“Ginsberg
talking is like Charlie Parker
taking his saxophone out for
a spin at the far reaches of
harmony and rhythm…” A Yale English professor reviews Spontaneous Mind: selected interviews 1958-1996 by Allen Ginsberg. The reviewer is rhapsodic that “Ginsberg’s
uniquely frank and vivid voice, silent now
these past four years, seems to sound
again in its deftly edited pages.” Ironically, with the passing of the last major Beat figures Ginsberg and Corso, the immediacy at the core of the Beat Generation is reduced to static words on a page for now and forever.

The candor and passion are to be expected, but the stereotype of
Ginsberg as a semiliterate primitive leaves one unprepared for his
erudition and intellectual brilliance. A question about his youthful
discovery of Cézanne elicits six long pages on the transcendental
implications of the painter’s ostensibly workmanlike notation of optical
phenomena, and the relevance of those implications to Blake, haiku
and the composition of ”Howl.” Elsewhere, belying dismissals of the
Beats as willfully ignorant of literary history, Ginsberg details the ways
the movement placed itself within both American and modernist
traditions, as well as within the mystical tradition that leads back
through Gnosticism to the ancient mystery cults. Other passages remind
us of the courage and prescience of the man who was proudly,
publicly gay over a decade before the Stonewall uprising. We find
him talking about global warming in 1968. Above all, we find him
continually challenging settled ideas, especially his own. Yes, as a
1976 interview shows, he eventually questioned some attitudes of the
60’s left, but the fact is that, as we see in a 1963 interview, he
questioned many of them almost before there was a 60’s left…

Each
interviewer tries to elicit the Ginsberg of his or her imagination —
William F. Buckley Jr., the dangerous radical; Playboy, the
homosexual crusader; fellow dropouts, the mocker of squares — and
each time, Ginsberg performs judo flips on their expectations, handing
back complex, nuanced versions of the attitudes with which they’ve
tried to saddle him. Indeed, he helps us appreciate the great
difference between a celebrity and a public figure — one the creation
of the media, the other a full human character seeking to act within the
public sphere — as well as why we don’t really have any of the latter
anymore.

New York Times Book Review

In conjunction with the review of this book, Ginsberg is the Times’ “featured author.” Here is a collection of links to reviews of his other works, articles by and about him, a link to a streaming audio of a reading he gave at the 92nd St. Y in New York in 1977 (42 min.), and a slide show.

Harry Potter and the Court Battle Over Creativity: “…(A) growing
parade of aggrieved writers and artists
… have helped to turn intellectual
property litigation into a burgeoning
cottage industry, with its own small plaintiffs
bar and even insurance policies to protect
successful writers and musicians from the
high cost of fending off claims.

Blockbuster books, movies, plays and songs
have always provoked anger and legal
actions on the part of little-known artists who
say their work has been usurped. The vast
majority of lawsuits are as improbable as
one New York designer’s unsuccessful claim
that the best-selling “Goosebumps” series of
children’s books stole a graphic he designed
for the Lithuanian basketball team.” New York Times Business

How world religions view homosexuality

Are You in Anthropodenial?

After finishing Frans de Waal’s
engaging history of primate
studies, The Ape and the Sushi Master, I
wasn’t surprised, a day later, to come
across a Web site called ”Bush or
Chimp?” The juxtaposition of head shots
of the new president alongside
chimpanzees, in poses ranging from
slack-jawed joviality to goofy hooting,
plays off a timeworn joke.

The laughter depends on the underlying
assumption that while apes may look like
humans, akin even to the most powerful
leader in the world, there still must be a
quantum leap from them to us. But the
laughter grows thinner by the year as
one by one the supposed bellwether
differences between apes and humans, like toolmaking, fall away.
Chimpanzees use leaves as seats, as it turns out; they fashion a kind of
footwear to protect themselves from thorns; they ”fish” for termites with
twigs and reeds they strip and cut for the occasion. New York Times

This is not, as far as my searching could reveal, on the ‘net, but is a shocking and important enough finding that I thought I’d post it:

Homicide a Leading Cause of Death in Pregnant Women :

The leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide, according to a
study published in the current issue of the Journal of Midwifery and Women’s
Health.

The study’s authors reviewed 651 autopsy charts from the District of Columbia’s
Chief Medical Examiner’s Office for cases from 1988 until 1996. The researchers
discovered 13 homicides of pregnant women that had not been reported with the
21 maternal deaths from medical causes (eg, hemorrhage and infection). These 13
unreported deaths account for 38% of pregnancy-associated deaths…

Other findings include:

Pregnant homicide victims are more likely to have been killed early in the
pregnancy, which can make it difficult to identify the pregnancy and link it
with the homicide.

Pregnant homicide victims are more likely to be killed with a gun.

Pregnant teenagers (aged 15-19 years) were more at risk.

… “What pregnant women do not know,” said American College of Nurse-Midwives
Executive Director Deanne Williams, “is that instead of facing joyful
celebration at the announcement of pregnancy, too many face violence and death.
We have got to do a better job of identifying this problem and helping the
women and their partners not end up with such a horrific outcome.”

The authors note that the deaths in the study, although not officially reported
within maternal mortality ratios, may truly be pregnancy-related in that the
violence might not have escalated to result in death had the women not become
pregnant.

A reader provided me with a link to a related study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

SETI founder speaks about Intel P2P cancer
project. “If corporate America was involved in a community PC effort to find
these wonder cancer drugs, who would ultimately benefit?” The Register

“Japan is the global imagination’s
default setting for the future. ” Modern boys and mobile girls: William Gibson explains his fascination with all things Japanese, which is evident when you read any of his writing. And he flatters the British for their unique vantage point on the East. The Observer The little blurb about the author at the bottom, by the way, mentions that the title of his forthcoming book is Pattern Recognition. That‘s been another central concept in all his novels, hasn’t it?

I do miss the BlogVoices discussion capability now that I’ve eliminated it. The blog is loading much faster, and several readers have written celebrating the fact that they can read me more easily now, that BlogVoices broke their browsers in various ways. So it’s history. But I did enjoy bringing up the page and scanning down through the items I’d recently posted looking for the indication that there were comments posted, that this isn’t a one-way conversation. Even though that’s what blogging is supposed to be all about…

Reprinted from Looka! “Horrendous classical music joke of the day: A-one,
and a-two, and a-three … (*bomp*bomp*bomp*)

You say Carmina, I say Carmana,

You say Burina, I say Burana,

Carmina, Carmana, Burina, Burana.

Let’s Carl the whole thing Orff.

— Robert Feiertag, posting on soc.motss”

Cheaper Flat Panels Comin’ At Ya’ The Register

“For healthy people, mind reading is an innate and effortless
ability, even though it’s in fact very complicated. For people
with autism, it’s like doing mental arithmetic.” Mind theory: “The brain regions critical in allowing us to
understand another person’s thoughts are
revealed.” Several years ago, researchers found that, in autistic subjects, facial recognition of others uses the same brain regions as object recognition, not the distinct specialized areas for person recognition. Now, a complementary study shows that patients with Asperger’s syndrome (arguably related to autism) do not use distinctive brain regions, as non-AS subjects do, to solve problems involving figuring out or imagining what another person is thinking or feeling. They have an impairment in the capacity to form a ‘Theory of Mind’; more simply put, empathic ability. Extraordinary to think that specific brain regions subsume this skill; it gives new meaning to the notion of humans as the ‘social animal’. However, reading this research made me wonder (as it turns out in the last paragraph does the study’s author) whether these findings might enable us to probe the claim that other animals — notably chimpanzees — have the capacity for a Theory of Mind. New Scientist

UCSF researchers move in on role of brain’s naturally occurring marijuana: “Nearly a decade ago, researchers determined that the brain contains a molecule that mimics the active ingredient in marijuana, but its
location and role in the brain were unclear. Now, UCSF researchers have discovered that the molecule acts, at least in part, in a region of
the brain that plays a key role in learning and memory.

The study, reported in the March 29 issue of Nature, suggests, the researchers say, that the molecule, known as a cannabinoid, plays a role
in particular cognitive functions within a structure known as the hippocampus. Paradoxically, marijuana disrupts cognitive function and the
likely explanation, the researchers say, is that marijuana disrupts the very cognitive system the cannabinoid normally supports.” EurekAlert!

So Gore Really Won? “One day after the Miami Herald published a story that prompted
national headlines about George W. Bush being the real winner in
Florida, the newspaper effectively recanted.

In a new story in Thursday’s editions, the Herald acknowledged what we also
pointed out: that a careful examination of the Herald’s own data would have
led to a conclusion that Al Gore was the choice of Florida voters under a
reasonable standard judging the “clear intent of the voters.”

The Herald’s data revealed that by looking at the so-called ‘undervotes’ in all
67 counties and counting various markings for president, Gore would have
won Florida and thus the presidency.” The Consortium

Free-Floating Planets — British Team Restakes Its Claim. “An academic tug-of-war over worlds beyond our solar system continued Tuesday, with two British
scientists reasserting their claim to have found free-floating planets that others say are nothing of
the sort.” Departing from the commonly-understood concept of a planet as an object orbiting a star, the argument here is that measurements of these objects — in the Trapezium Cluster of the Orion Nebula — qualify them as planets because they are “sub 13Mjup”, i.e. less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter. Nothing smaller has sufficient temperature and pressure in its core to support fusion. The counterargument is that the calculations are off and that these objects are really more massive brown dwarf stars, “unattached balls of gas.”

I’ve been had! …along with alot of others, it seems. Thanks to a reader who alerted me to this. To be fair, I did ask you if you really believed the “We Deliver” spiel. ‘(T)he
We-Deliver.tv domain name is registered to Sputnik7, a
New York entertainment portal out to grab some eyeballs
by any means necessary.

The We Deliver Web site is a form of “stealth marketing,”
says Sommer Hixson, the company’s public relations director.

“We Deliver is Sputnik7’s first original, live-action ‘webisodic’
about a fictional weed delivery service in New York called
Green Acres,” she says. “The 10-part series will launch on
Sputnik7 on Friday, April 20. We-deliver.tv is a campaign
to create a pre-launch buzz.” ‘ Salon

DOJ: Cypherpunk Threatened Feds. “A federal prosecutor said on Wednesday that an Internet essayist spent
months illegally compiling information about IRS agents through CD-ROM databases and conversations
with members of a mailing list of ‘cypherpunks.’

Robb London, an assistant U.S. Attorney, said in court that Jim Bell was not conducting a legitimate
investigation of government wrongdoing last year but instead was a disturbed person who had never
renounced a political treatise he wrote entitled ‘Assassination Politics‘, (a) long-winded thought experiment predicting how future
technologies including untraceable digital cash, encryption and anonymity should allow
anyone upset with the feds to bet on when a certain government agent will die. The
winner, presumably the assassin, wins the pool of money… Bell has pleaded not guilty to five counts of interstate stalking that allegedly took place
last year, saying he was legally assembling information about government agents he
thought were participating in a conspiracy involving illegal surveillance. ” Wired Wired correspondent Declan McCullagh, who has covered the Jim Bell affair and is covering the trial, was forced to testify over his objections that he might be compelled to reveal the identities of confidential sources of some of his information. The Register McCullagh describes the first day’s proceedings here. cluebot.com

Three New Places to Fight Hate. “Hate speech may flow freely on the Internet, but it just got a powerful rebuttal in the form of a trio of
new websites preaching tolerance.

The three sites will help fill a vacuum left by Hatewatch.org, which closed shop in January after its
founder said hate groups had failed to gain widespread acceptance on the Internet.” Wired

The neural correlates of person familiarity. More interesting and powerful findings from functional MRI. Comparing the brain activation patterns of people seeing familiar vs. unfamiliar faces, and listening to familiar vs. unfamiliar voices, reveals the neural correlates of familiarity or recognition — areas of the posterior cingulate gyrus of the cortex, for those who know neuroanatomy. I have long been interested in the dramatic psychotic symptom called Capgras’ delusion, which involves the belief that familiar others have been replaced by nearly — but not quite — identical duplicates. Extreme cases in which the patient was convinced that their entire city was replaced by a near-duplicate have been described. The deep resonances of this terrifying experience are reflected in such classic films as Invaders from Mars and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which the panic-stricken protagonists cannot convince others that people around them are being replaced or controlled.(Of course, on another level, films of this ilk are talked about in the context of our Cold War societal complex about Communist brainwashing and takeover — which may be coming back into fashion — but that’s a different story; I think they speak to something far more primal.) It has long been observed that the Capgras delusion occurs both in “functional” psychoses (e.g. schizophrenia) and a variety of “organic” conditions (e.g. carbon monoxide poisoning). Back in psychiatry’s dark ages of either/or, this was one of the early suggestions that functional mental illnesses were diseases of the brain as much as of the mind.

I have been suggesting for a long time that the Capgras symptom arises from a disorder of the machinery underlying the sense of familiarity in the brain, and that it might have some similarity to other so-to-speak delusions of unfamiliarity. For example, there is a class of paranoid patients whose concerns revolve around the conviction that people come into their homes while the patient is asleep or out, rearranging or absconding with things there. I suspect that the failure of these patients to retain a sense of familiarity about the arrangement or placement of the objects in their environment is the basis of their belief that things have been meddled with. There is also a particular set of paranoid fears that arises as memory and familiarity fade with the progression of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. There is also a symptom called derealization, in which people have a strange sense that the world around them is not real but a caricature or cartoon version of itself; they cannot articulate percisely what is different, but they know it is. This often occurs in temporal lobe epilepsy, which can involve the cingulate gyrus, and is related to frequent deja vu experiences, clearly a disorder of the sense of familiarity. Now, with the demonstration of neural correlates of the experience of familiarity, even if no new treatment interventions arise, a convincing explanation may at least some of the time be a comfort to the patients so afflicted, or their families. As an aside, I’m curious to see whether the more disembodied familiarity of media celebrities is subsumed by the same machinery as the more intimate experience of the familiarity of our associates, friends and family. Brain

An FmH reader writes that this is probably the real reason San Diego is dropping the use of the word ‘minority’ in its documents. “Yes, I think this should be derided, but not for the reason you give“, he says, alluding to my lampooning such apparent political correctness.

Monsanto v. Percy Schmeiser. A disturbing story to which I was originally pointed by jimwich, here summarized on Tompaine.com. 40% of farmers in Western Canada, including farmer Percy Schmeiser’s neighbors, grow generically modified canola. Pollen from his neighbors’ fields blew onto his land and, when Monsanto took seed samples from his canola crop without his permission and found “their” genes, they sued under Canadian patent law that makes it illegal to re-use patented seeds without a licensing agreement. Now Schmeiser is forced to pay thousands of dollars in royalties on GM seeds found on his land without his having bought the seeds or benefited from their inadvertent presence in his crop (they were engineered to be resistant to a Monsanto weed killer Schmeiser does not use). IMHO, this story, perhaps the first of many in Monsanto’s promised draconian crackdown on “seed-savers”, illustrates the real disaster of agribusiness giants’ taking proprietary control of crop genomes through GM. Placing the burden of assuring non-contamination with GM materials on the individual producer is an insidious means of crushing independent competition. This is far more worrisome than speculative and largely misplaced concerns over direct biological effects of engineered genes on the foodchain.

“…some of the most extremely violent rhetoric, from both sides, that
I’ve ever heard between a government and a terrorist organization…” “Muslim extremists who have been holding
an American hostage for the past eight months threatened to behead
their captive and send the head as a birthday present to President
Arroyo Thursday.

The Abu Sayyaf said the head of Jefrrey Schilling, the 25-year-old
Oakland, California native whom the group has held in the jungles
of Sulu since August last year, will be sent as “a gift” to the President
for her 54th birthday.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Arroyo declared yesterday all-out war against the
Abu Sayyaf rebels and ordered troops to take no prisoners unless the
bandits surrendered.” Phillipine Star A discussion thread on Plastic in reaction to this story suggests that the hostage is apparently an American Muslim who sought out the rebels himself “to hang out with them,” then got into trouble because he couldn’t answer their questions on Islamic doctrine.

San Diego will drop use of word ‘minority’ in its documents. Calling someone a minority implies that he or she is inferior, says sponsor of the measure which passed the San Diego City Council unanimously yesterday. “Schoolteachers and others, often
unconsciously, expect less of those who are labeled members of minority
groups. Those classified as minorities may even expect less of themselves…” No more consciousness-raising; the only politically correct solution these days is consciousness-lowering.

Do you believe this? We Deliver is an online drug dealing service that “got a really, really good idea”, they say, by reading the U.S. Postal Code closely. It turns out that the Netherlands legalized euthanasia in November, 2000. It also turns out that postal inspectors in the U.S. are “prohibited from the internal examination of any
package containing the remains of a human whose life
be deemed legally and prematurely ended from without
the borders of the United States”, a provision originally intended to insure that the remains of soldiers who die abroad are unimpeded in getting back to their grieving families. So We Deliver hooks you up with the ashes of your long-lost and recently-euthanized Dutch relatives, they say. “…For a reasonable fee, we
set it up so that a guy in Amsterdam will send you a
little bit of the deceased’s ashes. And he’ll measure out
the exact amount of ounces (or pounds) of ashes that
you wanna order, put it in a box, slap on an official
Netherlands ‘Euthanized Remains – Urgent’ sticker and
send it to yer address.” You receive your package, open it and, lo and behold, find that the shipper goofed and it is not ashes but an equivalent weight of some other ‘stuff’. “Of course you might still be a little skeptical. You don’t
know for sure if we legit. And that’s why we givin’
away a free joint to everyone who signs up for our
newsletter before 4/20/01. Try it out, see if you like it,
and then see if you don’t come back. We Deliver, y’all.” [via Plastic]

Read Any Good Pictures Lately? In Reading Pictures: a history of love and hate, a sequel to his A History of Reading, Argentinian writer and critic Alberto Manguel “coax(es) every possible allusion from the shadows… deconstruct(ing) the picture’s meaning for the artist while enriching the viewer’s understanding of what we are looking at, and why our responses can be so intense and complex”, in a meandering, eclectic way. The Independent

George Bush is sorely mistaken if he thinks there’s nothing that Britain and the rest of the world can do about US renunciation of the Kyoto accords on greenhouse gas emissions. Boycotts, restitution, withdrawals and expulsions, will follow. And any Briton who visits the US will be expected to drive on the left. The Guardian

Socially inept, self-involved and geeky? Temple Grandin, “perhaps the world’s best known sufferer of Asperger’s Syndrome”, recognized a fellow traveler in Kevin Mitnick when she watched him in a TV interview about a year ago. She, and others, have been thinking about whether AS is an indication that a child is at risk of becoming a hacker. Mitnick himself identified with a fellow hacker imprisoned with him and diagnosed as having Asperger’s. Some counter that Asperger’s is closely associated with rigid rectitude; if not hackers and crackers, how about a link between AS and nerdiness in general? USA Today

Lightly Braised Adverbs. Pay attention to the verbiage of the modern menu to learn when you should run, don’t walk, from that jovial eatery before you waste your money. Irish Times

Distant Supernova Dark Energy. “Light from a star that exploded over 10 billion light-years away is revealed in… a cosmic snapshot of the most distant
supernova. The ancient stellar detonation was detected by digitally subtracting before and after images of a faint, yellowish, elliptical galaxy included in the
Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field image… Remarkable in itself as the farthest known supernova, its measured brightness
provides astounding evidence for a strange universe – one which eventually defies gravity and expands at an accelerating rate. The unseen force driving this
expansion is dubbed dark energy and discovering the fundamental nature of dark energy has been called the challenge of this millennium. Astronomy Picture of the Day

The real computer virus is the Internet’s unmatched capacity for distributing misinformation. When the mainstream media prints an item that seems, in an old newsroom phrase, “too good to check”, it probably is too good to be true.

…In recent months I have found myself quietly
checking the validity of almost everything I find in
cyberspace and whenever possible doing it the
old-fashioned way: consulting reference books in
libraries, calling professors or original sources on the
phone, double-checking everything…

Seven years ago, AJR warned that an over-reliance
on Lexis-Nexis was leading to a “misinformation
explosion.” Since that time, the number of journalists
using the data retrieval service has increased
exponentially; at many news organizations, libraries
have been phased out and reporters do their own
searches. This has led, predictably, to an entire subgenre
of phony quotes and statistics that won’t die. American Journalism Review

“How did everything get to be so complicated? For most people,
a rueful exclamation; for Stuart Kauffman, the most interesting
question about the universe.” A review of Investigations:

Kauffman’s approach to explaining how such things can be is
unconventional. A philosopher turned doctor turned theoretical
biologist, he works out of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico,
where the house style is computer simulation of just about
anything. In his last book, At Home in the Universe , he outlined
the power of self-organisation, arguing that there are laws that
can generate order where we don’t expect it. In Kauffman’s
computer-generated universe, stable structures appeared where
intuition predicted a mess. Wherever he looked – in networks of
interacting genes, in vats of chemicals or in the patterns of
decision that tie producers to consumers in the marketplace –
he saw “order for free”.

In Investigations, one puzzle he wants to cast in a new light is
how to read the energy exchanges that underpin all these
processes.

…The book
is undeniably heavy going in places. Some of the chapters take
for granted science that another writer would explain at length.
Although there are plenty of concrete examples, much of the
core argument keeps trying to turn back into mathematics. Yet
Kauffman’s obsessive probing of the limits of understanding is
pretty gripping, in its way. The book may be science. It may be,
as he suggests hopefully, proto-science. It is certainly a crash
course in how to think like Stuart Kauffman, which is a great
way to see blind spots in the science that already exists. The Guardian

“Holier Than Thou” morality study shows why you probably aren’t as nice as you think. “We knew something had to be wrong when the average person thinks he or she’s a better person than the average person, when the majority of Americans
consider themselves to be members of an elite moral minority. We wanted to know whether people feel holier than thou because they underestimate others’ moral goodness, or because
they overestimate their own.”

Ten Reasons for Reparations: “Conservative muckraker David Horowitz has been verbally mugged for peddling
an ad to college newspapers giving ten reasons why reparations are racist. But the
name callers have done little more than canonize Horowitz as a martyr for truth and
free speech. Even worse, they’ve failed miserably to tell why reparations merit a
serious look. There are ten compelling reasons it does.” AlterNet

Media Gives Bush a Free Pass: ‘The incident occurred in Fort Worth on Feb. 25 when a “very intoxicated” college
student was arrested at a rowdy fraternity party and was, according to the county
sheriff, “very vocal” that his girlfriend was George W. Bush’s teenaged daughter,
who’d also attended the party. After the student used his cellular phone to make a
call from his cell, Secret Service agents quickly arrived to get him out. Bush’s
daughter reportedly waited outside the jail in a Secret Service vehicle.

The White House wouldn’t comment on the matter, and the story disappeared from
the news in a day.’ AlterNet

(Ariana Huffington’s overthrowthegov.com)

“It made me feel like a very cool cyborg surgeon…” It’s in the Eyes. Surgeons complain of being distracted by having to look up from their operating field to view data on a computer screen. Now doctors at the Mayo Clinic are finding “useful and not distracting” a retinal-scanning device that “paints” images and data directly on their eyes, allowing them to review crucial information without ever having to look up from the patient. ‘The main computer sends the needed data to miniature
horizontal and vertical scanners in the control module that then
project the image through the headpiece’s optical element,
where a laser beam places it directly onto the user’s retina.

James says the data looks like it’s being projected onto a “big,
transparent TV screen that’s floating in space about an arm’s
length away from you.” ‘Wired

It reminds me of a scene from Spy Kids, which I saw with my son this weekend. The big sister is outfitting her little brother with his spy gear as they gear up to save their captured secret agent parents. She slips onto his face a set of sunglasses with a computer display on their inner surface superimposed on the visual field. He immediately says “Yecchh!” and she asks him what he sees. “You!” he replies (I guess you had to be there…)

Have You Hugged the Internet Today?. Today has been ‘Back the Net Day’, “a
one-man campaign to revive e-business by
encouraging people to buy online. Or send
online cards, or buy worthless tech stocks
… whatever, just log on now! The Internet
needs you!” Empathize with your local ex-dot.com-billionaire. The Standard

Annals of the Age of Depravity (cont’d.): Stepmother Forces Boy to Stitch Up Mouth

W’s Brave Old World: ‘New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd – who made endless fun
of Al Gore for his earth-tone sweaters, his Palm Pilot and his
connection to the book Love Story – isn’t one for making apologies.
But she’s come close to admitting that her election-year ridicule of
Gore might have helped put a dimwitted reactionary in the White
House.

“Forgive me, Al Gore,” Dowd wrote in a column on Bush’s drive to turn back the
clock on the environment and foreign policy. “I’m going hungry for a shred of
modernity.” With her second thoughts about making a mockery of Al Gore and his itnerest in the future, Dowd might not be alone.’ The Consortium

The Macedonian extremists may be dangerous, but they’re not crazy; peace is not the only option. by Paul Glastris, a senior fellow at the Western Policy
Center, who served as a speechwriter for President Clinton
and covered the war in Bosnia for U.S. News & World
Report. Slate

‘Yeti’s hair’ defies DNA analysis. “British scientists on the trail of the Yeti have found some of
the best evidence yet for the existence of the mythical
Himalayan creature — a sample of hair that has proved
impossible to identify.

Genetic tests on the hair, which was gathered from a tree in
Bhutan, have failed to match its DNA to that of another animal.
The findings, which have surprised sceptical researchers, raise
the strong possibility that the sample belongs to an as yet
undiscovered species.” The Times of London

After a comprehensive look at “Jesus through the ages” to illustrate how the Church has repeatedly reinvented him to maintain popular appeal, Fade to Black does its part “in helping the Church create the updated image of Jesus for the new Millennium”, with its Jesus 2000 Contest.

Memento Mori By Jonathan Nolan —

The short story that inspired the film Memento is available online in its entirety, courtesy of Esquire.

Whoops! An LA Times article on the joys of collecting wild edible mushrooms was inadvertently illustrated with a photograph of an amanita, which can be poisonous. Here’s the erratum.

Tolerance Ads To Infiltrate Web Sites Of Hate Groups. You may recall my coverage of the exploits of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center, on my most-worthy-charities list for many years for their effective work in breaking the back of rightwing hate groups. The SPLC has gotten Yahoo to provide $3 million woth of ad space over the next three years for “in-your-face ads urging tolerance and racial harmony”. While they’re going to be broadly disseminated, the organizers will be positioning them to come up especially for Yahoo users searching for hate sites and extremist chat rooms. Reportedly, Yahoo has allowed more than 100 “white pride and racialism” clubs among the thousands of community clubs it hosts.

The SPLC is also launching a new site, tolerance.org, with content like:

Click-on maps to locate hate groups and human rights organizations in your
city.

A hands-on primer on four hate groups on the Web and ”how they disguise
their message under a veneer of respectability.”

Tips such as ”101 Tools for Tolerance”; online forums for parents, teachers
and caregivers; and ”Planet Tolerance” for youth.

Six do-it-yourself, five-minute ”image association” tests for unconscious
biases: black and white race bias, age bias, gender bias, skin-color bias,
Asian-American bias and body-image bias. Results remain anonymous.

About time the pot called the kettle black? North Korea And Cuba Take Aim At Human Rights In US Genocide. Rape. Murder. Racism. Executions.

Systematic child abuse.

Such was the list of charges leveled Monday against the U.S.during the U.N.Human Rights Commission annual meeting.

And those pointing the finger? North Korea and Cuba.

Flocking & Schooling. A computer simulation shows that flocking/schooling behavior results from the application of three simple rules in a leaderless system. The original principles have been used to program realistic screen animations such as the stampede scene in The Lion King and bats swarming in several movies. There’s a link to a swarming program you can d/l. [via boing boing]

Email ‘joke’ leads to bus strike The Register

D.C. Officers Upbraided Over E-Mails. “Elected officials from Capitol Hill to city hall chastised D.C. police officers yesterday for sending racist, vulgar and homophobic messages on their squad car computers over the last year, and legal experts said the e-mails could expose the department to lawsuits and provide fodder for criminal defense attorneys.” The behavior was reportedly found in routine internal monitoring of patrol computer usage and email traffic, but The Register, in pointing to this Washington Post story, also blinked to this reprint of an alt.radio.scanner usenet group discussion on “how easy it is to intercept the supposedly secret traffic on
the Motorola mobile data terminals used by many police forces to access
criminal history and other sensitive information.”

Hanging Gardens of Where? “Name the Seven Wonders of the World.

OK, name one.

If you think of any of them, don’t worry. Few people besides 6th graders and ancient history scholars can
name them all. In fact, only one of the original ancient wonders survives: the Egyptian Pyramid at Giza, built
around 2600 B.C. and the oldest structures on the list. Over the millennia, the monuments have been
destroyed by earthquakes, fires, sandstorms and marauding armies.

Now there’s a campaign under way at new7wonders.com to pick seven new symbols of humanity’s greatest
achievements. So far, more than 2 million people from over 200 countries have cast their ballots, according to
the site… So far, the Mayan pyramids at Chichen Itza in Mexico top the list. Mexicans, by the way,
have cast 30 percent of the ballots in the poll, which concludes June 30.” Wired

Conan Doyle ghost story resurrected A rough and ready ghost story written 125 years ago by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle when he was an 18-year-old student will be published for
the first time today…

(R)ejected for publication at the time, (i)t has since been considered too
immature to appear in print.

But Conan Doyle’s executors were persuaded to publish after academics
suggested that the story featured characters they considered to be the
precursors of his most famous creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.” Telegraph

Writing Off Into the Sunset. The somewhat serpentine book-to-movie connection. Publishers Weekly

Earthquake As Artist [thanks, Abby]

The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…

g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?

i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.

 
        Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…

g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?

i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.

 
        Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…

g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?

i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.

 
        Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

The reality of the ‘internet toaster’: “An ingenious British student … has designed a (toaster) that grabs the weather forecast and burns it onto a piece of bread.” The Register

Did atheist philosopher Alfred Ayer see God when he ‘died’? The National Post

Tom Rapp is back! I just learned by hearing an interview on NPR this morning that the Sixties songsmith (who once finished ahead of Robert Zimmerman in a New York talent contest) released a new studio recording last year — A Journal Of The Plague Year.. The NPR interviewer commented that Rapp is well thought of by many younger musicians who weren’t even out of diapers when his band Pearls Before Swine — consisting of the loose assemblage of whoever Rapp gathered around him in the studio — was around… but this fan is old enough to remember him fondly from back then, and I still have them on vinyl and a rerelease of the first two, most interesting, Pearls albums One Nation Underground and Balaklava (originally on the venerable ESP Disk underground record label where Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Paul Bley, the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders among others resided) on CD. Sonic Youth and others acknowledge him as an inspiration, and there was a 1997 tribute album by lots of artists I’ve never heard of. Rapp has been a civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia for many years and says his work is too important for him to take time off to tour behind his new recording.

In browsing around for material on Rapp and Pearls Before Swine, I just hit upon this wonderful and encyclopedic site, Fuzz Acid & Flowers, ” (an) extensive guide to U.S. psych(edelic) and garage music 1964-1972.

The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…

g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?

i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.

 
        Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.