1996 fighting in the
former Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
soldiers ignored the protective sign and looted humanitarian
supplies, according to Red Cross officials.” Twenty-seven expatriates working under the Red Cross have been killed in the course of their duties since World War II, the majority of them since 1990. International Herald Tribune

Reproductive Emergency. Wendy Kaminer: “Battles over anti-abortion measures like these are important, but they are mere skirmishes
compared to the upcoming fight over the next Supreme Court nominee. Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor, who has been crucial in maintaining the 5–4 majority in favor of Roe, is expected to
retire soon. Bush will, no doubt, nominate a judge opposed to abortion rights, and if he or she
is confirmed, Roe v. Wade will be overruled as soon as the next case challenging it wends its
way to the Court.

The crusade to make abortions illegal and unsafe (they are unlikely ever to be rare) does pose
political risks for Republicans. If outright abortion prohibitions and a reversal of Roe v. Wade
were popular, Bush would not have cloaked his support for them during the campaign. Female
voters deprived of all abortion rights could become a more potent political force than are male
voters who fear being deprived of their guns. If reproductive choice falls victim to the Bush
administration, the administration could in turn fall victim to reproductive choice. But once
revoked, rights are not quickly or easily restored; and the Supreme Court outlives the
administrations that shape it. A Bush Court would survive, while women and girls would die
from illegal abortions.” The American Prospect

Bush Whacked. Robert Kuttner: “George W. Bush is losing his working majority in Congress. The only surprise is that it took so
long. As recently as a month ago, the new administration imagined that its tax package would
just sail through on a tide of media torpor, Republican discipline, and bipartisan gesture.” The American Prospect

Back from the Brink: “Psychological treatments for schizophrenia attract renewed
interest… Researchers are increasingly exploring ways to combine
psychological and social approaches with antipsychotic drugs, especially
in the early stages of the disorder. Techniques in the spotlight include
family-education sessions, job training, social rehabilitation, and several
forms of one-on-one psychotherapy.” Schizophrenia is a brain disorder we so far haven’t found a way to ‘cure.” But if we do, I’m convinced that it is not going to be through the ‘talking cure’, as psychotherapy has been called since the days of Freud, since which time clinicians have been valiantly attempting a gamut of therapeutic techniques with patients suffering from schizophrenia. The emphasis on medication treatment is not, as this article implies, because of physicians being bombarded with pharmaceutical company pressures to see things that way to support drug company profits, or because managed medical care discouraged complicated and time-consuming psychotherapeutic approaches. It began decades before the current generation of extremely costly ‘atypical’ antipsychotic medications, when we had dirt-cheap generic antipsychotics off patent protection because they had been around for decades; and it began a medical school generation before managed care was a blip on the horizon. It is simply because schizophrenia is a family of conditions in which basic brain functioning is awry in profound ways which cannot be corrected by reorganizing the personality structure and relatedness with insight, catharsis or the other magics that a therapy relationship works in ‘lesser’ conditions. Nevertheless, the art of creating a nonthreatening, supportive, thoughtful, safe treatment context with someone for whom all human interaction has become bewildering and terrifying had largely been lost somewhere along the way. It’s true that the baby had been thrown out with the bathwater and that psychiatrists-to-be can go through their entire training process without learning how to talk to such patients. If inddeed there’s a resurgence of interest in learning how to talk to the most psychiatrically ill patients, it can only be a good thing. Me? I’d never stopped… Science News

Salon.com offering porn to stay alive. “Trendy online rag Salon has addressed its steadily decreasing
relevance by embracing it fully.” The Register

Bovine Hormone Whistleblowers Honored: “On Monday, April 23 Jane
Akre and Steve Wilson —
two Tampa journalists who
took on the Fox television
network in a legal suit over
censorship of their
investigative report on the
safety of bovine growth
hormone — were named the
winners of the North
American part of the
prestigious 2001 Goldman
Environmental Prize.” Utne Reader

Adbusters: Fools Festival: “On April 1st 2001, legions of fools in ten
different countries descended on their local
malls and let money rain down on the heads of
the shell-shocked. The resulting pandemonium
was a boon to the foolish at heart and proved
that throwing money at the problem works –
when the problem is conformity!

Way to go fools!”

You Can Hide From Prying Eyes. Reports of the demise of online privacy have been exaggerated, it appears. Declan McCullagh reports from the recent fourth Information Hiding Workshop on some clever thinking about how to hide your online identity from those who have an interest in tracing your activities, Wired such as these people.

Inmates Do More Than Phone Home: “With the 1st Amendment as a shield and monitoring spotty, prisoners make
calls to arrange crimes that include murder.” LA Times

Google Restores Deja View. “The porn is back. The chronicles of many nasty flamewars are back, too. And everything you ever said
in Usenet, back before you had a real job or kids to worry about, has now returned to haunt you.

Popular Internet search site Google has made more than 500-million archived Usenet messages — an
archive dating back to 1995 — available online again.” Wired

Journalists Protest Gag Order: “The Electronic Frontier Foundation will represent a Seattle journalist collective that is
the target of a police probe and court-imposed gag order.

On Saturday evening, FBI agents visited the downtown offices of the Independent Media Center and
handed the group a court order — apparently related to the Quebec City trade summit — that also
instructed the media organization not to publish the contents of the order…

Still unclear is what the gag order says, or doesn’t say. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
reported on Tuesday that the FBI visit was connected to the online publishing of
security plans from the high-level trade summit held last weekend. Jill Freidberg, a Seattle IMC spokeswoman, said that “what was put out on the Seattle
P-I is filled with unfathomable inaccuracies” but, citing the gag order, refused to
provide details.” Wired

Arabs See Jewish Conspiracy in Pokemon. ‘Japanese embassies throughout the region have received inquiries from parents
and officials who had heard that Pokemon was Japanese for “I am a Jew.” ‘ LA Times

A columnist for the Worcester, Massachusetts Telegram & Gazette has angrily
quit his post after readers objected to a column — and his editor agreed.

James Dempsey’s April 20 column satirized Worcester residents’ fears of a
planned visit by Harley-Davidson enthusiasts by assigning similar concerns to
an upcoming convention of priests. “I see nothing but grief coming out of
this,” Dempsey wrote. “They’ll inspire the locals with their troublemaking
ways, and when they leave we’ll have the problem of swaggering,
cigarette-puffing altar boys to deal with.”

Readers offended by Dempsey’s column included Gazette editor Harry Whitin,
who published an apology calling the piece “mean-spirited, anti-Catholic and
crude.” Furious, Dempsey announced his decision to abandon the column and
return to the paper’s reporting staff.

“You don’t OK a column and then, because of some criticism, publicly
humiliate the columnist…” Dempsey fumed on Wednesday. “How is a columnist
to write provocatively, or indulge in satire or criticism, without wondering
whether the next day he or she will be excoriated in the newspaper and
characterized as a bungling fool?”

Readers discussed the flap in the newspaper’s message boards. [via Spike Report]

‘ “I joined the baboon troop during my twenty-first year. I had never planned
to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I
would become a mountain gorilla.” So begins Robert Sapolsky’s new book, A
Primate’s Memoir, about the time he spent in Kenya’s Serengeti over the
past twenty years, researching the stress levels of a troop of baboons.’

“For these baboons, stress is entirely socially generated, so they
really are good models for us. Study some marginal baboon population in
some dying ecosystem and it would not be anywhere near relevant to making
sense of which middle-aged executive gets heart disease. Our stress is
created by our privileged cocooning from ecological stressors; likewise
these baboons.”

An interview with Sapolsky, a professor of
biology and neurology at Stanford with wide-ranging interests and a MacArthur fellowship,
covers everything from the shadows
colonialism still casts on Africa, to the fallacy of free will, to why he
only rates as a “pathetically low-ranking baboon.”

Includes
excerpts from A Primate’s Memoir. The Atlantic

Planet ‘Survivor’: Astronomers Witness First Steps of Planet Growth – And Destruction. ‘Planet formation is a hazardous process. New pictures from the Hubble telescope are giving astronomers the first
direct visual evidence for the growth of planetary “building blocks” inside the dusty disks of young stars in the Orion
Nebula, a giant “star factory” near Earth. But these snapshots also reveal that the disks are being “blowtorched” by
a blistering flood of ultraviolet radiation from the region’s brightest star, making planet formation extremely difficult.’

Acne: No Longer Just a Market for Teenagers. Adult women, even those who describe themselves as having had perfect skin in their adolescence, are increasingly seeking cosmetic and medical treatments for acne. Some dermatological experts say adult acne truly is on the rise in women, and point to the hormonal consequences of increased stress in modern life. Critics think it is simply a matter of women being more worried about blemishes than they used to be, a fact exploited — or perhaps created — by pharmaceutical and cosmetics companies aggressively attempting to expand their marketing territory. New York Times

The Outsider: Taking Flight, Tension-Free “Almost exactly 100 years ago, a couple of guys from Dayton, Ohio, went
down to Kitty Hawk, took the strings off their kites and ruined the whole thing.” New York Times

Who Built the H-Bomb? Debate Revives thanks to a tape-recorded memoir by conservative hero Dr. Edward Teller, disparaging scientific rivals as he faces death. New York Times

Science’s Elusive Realm: Life’s Little Mysteries. The new Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM) at Los Alamos studies what prominent scientists calls the ‘mesoscale,’ between the realm of molecules describable in quantum mechanical terms and the realm of the cell where well-described biological theory holds sway. Difficult to investigate, it is the level on which cell constituents interact with one another and the elucidation of its organizing principles and deeper theory will help us “to understand and maybe even design matter that organizes itself into living systems… To start with, ICAM researchers are focusing on one beguiling fact: complex
systems can arise out of simple constituents that interact with each other in ways
not necessarily obvious”, looking at, for example, the mystery of protein folding.

” ‘We are letting nature tell us what it likes to do.’ … Such experiments have
extraordinary implications… Unlike vitalism — a doctrine that says
the processes of life are not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry
alone and that life is in some way self-determining — the research into complex
adaptive matter says that life is the consequence of molecular interactions.

‘If we can discover organizing principles in biology other than evolution, it means
we will be able to make living systems in the laboratory. We
can understand how life began.’ ” New York Times

News Analysis: Intelligence Fallouts for Bush. “Two
significant flare-ups early in his term — the collision of an American spy plane
and a Chinese fighter, and the mistaken downing of a plane carrying a
missionary family over Peru during an anti-narcotics operation — involved
elements of American intelligence.

By operating in gray areas beyond the scope of other aspects of American
foreign policy, such intelligence operations come with the potential for creating
international incidents, government officials say.” New York Times

For an Undersea Library. From Jim Higgins’ weblog: “A salesman for Borders who had recently started calling on Navy bases in Puget Sound asked the poet
W.S. Merwin what books he should recommend to the crews and captains of Trident submarines (with their
nuclear weapons), which have small libraries frequently visited by the sailors during their months at sea:

He asked Merwin:

Could any poem, novel or short story cause anyone to interrupt their learned sequence of actions, once
they have been ordered to launch? What words do I hope these men have read, and thought of, before
they push buttons?

Merwin took his questions seriously. In an essay in the May/June 2001 issue of American Poetry Review,
Merwin chooses five books and five poems, and explaining his reasons for each. He made a point of
choosing works that are fairly modern, making them accessible to contemporary readers.” [thanks, Higgy]

Browsing Higgins’ site yielded the following gem as well. Word Ways: the Journal of Recreational Linguistics. “For more than thirty years, Word Ways has explored the many facets of logology (an old word
resurrected by the late Dmitri Borgmann to describe recreational linguistics). Dmitri wrote the classic book on
this topic — Language on Vacation (Scribner’s, 1965), now out of print — and was the first Word Ways
editor in 1968. Word Ways is currently edited by Ross Eckler, author of the recent book Making the
Alphabet Dance (St. Martin’s, 1996), a survey of the field and the many new discoveries made in the last
thirty-five years.” [thanks, Higgy] Here are two entertaining tidbits from Word Ways:

the Francis Xavier O’Brien Problem

Nixon and the Bee

Ex-Senator Kerrey Admits Role in Vietnam Massacre “I went out on a mission, and after it was over, I was so ashamed I
wanted to die. This is killing me. I’m tired of people describing me as a hero and
holding this inside… I understand that there are all kinds of potential consequences, up
to and including somebody saying, ‘This is a war crime, and let’s
investigate and charge him and put him in prison’ .” Here’s the New York Times investigative report which broke the story.

Crew Unable to Destroy All Secrets on China Plane “In some cases the crew was not able to physically destroy the
material, and in others what they tried to destroy was not destroyed
to the extent that rendered it useless, the source said.” Uhh, under what circumstances, then, could failsafe measures be taken??

Browser delays hit Mozilla, Microsoft “Two pending browser upgrades — one from Microsoft Corp. and one from Mozilla.org — have fallen
behind schedule.

Mozilla.org.’s Mozilla 1.0 browser, which
until last week was expected to go gold
in May, is now expected sometime in the third calendar quarter of this
year…
At the same time, Microsoft’s next version of its MSN Explorer consumer browser, which Microsoft
had said it planned to make publicly available last week, now won’t be available until some time
in early May, a Microsoft spokesman confirmed.” ZDNet

Sex, lies and monogamy: “At the heart of all
long-term relationships lies a fundamental
deception — women only stay with men for security,
and men only stay with women for sex. It’s a
cynical view of human relationships, but
researchers now say it is the driving force behind
the evolution of monogamy–and women started
it. By offering sex all the time, females in
monogamous species disguise whether they are
fertile and trick males into sticking around.” New Scientist

How to delude yourself: ‘Robyn Dawes, a psychologist at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh (Everyday Irrationality: How pseudo-scientists, lunatics,
and the rest of us systematically fail to think rationally, Westview Press),
wants to show us how to recognise thinking
that is not merely muddy or wrong, but
“irrational” in a strict sense, in that it leads the
thinker into a self-contradiction.’ New Scientist

Sleep in early life may play crucial role in brain development. A new study shows that sleep enhances brain connectivity during a critical period of visual development in cats, a process called plasticity. The new study strongly suggests that sleep functions to help consolidate the effects of new learning in response to exposure to novel experience. “This is the first direct evidence that sleep modifies the effect of environmental stimuli on the development of new brain connections,” said the principal researcher.

While the study focused specifically on the impact of sleep on neuronal remodeling during the critical period for visual development in the
cat, the researchers believe the finding has broader implications, not just for plasticity during development in other brain structures, but for
plasticity in the adult brain.

If this is shown to be the case, sleep could prove an important part of the strategy for preparing for such challenges as exams. “The fact
that sleep provoked slightly more plasticity than double the amount of exposure to experience [when cats remained awake in a lit room]
suggests that if you reviewed your notes thoroughly until you were tired and then slept, you’d achieve as much plasticity, or ‘learning,’ in the
brain as if you’d pulled an all-nighter repeating your review of the material”…

“This discovery offers direction for examining the two major hypotheses for how sleep impacts plasticity. One theory is that patterned
neuronal activity following a period of environmental stimulation is replayed during non-REM sleep, strengthening neuronal connection
changes. The alternative theory, which could also work in conjunction with the first, is that powerful growth factors, such as neurotrophins,
which are known to be necessary for cortical plasticity, are released during non-REM sleep.” EurekAlert!

Lost Innocence: “This coming Saturday marks the birthday of the mathematician
Kurt Gödel. Born in what was then Austria, on April 28 1906,
Gödel died in Princeton, New Jersey on January 14 1978, having
developed a paranoia that he was being poisoned and, as a
result, starving himself to death (an altogether odd end for one of
the greatest logicians the world has ever known).

Two years ago, when Time magazine conducted a poll to
determine the 20 most influential thinkers of the 20th century,
Gödel was one of just two mathematicians in the score.” The Guardian

Teenage boys are embracing fatherhood: “Scientists have found that boys aged between 11
and 14 … unconsciously change the way they
cradle babies, a sign of their emerging parental
instincts. Nurturing behaviour at such a young age
appears to be a new phenomenon and may be
connected to the positive portrayal of fatherhood by
role models such as David Beckham.

Eighty per cent of people cradle babies on the left,
a preference that has little to do with whether they
are right- or left-handed. Past studies have shown
that the trait is present in girls as young as six. They
have also suggested that it only emerges in men
when they first become fathers.

The new study shows, however, that it is beginning to emerge at an earlier age in adolescent males. The article doesn’t explain this phenomenon of left-sided cradling, which I think has to do with unconsciously preferring to activate the nonverbal (nondominant, “emotional”) hemisphere with the direction of one’s gaze on the baby’s face. The Telegraph

Civility and Double Standards. Robert Parry: ‘As George W. Bush completes his first 100 days in office, he seems to have
accomplished at least one of his campaign promises: restoring civility to
Washington. The national press corps — that couldn’t use the word “liar”
enough when describing Al Gore’s supposed exaggerations or pretty much
anything about Bill and Hillary Clinton — now tip-toes around apparent
contradictions and misstatements by the new administration.

While some might call this a victory for civility, others might call it a
double standard. (Here’s) how the national press corps
avoids the “L” word in this new era…’ The Consortium

Psychoanalysts continue to discuss The Sopranos: ‘There is no doubt the Jennifer finds herself in an extremely difficult
therapeutic situation. Gloria and Tony are toying with her like
“great cats of prey”–contemptuously flaunting their power and
defiance–and there isn’t much Dr. Melfi can do.’ Slate. Looking at the archives of this discussion, by the way, it’s clear the four analysts are enthralled by the show’s characterization and plotting. Comments indicate that they (including the renowned Dr. Gabbard, who has written a well-received book, Psychiatry and the Cinema) consider this ongoing subplot the most realistic media depiction of the psychotherapy process they’ve seen. And Gabbard observes:

Two of the writers, Robin Green and Mitchell
Burgess, also executive producers, spoke at an analytic
meeting last year in L.A., where they were given an award.
When we asked them about how they came up with such
accurate depictions of psychotherapy in the series, they said
that most of the writing team had been in psychotherapy
themselves. They don’t actually use consultants for the therapy
scenes (except for medication questions), but the accuracy
appears to stem from good treatment experiences in their own
lives.

Natural Selection Moving Women To Have Kids Earlier. Factors that influence an earlier age of reproduction — e.g. earlier onset of menstruation — are selected for and can be expected to show increasing frequency over time. UniSci [via Robot Wisdom]

In the aftermath of a rampage by a psychiatric patient who killed a nurse and three patients at a Port St. Lucie, FL psychiatric hospital with his bare hands, a Florida co-conspirator, commenting in part,

“I’ll bet if this had happened in a media capital, the care of
psychiatric patients and the funding of the psych-care system would be a
prominent topic of conversation. People would talk about it on Sunday
morning talk shows. George Will would say that you have to expect a few
deaths on psychatric wards and it would be ridiculous to waste money making
them safer,”

send me this link to a Palm Beach Post feature on psychiatric nurses’ fears of violent patients. I’m of two minds about this. Psychiatric patients are already treated with enough irrational, xenophobic fear and stigmatization by the public that they don’t need anything that’d detract further from the compassion with which they need to be treated. But on the other hand, while statistics used to demonstrate that the mentally ill population is no more violence-prone than the general population, this does not appear to be the case any longer. I blame it mostly on global changes in the delivery of healthcare over the last decade, which can be neatly summarized under the rubric of “managed care. “

The upshot is fewer services, less continuity of care and less familiarity with the patients on an outpatient basis; and shorter lengths of stay and less thorough inpatient treatment when hospitalization occurs. Patients are sicker, and more apt to have been off necessary medications for longer, when they are admitted. A less thorough history to familiarize caregivers with the patient’s issues is available on admission or thereafter. The hospital units are less well-staffed, more chaotic and crowded, than they should be or had been in the past. The stresses of working under such conditions mean that veteran staff are more prone to leave the field, leaving care in the hands of generally less experienced and less well-paid nurses and mental health workers. Hospital administration has increasingly fallen into the hands of fiscally, but not clinically, sophisticated bureaucrats making decisions without firsthand knowledge of mental health care. Clinically astute caregivers such as psychiatric MDs are increasingly marginalized because of their intolerable agitation for quality-of-care measures with less concern for costs. Inpatient and outpatient services are more likely to see themselves as finger-pointing adversaries, pitted against each other competing to do more with fewer and fewer resources, than collaborators. Consolidation of health care delivery has meant that decision-making is more centralized, more removed, more corporate, less local, less responsive. And although this translates into more danger in treatment settings, the patients are largely the victims.

“Sexy emails between a fiancee and an unknown woman in Las
Vegas caused ex-Royal aide Jane Andrews to beat and stab her
lover to death, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.” The Register

Libertarian, or Just Bizarro? ‘Clyde Wayne Crews, the new director of technology studies at
the Cato Institute, the libertarian think-tank, …outline(s) his vision for what he
calls “splinternets,” or parallel Internets that would be run as distinct, private, and
autonomous universes.

Lamenting the flood of regulation over privacy, children’s safety, copyright, gambling,
taxation, and other issues on the Internet, Crews asks, “how about more Internets, not
more regulations?”

The Internet as we know it —- what people are already calling the “Big-I Internet” or the
commodity Internet — “is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons,” Crews said.’ Wired

The Myth of Matriarchal
Prehistory: “One of the more popular accounts of prehistoric human society is
that it was matriarchal: that women ruled globally, for hundreds of
thousands of years, until a patriarchal revolution reversed things
about 5000 years ago. Women were the heads of the households;
they worshipped goddesses, or a single great goddess; men
revered them and acceded to their rule.

It’s not hard to figure out why this theory became so popular among
second-wave feminists in the 70s, many of whom were coming out of
the Wiccan and neopagan movements. In fact, goddess worship had
been proposed as early as the 19th century, and vitalized by
archaeological findings of goddess figurines from early excavations.” Interview with Cynthia Eller, a professor of women and religion at Montclair State
University, who argues in her new book The Myth of Matriarchal
Prehistory that this speculative theory should be scrapped. New York Press

Nothing surprising about actor Robert Downey Jr.’s rearrest for alleged drug charges; or his being fired from Ally McBeal in response. The only surprising thing is that he got so far before going down in flames. This is not a celebrity phenomenon; literally millions in the US are in psychiatric and substance abuse facilities each day on similar, if not far more dramatic, paths of programmed self-destruction.

The actor’s legal troubles began in 1996 when he was stopped for speeding and authorities found cocaine, heroin and a pistol in his
vehicle.

A month later he was found unconscious in a neighbor’s home and hospitalized at a substance-abuse treatment center. Three days later,
he was arrested for leaving the recovery center.

In August 1999, Downey was sentenced to three years in prison for violating his probation by missing scheduled drug tests. He was
released a year later on $5,000 bail.

Last November, he was arrested at a Palm Springs hotel after police received a 911 call reporting someone in a hotel room with guns and
drugs.

He was charged with felony possession of cocaine and Valium and a misdemeanor count of being under the influence of a controlled
substance. No weapons were found. Nando Times

Where’s the prurient interest in their stories?

Drug Warriors Shot Down Planes Before; Law Exempts U.S. from Blame. “Almost immediately after the Peruvian Air Force shot up a Baptist-owned Cessna
bearing nothing more intoxicating than missionaries, the United States — whose
Central Intelligence Agency provided Peru with the Cessna’s intercept data —
moved quickly to put the bulk of the blame on the Peruvians.” AlterNet

FTAA Roundup. Media reports of the FTAA protests in Quebec were short on substance, focusing on the visual contrast between the men in suits inside crafting trade agreements and the clashes outside between masked protesters and riot-clad tactical police. There were more anti-globalization protestors than at the 1999 WTO action in Seattle, and their political critique was more focused. What really happened in Quebec, and should you care? AlterNet

UN lays blame for Timor wave of terror. “A United Nations investigation has found that senior
Indonesian military officers planned mass destruction,
deportations and killings in East Timor two months
before a 1999 vote on the territory’s future.” Sydney Morning Herald

OpenCola, Version 1.0, first open-source soft drink. ThinkGeek

Human foot-and-mouth cases in the UK? A slaughterman from north Cumbria is suspected of contracting the disease from the carcass of an infected cow he was handling. Now there are two other suspected cases. The disease is mild in humans and not life-threatening, causing a flu-like syndrome with blisters on the mouth and hands, and there are no known cases of human-human transmission. CNN

Jammers Jamming The Jammers Jamming The Jammers — Nike’s Purported Propaganda Offense Plastic

Big Blue’s Big Brother Lab: ” Imagine knowing the name of every single person who lived in this
world. One of IBM’s lab scientists shows how existing technology could
make this scenario possible.” Wired

One Smart Bookie:

“In repeated raids the police have seized betting
records and about $700,000 from Weisberg’s house and
safe-deposit boxes. Three times in 1989-1994 Weisberg faced
felony charges of sports bookmaking. The first time he pleaded
guilty and received five years’ probation. Since then judges, a jury,
psychologists, and psychiatrists have determined that Weisberg is
not responsible for his actions because his mental disability
prevents him from distinguishing between right and wrong… One of the most celebrated sports bookmakers in the Midwest, he
is mentally disabled, with an IQ that has at various times been
measured in the mid-50s to the low 70s. Although Weisberg’s
speaking skills, as reflected in court records, appear roughly
normal, he is not, in fact, an articulate speaker, and he has a
sharply limited conversational range. But few people can approach
Weisberg at calculating odds and handicapping games.”The Atlantic [via Spike Report]

And new research clarifies what it is that leads to savant skills, at least in patients with autism if not those, like Weisberg, with retardation. Not surprisingly, they start with the details. Aptitudes in which they excel are strengthened by repetition motivated by the pleasure it brings them. The Independent

UK: Jedi Get Green Light? “The campaign to have ‘Jedi’ recognised as an official religion in the
forthcoming UK census has received a boost. The census form itself
confirms that entering a frivolous faith therein will not result in an
appearance before the courts.

‘Completion of the Census form is compulsory under the
Census Act 1920. If you refuse to complete it, or give false
information, you may be liable to a fine. This liability does not
apply to question 10 on religion.’ ” The Register

Film Critic, Review Thyself. The Mexican film Amores Perros is attracting rave reviews but LA Times critic Kenneth Turan found himself indifferent to this “film that stubbornly refused to end”. He declined to review it, leaving the task to his deputy, but writes a searching confessional about how his reaction troubles him. “If you come out of a film and aren’t sure what
your opinion is, it could well mean you do know but are not comfortable with
your thoughts.”

Upspeak: ‘Declarative statement made with rising into-nation?
L.A. valley-speak is its exaggerated form and possible
source, but upspeak (a.k.a. uptalk) emerged as a
widespread teen practice in the mid ’80s. In recent
years, its distinctive “intonation contour” has threatened to
become a genuine dialect shift. Although the questioning
tone can connote indecision, deference, or apathy, a 1992
linguistic study of a Texas sorority found that upspeak was
used most commonly by group leaders, suggesting that the
tentative sound can serve as a way of getting attention,
involving listeners, and enforcing con-sensus?’

Modern threat to an ancient game: “Orkney islanders angry as
insurance fears may end the
traditional battle of the Ba, …a game peculiar to the
Orkney Islands which involves two teams
of hundreds of players battling to shift a
rock-hard leather ball across Kirkwall.
There are no rules.” Guardian-Observer

Sweet tooth gene found: “The discovery could lead to the development
of new sweeteners and a greater
understanding of why some people have a
sweet tooth.” BBC

WTOP: “Wondering why you can’t listen to your favorite radio station on the internet right
now? Follow the money trail.

Most commercial radio stations in America… have been pulling
their streaming audio off the internet.” And more coverage, from The Industry Standard:

The law of unintended consequences
struck Internet broadcasting last week.
Many large radio stations stopped
streaming their content on the Internet
because of a clause that was negotiated
in the settlement of a two-year-old
strike. A few outlets carried news of the
outage last week; this week, reporters
are still finding new angles.

KPIG’s still streaming, though; they explain why.

“You have to want to experience something different. The
night is for people that are tired of everything being the
same and are bored of events that don’t even have a spark
of originality…” Deep Blue – an
original club concept devised by a Belfast collective of artists,
musicians, DJs, writers and photographers – is not for the nervous. Irish Times [via Robot Wisdom]

Prank heaven: Guardian reviewer likes Onion writer’s telephone-prank book. [via Robot Wisdom]

Bouncing Off The Walls. 20th century concert hall designs have supposedly been informed by acoustical science — often with disastrous results. Has the science finally advanced enough that the halls can be acoustical masterpieces as well as architectural? Lingua Franca

Miles too popular: cutting a cult off at the knees. New Statesman

“…(I)s there something about cinema that leads it to shy away from the spiritual?

Some observers feel cinema is less than ideal for exploring religious or spiritual subjects.
According to one argument, contemporary audiences expect so much spectacle, escapism, and
star power for their ticket money … that sky-high production costs lead studios to avoid anything too
thoughtful or controversial.

Another argument holds that movies are materialistic by their very nature, which makes them
unsuitable for exploring spiritual themes. The acclaimed French filmmaker François Truffaut
believed this, pointing out that nothing can be filmed unless it’s physically present in front of a
whirring movie camera.” Christian Science Monitor

Several decades ago, Jerry Mander made a similar argument about TV, IMHO the most compelling of his 1978 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, proposing that the exteriority and resolution limitations of the medium make it inherently harder to convey the subtler, more rarified nature of the finer emotions than the more base.

I recently looked at this again because of the item to which I blinked below on chimpanzees being emotionally affected by scenes on television. One reader wondered, in response to that, about the significance of mirror neurons to that process and the bearing that might have on media elicitation of violence. By the way, the mirror neuron piece on The Edge (link above, to which I originally pointed shortly after it appeared in June, 2000) provoked a lovely and challenging discussion thread there. [thanks, Marnie]

And, as long as The Edge is in our sights, here’s what’s there now: Software is a Cultural Solvent:
How Our Artifacts Will Be Able To Interact With Our Biological Forms,
A Talk with Jordan Pollack.

I work on developing an understanding of biological complexity and how we can create it,
because the limits of software engineering have been clear now for two decades. The biggest
programs anyone can build are about ten million lines of code. A real biological object — a
creature, an ecosystem, a brain — is something with the same complexity as ten billion lines
of code. And how do we get there?

Anthropology’s Alternative Radical: ‘ “He’s like a rock star,” said one graduate
student in anthropology. “He’s the professor that all the students think is cool.”

Among his colleagues in anthropology, however, there is no such consensus. (Michael)
Taussig owes his academic reputation to a body of highly unconventional work
on topics like devil worship, shamanism and state terror. Ominous and
otherworldly, his subject matter is inherently provocative. Yet it is his experimental
approach to ethnography, or case studies of other cultures, as well as his
occasional diatribes against the work of more traditional colleagues that have
made him a polarizing figure in the field.’ New York Times

N.Y. to London in 40 Minutes? Wired

Clean Your Fridge – Magnetic, yes. Poetry, no. “April is National Poetry
Month, and here’s a modest
proposal on how to honor it:
a brief moratorium on
Magnetic Poetry, those small
magnetic tiles stuck on
fridges across the country
and arranged in stray vectors
of significant verse.” Slate

Word Imperfect: “…The author of The Professor and the Madman—the best-selling tale of
the making of the Oxford English Dictionary—questions the legacy of the
definitive list of synonyms that the brilliant Peter Mark Roget compiled
150 years ago. Is the name Roget becoming a synonym for intellectually
second-rate?” The Atlantic

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

Sales Growth in Books Online Is Leveling Off. As a snob who would never live far from quality independent bookstores, I welcome this trend that’ll contribute to their continued survival. New York Times

Computer makers are building equipment
on the assumption that we are all
copyright outlaws. Law.com

Disrespecting the beliefs of others is
becoming a trend . Christian zealots disrupt a gathering of peaceful, drum-beating sunset-watching meditators in the Florida Keys, praying to save the heathens from Satan. Little did they realize Satan wasn’t there until they brought him. Sarasota Herald-Tribune

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

Get those kids out of here. “Catwalk models may be getting younger, pop singers may be
pre-pubescent and the images of movie stars may be getting
more perfectly airbrushed but, in the world of modern dance,
wrinkles seem to be the coming thing… A surprising number of recent productions… suggest that
choreographers are finding themselves less entranced by the
perfect limbs of 20-year-olds than by the dramatic and physical
possibilities of bodies that have been lived in. The Guardian And: Worldwide Search on for Over-50s ‘Man
Band’ “Up to 5,000 hopefuls from all around the globe have applied to join an over-50s ‘Man Band’ and
prove to the record industry that pop fans are sick of endlessly cloned boy bands.

The London publicity company 15 Minutes has been deluged with applications from Tokyo to Sydney,
from Bangkok to New York.” Reuters But: The new principal dancer at the Royal Ballet is a 19 year-old wunderkind. BBC

I’m Sorry, I’m Not Apologizing, OK? “It struck many Americans as verging on the absurd that the return of the spy
plane crew hinged on protracted negotiations with China over the wording of a
(possible) apology.
If you think the subtle differences among carefully chosen expressions of
remorse are an arcane linguistic quirk of an ancient and hypersensitive exotic
culture, think again. We all play similar linguistic games every day when we
negotiate apologies in English.
The word ‘sorry’ sits right on that fine line between regret and fault.” LA Times

A matter of sex and death: “Ageing and our own mortality could be the price we pay for
human fertility”, says Professor of Medicine and theoretician of ageing Tom Kirkwood.

The distinction between germ-line and soma enabled such
amazing advances in the evolution of life that we might almost
forgive the terrible price we have paid. For it was this, not sex,
that caused us to age and die. … To understand why the soma/germ-line distinction is so
important for ageing, we should know that the germ-line
cannot be allowed to fail in its duty of keeping going
indefinitely. If it did — if, for example, it permitted damage to
build up in its DNA sequence — it would rapidly become
extinct. Some change to the DNA sequence must occur, or
evolution would be stalled, but the kind of damage that builds
up in the somatic cells of our bodies would be intolerable in the
germ-line… But with the soma, there is no
corresponding requirement for somatic cells to keep their DNA
in good shape indefinitely. It does not matter, biologically, if
our somatic cells eventually fall apart. The somatic cells
comprise the individual and that is all that they will be required
to do. Life in the natural world is brutish and short. All that the
organism needs from its somatic cells is that they can keep the
soma in good shape until an age when the likelihood of still
being alive is negligible. When we factor in that the care and
repair of somatic cells does not come cheap, it makes sense to
cut back maintenance of the somatic cells and to divert that
energy into helping with reproduction. The result was that the
soma became disposable, and with that came ageing. The Times of London

“Researchers in Chicago have built a cyborg, a half-living,
half-robot creature which connects the brain of an eel-like fish to
a computer and is capable of moving towards lights.

The device, developed at a research centre owned by Evanston’s
Northwestern University, consists of the brain stem from the
larva of a lamprey, a bloodsucking fish, attached by electrodes
to an off-the-shelf Swiss robot.” The Guardian

ACLU Action Alert: Oppose Covert Attacks on Reproductive Freedom! The newest front in the battle against reproductive freedom is a bill drafted with the assistance of the National Right to Life Committee and called the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act”, H.R. 503, which creates a new offense of injuring or causing the death of a fetus during the commission of a federal crime — an attempt to establish a dangerouslegal principle of the recognition of the fetus as an independent victim of a crime with rights distinct from the woman who has been harmed by a violent criminal act. Under the guise of protecting women, this is an unprecedented assault on a woman’s freedom of choice. Except to undermine reproductive freedom, there is no justification for a new law rather than more robust enforcement of existing laws against violent crime. One-click faxing to your U.S. Representative from this site to register your opposition.

“A difficult home
environment leads to an increased risk of criminal activity. Increased abortion
reduced unwantedness and therefore lower criminal activity.” New Attention for the Idea That Abortion Averts Crime: “John J. Donohue III of Stanford Law School and
Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago… insist, however controversial
its implications, that it is impossible to ignore what they say is a striking link
between the introduction of legalized abortion in the early 1970’s and the drop
in crime about 18 years later.” The argument appears flawed, starting from the inability to fix causation in a web of correlation. The public policy implications are even more convoluted. New York Times

Why it is crucial that elephants have good
memories The Independent

Chimps touched by television: “A new study suggests that
humans are not the only animals to feel
sad or scared when watching television
— chimpanzees are also moved by
video clips of fearful or appealing
scenes.

What’s more, Lisa Parr of Yerkes
Regional Primate Research Center in
Atlanta, Georgia has found that chimps (Pan troglodytes) respond
physically to events portrayed in videos just as they would to the events
themselves. Nature science

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Inc.: “Our charitable purpose is to bring about the
Singularity – the technological creation of greater-than-human intelligence. We believe that the creation of greater-than-human
intelligence would result in an immediate, worldwide, and material improvement to the human condition.”

“I wouldn’t be
surprised if tomorrow was the Final Dawn, the last sunrise before the Earth
and Sun are reshaped into computing elements.” Making HAL Your Pal. “If a computer becomes sufficiently smart, the argument goes, and
if it gains the ability to harm humans through nanotechnology or some means
we don’t expect, it may decide it doesn’t need us or want us around.” Portrait of a grandiose 21-year-old autodidact who believes the dangers of the Singularity are so imminent he has devoted his life to attempting to persuade others of the necessity to enforce the friendliness of AI entities. Because he’s an avid science fiction fan, his efforts take a form akin to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, of course. Wired

Dr. James Watson as eugenicist; calls for legalization of genetic engineering of humans to rid the species of genetic flaws.

Pleasure has an element of surprise “The brain finds unexpected pleasures more
rewarding than expected ones, and it may have little to do with what
people say they like.” Telegraph UK

Crackers Expand Private War: “American cracker group PoizonBOx has defaced at least a hundred Chinese websites since April 4.
Chinese hackers are now vowing to retaliate with a planned week-long all-out crack attack on American
websites and networks which will start on May 1.” Wired

“Execution enthusiasts will have to wait until Friday at the latest to
find out whether they’ll be able to witness the death of Timothy
McVeigh live on the Web.

A Federal judge yesterday heard a petition from the Entertainment
Network Inc (ENI) which is seeking to change the law so that it can
broadcast the death by lethal injection of the man responsible for the
Oklahoma bombing.

ENI which specialises in online voyeurism (although mostly of young
college girl) claims it has a constitutional right to broadcast the
execution.” The Register

An end to recharging for mobile phones: “The plan is to replace rechargeable batteries in mobile devices with a miniature version of the
hydrogen fuel cell used to power electric cars, and recharge it with a super-efficient solar cell built
into the devices.

Until now, the tiny amount of space available in a mobile phone or PDA was too small to allow
integration of fuel cells and solar cells, Fraunhofer researchers told ZDNet. And it is a race against
time: as mobile electronic devices shrink in size and increase in functionality, they draw more
power. Manufacturers of solar cells meanwhile continue to raise the efficiency of their products —
some have achieved an efficiency of almost 25 percent — but they are still much too expensive for
the mass market.” ZDNet

“These are only preliminary results, but already they look quite interesting. I’m closer now to being
a lot more curious. Something is going on, but I won’t be a believer until we get something on film.” Ghostbusters Probe Phantom Menaces in Edinburgh. Reuters

Study Finds Herbal Remedy Useless Against Depression. “St. John’s wort, the popular herbal
remedy, proved useless in treating
depression in a carefully designed study
being reported today in the Journal of the
American Medical Association. New York Times

Where Did I Come From? “Tracking ancestors who entered the country through Ellis Island used to mean
poring through endless reels of microfilm.

Now, it can be as simple as a few clicks of a computer mouse.

On Tuesday, Ellis Island officials and the Mormon church introduced a new database containing arrival
records for the 22 million immigrants who entered the port of New York from 1892 to 1924. The database, which includes 70 percent of all U.S. arrivals recorded during that
period, will be available to Ellis Island visitors and on the Internet.” Wired A search of the Ellis Island website of the National park Service indicates that, despite publicity promising a Y2K opening, the American Family Immigration History Center is “Coming Soon in 2001: AFIHC

American Family Immigration History Center: New family history research facility that contains the ships’ passenger records on the over 22 million
people who entered through the Port of New York and Ellis Island from 1892-1924, the peak years of immigrant processing at Ellis Island. Visitors will
be able to access 11 fields of digitized information, as well as obtain reproductions of original ship manifests and photos of ships of passage. For more
information please contact the Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., at (212) 883-1986.”

China Incident
Brings Out
Schizophrenia in
U.S. Say
Europeans. “The recent standoff with
China is just the latest in a
series of events that
highlight a schism within the
Bush administration over its
approach to international
relations. And Europeans are
worried…” about the disarray within the Bush administration, the U.S. tendency to act more and more unilaterally without concensus with European allies, and the increasing foreign policy focus on the Pacific and away from Europe. Utne Reader Meanwhile, the U.S. press is falling all over Li’l George‘s supposed combination of humility and resolve. “The national news media can’t make up its mind if George W.
Bush is Gary Cooper, John Wayne or a reincarnation of John F.
Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis.” The Consortium

Annals of Overreaching Intellectual Property Rights: Owning the Future: PB&J Patent Punch-up: “Hold on to your lunchboxes, Technology Review readers. This legal squabble pits J. M. Smucker, beloved maker of jam, against tiny, Gaylord, MI-based
Albie’s Foods. For reasons that elude me, Smucker’s lawyers decided to try to enforce the firm’s exclusive rights to—I’m not making this up—its patented
version of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” Technology Review