Fuelled by a willing media, America’s thirst for

paranoiac conjecture is reaching new heights of

lunacy. The Guardian

The rush to the death chamber: “Like Timothy McVeigh, more condemned prisoners are in a hurry to die. Does the trend undermine

justice?” Opponents say that it is the oppressive and prolonged conditions on death rows that “torture to death” many inmates convicted of capital crimes, leading them to give up their rights to appeals. Christian Science Monitor

Time twister. A Connecticut theoretical physicist with a lifelong passion for reading everything he could get his hands on about time travel thinks that “closed time-like loops” to take us back in time are achievable. A circulating beam of laser light can twist time into a loop; prohibitive amounts of energy are required unless you slow the light down, which we’ve just figured out how to do. New Scientist Time travel experimenters ought to make a pact that, when they figure out how to implement this scheme, they travel back in time to the present to tell us how to do it (grin).

Brain researchers discover role of key protein in converting short-term memories into lifelong ones EurekAlert!

One of Australia’s foremost tourist attractions to close for weeks. Uluru, formerly known

as Ayers Rock, will be closed for

a twenty-day mourning period as a show of

respect for an Aboriginal leader, unnamed for cultural reasons, who

died. Tour operators plead with the national government to overrule park managers’ decision, fearing the longterm consequences of even a brief closure to their business. Aboriginal authorities, to whom the Australian government returned the former Ayer’s Rock in 1985 and who have leased it back to the government in perpetuity for park use, consider it sacred and have always discouraged tourists from climbing Uluru. Ironically, the elder whose death is the occasion for the ban, was a leading proponent of the pragmatic value of opening the site to tourist access. CNN

“…(T)hings are messier, more beautiful and more dynamic than originally thought…” Astronomers find ‘spaghetti’ twirling around in galaxy: ‘Circulating the Milky Way is a stream of stars that has wound itself around the galaxy like a strand of spaghetti.

A consortium of researchers from three continents — called the “Spaghetti Collaboration” — found new evidence suggesting the existence of

three more star streams in the outer galaxy.’ Yes, a picture would be nice. EurekAlert!

Vatican comes out against pro-masturbation priest: “A Vatican Cardinal has advised Catholics not to

masturbate, after a lengthy study of a pro-masturbation

priest’s arguments.

Spanish reformist priest Marciano Vidal has criticised the

church, saying no one has proved masturbation is immoral.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described the act as very bad

indeed after the church conducted a three-year

investigation.” The Cardinal also got in his digs about homosexuality, concluding that only heterosexual relationships and chastity are sanctioned by the Church. Ananova

“The liberal obsession with installing hate crimes in every statute book is one of the saddest spectacles of our age.” CounterPunch

Mob phreakers rule Vegas phone network The Register

The Zero Year Curse: ‘Many Christians believe the election victory of George W. Bush was a direct answer to fervent prayer. But several

well-known prayer and intercessory groups are urging Americans not to stop praying, especially for the President and his safety.

They are citing what’s known as the “Zero Year Curse” and have issued “code red” prayer alerts. The groups are urging Christians

to pray especially for the physical safety of President Bush to combat the supposed curse, which is also known as the Tecumseh

curse,” about which I wrote during the election campaign. I had not ben aware that Reagan, the only ‘zero-year’ President since 1840 who did not die in office, is considered the “exception that proves the rule” by Christians; they attribute his survival to their prayer. Bizarrely, Christian fears in Y2K are aroused by predictions from New Age astrology groups. Superstition begets superstition, I guess… Christian Broadcasting Network While we’re at it, look here or here or here for discussion of that turn of phrase, “the exception that proves the rule.”

Review of God, Faith and Health by Jeff Levin. In bad faith: “A researcher offers evidence

that religion is good for your

health. Too bad so much of it is

bunk… Levin does a good job summarizing much of what we know

about the connection between spirituality and health.

Readers new to the field will probably find themselves

willing to believe that religious affiliation and activity are

probably a good marker for improved health, and may even

promote it. But they should be leery of those who try to take

the evidence much further than that, and be conscious of the

bad effects religion can sometimes have. Read a history of

the crusades for even more evidence on the negative effects

of religion on the public’s health.” Salon

“A sentimental view of the Marx Brothers misses the

point about them even more than it does about Chaplin.

They were nervous and resourceful fighters who rose from

the bottom and never forgot it, and they deployed the

slapstick aggressions of everyday life as a coarse stimulant

and a way of gaining private ends. ” The London Review of Books casts a serious eye on Groucho, loaded with anecdotes and quotes.

One of the earliest sketches to lodge in the memory of

lifelong fans was a skit about the Emperor Napoleon called

I’ll Say She Is! Its mode is runaway farce, a pastiche

without a prayer for logic, and any sample suggests about

as much as any other: ‘Our just is cause. We cannot lose. I

am fighting for France, Liberty, and those three snakes

hiding behind the curtain. Farewell, vis-à-vis Fifi D’Orsay.

If my laundry comes, send it general delivery, care of

Russia, and count it – I was a sock short last week.’

A

memory of the three brothers all playing Napoleon in their

tricorn hats would find its way into Finnegans Wake,

according to Thornton Wilder, a formidable scholar of

Joyce. ‘This is the three lipoleum Coyne Grouching down

in the living detch.’ When told of the homage in later years,

Groucho was well pleased and only a little sceptical. ‘Did a

New York policeman, on his way back to Ireland to see his

dear old Mother Machree, encounter Joyce in some peat

bog and patiently explain to him that, at the Casino Theater

at 39th and Broadway, there were three young Jewish

fellows running around the stage shouting to an indifferent

world that they were all Napoleon?’

Woodworking can be hazardous to health; both commercial and DIY. Environmental News Network On a related topic, concerns are mounting that pressure-treated lumber used in climbing structures in children’s playgrounds may expose them to considerable arsenic levels. Wooden climbing structures are being dismantled in several states.

Clichés – avoid these like the plague. “Corrupt men with dead souls simply repeat

stale phrases. Like Senator Trent Lott, they use the word suck without bothering

to let a picture form in their minds.

Since all language is “fossil

poetry,” almost every phrase is a cliché. We cannot write every phrase entirely

new or we’ll end up as incomprehensible as Gertrude Stein. But that is no excuse

for wallowing in the worst of the cesspool. We can strain against fate and fight

against habit and, who knows? maybe even create some new phrases in the

process. To leave a new phrase or word behind is to have expanded the

collective consciousness and to have more than justified one’s existence. Good

writers are the heroes who free us from the tyrannies of clichés and open up the

future. Vocabula Review

“A new class of music writers is on the rise — call them the rock

curmudgeons. Call them dangerous.” Is Rock ‘n’ Roll Dead? Only if You Aren’t Listening The author, chairman of the English Dept. at SIU, finds rock music criticism to be part of a larger critical problem:

The decision to stop listening, for a music critic — or stop watching,

for a film critic, or stop reading, for a literary critic — is a

perfectly legitimate one; to delimit, however arbitrarily, the

boundaries of one’s expertise and interests creates a field of

manageable size within which one might hope to make a

significant contribution. But surely there’s a world of difference

between admitting “I don’t find time to read a lot of

contemporary poetry,” on the one hand, and pronouncing that

“no significant poetry has been written since Robert Lowell,” on

the other. Chronicle of Higher Education