Space News: Humans on Europa: A Plan for Colonies on the Icy Moon of Jupiter. “Frigid and ice-covered, Europa is believed to harbor a giant liquid ocean beneath its

crusty arctic surface, a primordial sea whose tidal motions are driven by Jovian gravity and

warmed by intense radiation given off by the giant planet.

Yet despite the planet’s fearsome environment, members of the Artemis Society, a private venture

dedicated establishing a permanent, self-supporting community on the Moon, also have set their

sites on the creation of a human colony at Europa.” And: “NASA selected two proposals Wednesday for possible

fly-by missions to faraway Pluto, keeping alive the possibility it will launch a spacecraft to the

yet-unexplored planet.” And: Asteroid Belt Like Ours Spotted Around

Another Star. “Astronomers announced today what they say is

the first solid evidence for solid rocks orbiting another star, an asteroid belt that might be similar to

the one surrounding our own Sun between Mars and Jupiter.

If true, the research points to the possibility of potential Earth-like planets in the making, or planets

that have been destroyed, or possibly even a giant planet like Jupiter that, though unseen,

orchestrates the chaos of collisions that created the debris.” And: Recent X-ray data suggests massive black holes were fed by monstrous galactic collisions.

Julian’s RockList Site: “At the end of each year, critics & readers of music publications select their favorite albums and singles

of the year.

Lists from publications including: New Musical Express, Melody Maker, Select, Q, Mojo, Rolling Stone,

Spin, & Village Voice, various European publications and several independent fanzines from around the

globe plus the complete John Peel Festive 50’s are included on this site.

There are critic single and album lists from 1974 to 2000, pop poll results from 1952 to 2000, personal

lists from critics including Dave Marsh and Robert Christgau plus All Time Best Film Soundtrack and

Banned recordings.” [via MetaFilter]

Place yourself on the Political Compass. I’m a solid southwesterner, as if you couldn’t already tell.

FBI Shooter in Ruby Ridge Killing Can Be Tried. Amazing precedent by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals finds that Lon Horiuchi can be prosecuted on involuntary manslaughter charges brought by the state of Idaho after an errant shot killed Vicki Weaver during the Ruby Ridge standoff in August 1992. His “malice or excessive zeal” invalidates the immunity federal agents are usually given for violations of state law in the performance of their duties. “The appeals court decision marked a fresh bombshell in a case which has been taken up by

right-wing groups and anti-government activists as an example of how federal agencies allegedly

trample the rights of U.S. citizens.” The vehement dissenting opinion used the usual hackneyed verbiage about the “chilling effect” this would have on federal law enforcement. Reuters

Cluster Ballooning: “I’ve flown helium cluster balloons nine times over the past several years, making me the most active among the three or four people worldwide

who have ever flown cluster balloons (see History and Technical Notes). A summary of my flights follows, along with links to photographic

accounts of some of the individual flights.” He’s been as high as 21,400 ft., with bottled oxygen and Air Traffic Control clearance. His next flight over the Sierras this summer will be used in a video using ballooning to teach math and science concepts to schoolchildren.

An Amorphophallus titanum, the world’s largest flower at 8′, with a fragrance like rotting meat, is about to bloom at the Botany Dept. of the University of Wisconsin. The plant is native to Sumatra and there have been only 15 blooms in ‘captivity’ in the U.S. The link takes you to a live webcam watching and waiting. Write me, please, if you happen to log in and find that the blessed event has occurred. [via MetaFilter]

Romany gypsies are threatening to sue IBM over its alleged

involvement in the Holocaust. ‘In a case similar to that brought and then dropped by Washington

DC law firm Cohen, Milfield, Hausfeld and Toll earlier this year, the

action revolves around IBM’s Hollerith tabulating machinery.

This is believed to have been used by the Nazis to track and identify

their victims.

“The spontaneous, unceasing, self-willed delivery to IBM Germany of

IBM machines….is a conscious and deliberate act of participation in

an administrative organisation dedicated to…racial destruction,”

said (the) groups’ lawyer…’ The Register

At last they’ve found life after evolution: “Entrants for this year’s Aventis Prize,

the world’s most important science

book award, have departed from the

usual formula…” Telegraph UK

Carnegie Mellon University engineers are working on the next-generation pogo stick; and Pogo is working on a 240 g. full-color touchscreen device smaller than a 3″x5″ card with full PIM, MP3 player, GSM and GPRS integrated phone, SMS text messaging, email, and HTML and flash web browsing.

Medical eyes glaze over Web hypnosis: ‘Medical authorities have denounced as “highly inappropriate” and “grossly negligent” a

plan by celebrity hypnotist Martin St James to offer his services over the Internet…

From June 22, at a monthly cost of $US25, Internet users will be able to log on and

self-hypnotise themselves to stop smoking or relieve stress. Mr St James, who says he helped cure himself from cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome

with self-hypnosis, will also offer free services, including suicide counselling.’ [Not only inappropriate and negligent; what happens if the user’s computer crashes or they lose their ‘net connection before they bring themselves out of trance (grin)?]

R.I.P. Francisco Varela (1946-2001) . John Brockman describes him on The Edge:

‘Francisco, an experimental and theoretical biologist, studied what he termed “emergent selves” or “virtual identities.” His was an immanent view of reality, based on metaphors derived from self-organization and Buddhist-inspired epistemology rather than on those derived from engineering and information science. He presented a challenge to the traditional AI view that the world exists independently of the organism, whose task is to make an accurate model of that world — to “consult” before acting. His nonrepresentationalist world — or perhaps “world-as-experienced” — has no independent existence but is itself a product of interactions between organisms and environment. He first became known for his theory of autopoiesis (“self production”), which is concerned with the active self-maintenance of living systems whose identities remain constant while their components continually change. Varela is tough to categorize. He was a neuroscientist who became an immunologist. He was well informed about cognitive science and was a radical critic of it, because he was a believer in “emergence” — not the vitalist idea promulgated in the 1920s (that of a magical property that emerges inexplicably from lower mechanical operations) but the idea that the whole appears as a result of the dynamics of its component parts. He thought that classic computationalist cognitive science is too simplemindedly mechanistic. He was knowledgeable and romantic at the same time.’

Bush Speak: An Interview with Mark Crispin Miller, the author of The Bush Dyslexicon: The

Saying of President Dubya. ‘(Miller) sees more in these verbal tics and grammatical bungles than just plain idiocy. In fact, the professor of media ecology at New

York University credits Bush for speaking a language television producers and talk show hosts can understand: one of superfice and shallowness, of one-liners and aw-

shucks answers. As Miller argues in his introduction:

“[T]his book is meant to shed some light on the propaganda of our time. The Dyslexicon attempts to give the lie to that enormous wave of

propaganda — a joint production of the GOP and the major media — whereby George W. Bush was forced on us as President, then, after his inauguration, hailed nearly

universally for his amazing charm, his democratic ease, his rare ability to be all things to all Americans, and so on. Our experience of this transparent coup has been

disorienting from the start.” ‘AlterNet

OxyCon Game: Anatomy of a Media-made Drug Scare. The author contends that the sensationalistic media coverage is untrue and irredeemably besmirches the image of a drug acknowledged as a major breakthrough in the treatment of debilitating pain. He says that “experts” deny that abuse of the drug outpaces growth in legitimate prescribed usage and that its illegal use is only a problem where “the usual street drugs” are not available. Well, I’m sorry, but this is typical muckraking journalism, and it’s confused and inaccurate. As someone observing from the front lines of the treatment of substance abuse, I can assure you how prevalent abuse of OxyContin has become in the past eighteen to twenty four months… among prescribed users who are better at scamming doctors to get it than doctors are in recognizing a con or saying no when they recognize it. The “dual diagnosis” patients we see with substance abuse and personality disorders or mood disorders, to listen to them, have the worst migraine headaches imaginable, or the most persistent lower back pain after their wokplace injury or motor vehicle accident, or insist they need their Oxy for dental pain or the dull, subjective ache of fibromyalgia, with a frequency far in excess of epidemiological data on the co-occurrence of these conditions.

Ridiculing concern by likening it to the ’30’s film Reefer Madness, as is done here, is the worst sort of ignorant yellow journalism.While War on Drugs hysteria may fuel publicity about the latest drug menace, that doesn’t mean there is not an epidemic of abuse. And you can expect one any time there’s a major therapeutic advance in pain management. AlterNet

So What Else is New? Bush brother blamed for unfair election: ‘Thousands of black electors in Florida were disenfranchised in last November’s election by an electoral system tainted by “injustice, ineptitude and inefficiency” a leaked report by the US civil rights commission says.

It accuses Governor Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, and his secretary of state, Katherine Harris, of “gross dereliction” of duty, saying they “chose to ignore mounting evidence” of the problems. ‘ The Guardian

Does the Constitution protect the right to talk

about how to foil copyright protection? Princeton computer scientist Edward Felton broke the music industry’s SDMI copy protection as a mathematical exercise but was scared off from publishing his results by threat of a lawsuit from the music industry. Nevertheless, bootleg copies of his, quite technical, paper are all over the ‘net. Now, with Electronic Frontier Foundation legal assistance, he’s suing the RIAA and the U.S. Justice Dept. for the right to publish, hoping to invalidate the “anti-circumvention” clause of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Salon

R.I.P. John Platt, unassuming British rock critic and cultural historian of the late ’60’s. New York Press

I wrote awhile ago about the Java toaster which gets a weather forecast off the net and burns the appropriate symbol into your morning toast. Here are the photos. The Register

Archaeologists Home In on Body Ornament Origins. The origins of human self-adornment have been shrouded in a veil of mystery. A new report finds archaeological evidence of widespread, persistent and standardized use of body ornamentation more than 40,000 years ago, emerging more or less simultaneously in Europe, Asia and Africa. It is suggested that, with burgeoning human numbers, the frequency of encounters with outsiders grew sufficiently to make it useful “to convey to strangers aspects of social identity, such as group

membership, gender, age and marital status.” Scientific American

“My hypothesis is that the genome is an internal expression of the ecosystem in which it lives.” Philosophical tract questions wisdom of genetic modification: ‘The relationship between the genetic material of living things and the ecosystems in which they live is

deep and changeable, says Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental

Research in Takoma Park, Maryland. In an essay that is being embraced as an important philosophical

advance by some environmentalists, Makhijani argues that tinkering with genes may upset the

environment in much more complicated and far-reaching ways than have been considered.’ BioMedNet

Researchers find many parents have ‘fever phobia’. “Despite the knowledge that childhood fever is a natural

body defense and not a disease, many parents continue to have a

”fever phobia” that leads to overtreatment and misconceptions,

according to a study published yesterday.” Boston Globe

The Botany of Desire: How Grasses Use People to Fight Trees New York Times

Toward True Security, a report issued jointly by the Federation of American Scientists, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council, blasts the National Missile Defense intentions of the Shrub administration as destabilizing, rather than enhancing, nuclear security. Here’s the Washington Post‘s coverage of the report. To claim that the most immediate nuclear threat is from so-called “rogue states” is preposterous. The twin threats of further nuclear proliferation and an accidental Russian attack from a failure of its aging command-and-control and early-warning systems are far more dangerous. Even apart from NMD, the U.S.’s maintenance of a large nuclear arsenal on hairtrigger alert is an outmoded cold war posture that could lead to accidental nuclear war in the face of such a threat. The FAS report was written by a 16-expert panel including former weapons designers and disarmament negotiators. In addition to giving up on NMD, they suggest a nuclear posture declaring our weapons to be deterrent only; decrying rapid-launch options, scrapping pre-set targeting plans, unilaterally reducing the size of our arsenal and retiring all tactical (battlefield) nuclear weapons, “dismantling them in a transparent manner.” We should commit not to resume nuclear testing and affirm a commitment to eventual disarmament. We should convince Russia to follow suit.

Sorry to be so shrill. I cover disarmament issues so often in FmH, as passé as they may seem, because of the extent to which I think we have to awaken from a deluded dream if we do not recognize the threat under which we still live and the insanity of the current administration’s enhancement of our jeopardy. Sorry, it’s abstract, but think about it.

Baby’s sex not linked to shape of mother: “The widely held belief that a woman’s body shape can influence the sex

of her children has been undermined by a new study.

Folklore has it that a curvy “hour glass” body-shape is supposed to

produce girls and a more androgynous shape, boys. Evolutionary

biologists thought this was because a a less curvy body is supposed to have

higher levels of the male sex hormone testosterone, which favours more

male conceptions.” Telegraph

Celebrate Remote Control Anniversary! “Tomorrow (June 7) is an important day

for couch potatoes: It’s the 45th anniversary of the marketing of the first TV

remote control.” Remember the 1956 Zenith Space Commander?

Phil Agre of the Red Rock Eaters mailing list, who is a nut for cheap writing implements, pointed me to this Washington Post blink about the banning of gel pens around the country.

Landmark Ruling Secures Native Land Rights: “On May 12th, 2001, the High Court in Sarawak, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, issued an extraordinary ruling that could have

sweeping consequences for indigenous land rights. After two years of litigation, the court upheld the customary rights of the Iban village

Rumah Nor, finding the Borneo Paper and Pulp company did not have the right to destroy Rumah Nor’s rainforest.” [via Utne Reader]

Aroma Therapy: In The Military, It’s Known As ‘Nonlethal Weapons Development’. Cognitive scientists research enhancing offensive odors in the interest of national security. Amusing mini-history of the ‘stink bomb’ included.

Least Common Denominator Dep’t.: Moviegoers confused: ‘Preview audiences who’ve watched

Steven Spielberg’s new movie, A.I., are having some problems with the

film’s title.

The initials “A.I.” stand for “artificial intelligence,” but exit polls suggest

many people think the title of the movie is “A-1” — just like the steak sauce.

New York gossip reporter Baird Jones claims the name confusion is so

serious that studio executives are considering putting the words “artificial

intelligence” in parenthesis after the title — a prospect that Spielberg is

furious over.’ [I could understand being confused going into the film, but coming out??!!]

The Intelligence Online news service’s list of “sites chosen by our journalists”: a rich set of links to intelligence services, foreign government sites, sites about business intelligence, computer security, infowar, terrorism, nonproliferation, money laundering, Muslim fundamentalism, etc.

A reader asks:

“I’ve been reading fmh for over a year now (I think; it’s so hard to keep “track), and love it. One thing has puzzled me, though: why do you call it “‘blinking’ and not ‘linking’?”

My reply:

I explained that once way back at the beginning. Just as a ‘blog’ is a ‘weblog’, a ‘blink’ is a ‘weblink’ . A friend suggested that there ought to be a special term for it and I ran with it. To take the wordplay further, just as ‘we_blog’, ‘we_blink’. I have yet to see it picked up by anyone else, though, so maybe I should give it a rest…

The Media Theory Site. “Social theory for fans of popular culture. Popular culture for fans of social theory.”

Time to Beta Test the New Wetware: an interview with Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky. “Basically, as an artist, my work is an

investigation into how culture gets made. I guess you could say its process

oriented… That doesn’t mean I’m going to sit down everyday and write “cultural

crit” stuff. Folks who I like to call “low level cultural bureaucrats” do that… it’s a

false and ultimately sterile way to try to beat culture into some kind of formula

that they then try to stamp their name on to make some kind of “career” and it’s

a modus operandi that disgusts me….” frontwheeldrive

Humble Pie: “As Bush dusts off the Reagan cowboy hat, there’s a growing consensus among even our

historical allies that America’s leadership role is neither inevitable nor advisable. If the

president doesn’t tread more carefully, he’ll find himself inflaming old animosities and, worse,

instigating new ones. It’s one thing to antagonize potential enemies–but do we really want to

antagonize our friends?” The American Prospect

California’s Progressive Mosaic: “Does California’s shift leftward signal

progressive change nationally?

California is more than just the Democrats’ electoral anchor, however. Increasingly, a number

of its cities are coming to look like Justice Louis Brandeis’s “laboratories of

democracy”–enacting minimum wage, health care, and worker-rights ordinances that would

normally be the responsibility of the federal government (if only the feds could be interested in

the conditions of working-class life). In city after city, a civic left has emerged in California,

with the state’s new-model labor movement–the most dynamic in the country–at its core.” The American Prospect

Sherry Stringfield returns to “ER”

We’re Just Dying to Work with You: “(M)any of the greatest (deceased)

actors in history are as busy as ever, toiling overtime, doing

everything from celebrity endorsements to cameo film roles.

Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, James

Cagney: all are proving veritable cash cows for their respective

estates, digitally reanimated for a whole new audience. And,

with the Screen Actors Guild strike threatening to paralyse

Hollywood, this year could be boom time for dead thesps.” Sunday Times of London

New Book Opens Hubble’s Space Images to Blind [thanks to David E. Anderson]

Thinking ‘drains the brain’. Too much thinking can be exhausting; the effect is more pronounced in seniors. Research demonstrates glucose drain from key brain areas with concentration. BBC

Mothers’ hormones determine tomboys. Ananova

Customized Computer Case Modifications: windows, blowholes, neon lighting and strobes, custom colors…

India to Levitate Flying Car: “An Indian boffin appears to have got the jump on his US counterparts

with a 12-rotor jambusting flying car.

Engineer Rakesh Goel expects the vehicle will be in production by

2004. He claims it is safer than a helicopter and ideal in crowded

cities.

Mr Goel does seem, however, to have overlooked the

consequences of giving the subcontinent’s legendary drivers access

to something which, in addition to left, right, forwards and

backwards, can also go up and down.” The Register

Israeli Survives Two Disasters: “Eli Yadid is the luckiest guy in Israel. Or perhaps the unluckiest.

When a building floor collapsed in Jerusalem, killing 23, Yadid was standing just beyond the killing

zone. When a suicide bomber blew himself up in from of a Tel Aviv disco, killing 20 Israelis and

himself, Yadid was just arriving.” He also survived a terrorist attack on his school when he was 16. AP

Johnny Paul Penry’s Texas death sentence overturned by Supreme Court. Penry is the severely retarded confessed murderer whose first death sentence appeal in 1989 was upheld by the Supreme Court in a precedent-setting decision in which they found capital punishment of the retarded to be constitutional but ruled that juries must be properly instructed in how to weigh the defendant’s mental retardation as a mitigating factor in sentencing. The Court at that time sent the case back to Texas for a new trial, and Texas still didn’t manage to get it right; the current Court ruling upholds Penry’s lawyers’ contention that the instructions to the jury in the second trial were no better than the first. This may all be a moot point, because the Supreme Court has pending before it another case, from North Carolina, in which it has agreed to reconsider the more basic question it rejected in the 1989 Penry case — whether execution of the mentally retarded fundamentally violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Dallas Morning News

R.I.P. Anthony Quinn, who died of respiratory failure in a Boston hospital Sunday at age 86.

Patience, a Password Led to Standoff’s End. “With visits and food, authorities earned trust of Idaho siblings. Tales of

neglect and filthy environment emerge.” LA Times

The Reviewer Who Wasn’t There Sony Pictures, Columbia’s parent, was forced to admit last week that David Manning, a reviewer whose glowing comments about even the most lame Columbia films, is a fake dreamed up by the studio’s advertising department.

The real question is why Sony had to conceive the counterfeit critic to begin with, given the world of movie junkets, where normal reporting standards don’t apply.

Reading the glowing newspaper-ad recommendations for even the lamest movie, you might wonder if those quoted critics are real. Unlike Manning, they are. Many are habitués of the junket circuit, an all-expenses-paid gravy train where the studios give journalists free rooms and meals at posh hotels and the reporters return the favor with puffy celebrity profiles and enthusiastic review blurbs. Sometimes studio executives will suggest what kind of quotes they need, and even shape the reviews to suit the studio’s goals. If a studio wants its movie pegged as “This year’s ‘Alien’,” the reviewer delivers precisely that. No one complains, and bad movies end up with great quotes. The junket troops are a mostly anonymous crowd working for obscure outlets like Wireless Magazine and Inside Reel, which helps explain why nobody—even people within Sony and Revolution—noticed that Manning was a sham. MSNBC

“Contacting the Congress is a very up-to-date database of congressional contact information for the 107th Congress. As of June 1,

2001 there are 509 email addresses (of which 201 are Web-based email homepages), and 535 WWW homepages known for

the 540 members of the 107th Congress. More traditional ground mail addresses are available for all Congressmembers.

Contacting the Congress has received many emails recently reporting that email addressed to Congressmembers is

bouncing back. It appears now that a recent study has confirmed what has been long suspected, Capitol Hill is ill-equipped for

email (the study refered to in the article is available online). This, combined with recent stories on problems with the Senate Email

Servers suggests that if your message is really important you should consider sending it via fax or phone (numbers

available here). It also suggests you should only mail your members of Congress, since spamming everyone in Congress just

contributes to this problem.”

My representative is one of the 31 who does not receive correspondence via an email address…

All-You-Can-Eat Economy is Making the World Sick, says the venerable Worldwatch Institute: “We’re eating more meat, drinking more coffee, popping more pills, driving further and getting fatter. Around the world we are consuming more than

ever before: but more than one billion people still don’t have access to safe water; natural disasters are taking a worsening toll; and we have yet to

vanquish some of the world’s biggest killers-diarrhea, malaria and AIDS-reports a new publication by the Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2001: The

Trends That are Shaping Our Future.”

From Neat Net Tricks:

CONFIRM.TO. There is a little-known feature that hides an HTML tag

which in turn triggers a relay system to post a read receipt to the

sender. The tag is planted in Outlook Express 4.x and Netscape Messenger

4.0 or later (and possibly any email software that supports HTML message

browsing). The message can be sent on any email software by placing

“confirm.to” in an address as: “anyuser@sample.com.confirm.to” (without

the quotes). When addressed this way, an email relay system intercepts

the mail, plants the tag in the message, and then delivers it to the

recipient to which it is addressed. When the recipient displays the

message online, the html tag triggers the relay system to send a read

receipt to the sender. No software or download is required for this to

work. The relay is performed by Postel Services. The first 30 such

relays per month are free and no sign-up is required. Greater usage is

available for less than 2 cents per receipt by setting up an account at

their site, http://www.postel.co.kr .

Discovery of ‘tidal giant’–a new Egyptian dinosaur–reported in Science. ‘The partial skeleton of a massive sauropod dinosaur, unearthed at an Egyptian site that its discoverers call “dinosaur heaven,” makes its

debut in the 1 June issue of the international journal Science. Dubbed Paralititan stromeri, the dinosaur is one of the largest ever discovered

from the Cretaceous period (about 146 to 65 million years ago) in Africa, and may be the second most massive dinosaur ever found.’ EurekAlert!

The Irony Scare: “how did a literary device become a public enemy?” The New Republic

The left should love globalisation: ‘Opponents of globalisation may have finally met their

match. The challenge comes not from the sharp suits of the

World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary

Fund, the World Bank, or even from Clare Short, but from a

middle-aged academic who is no stranger to direct-action

techniques. He is the man accused of leading the Italian

revolutionary left in the 1970s: Antonio Negri. Thirty-odd

years after he achieved notoriety in the student revolts of

1968, his new book, Empire (published by Harvard

University Press), has been hailed as “a communist manifesto

for our times”. It is a riposte both to the Jeremiahs on the

left who see globalisation as an unalloyed evil and to the

fatalists of the right who see it as a fait accompli that we

are powerless to change.’ New Statesman

A dermatologist writes: “(The skin disease) Tinea imbricata has an ornate appearance, but its precise distribution has been poorly defined

Clinical diagnosis based on appearance of their diseased skin is that Gungan inhabitants of the planet Naboo are infected with tinea

imbricata.

Indirect evidence suggests that Gungans have had contact with human populations who have this fungal infection

The occurrence of tinea imbricata in Gungans may help answer questions about extraterrestrial interventions in human affairs. ” British Medical Journal

A banner day for neo-Nazis: “Hatewatch, the website that monitored the proliferation

of hate sites on the internet, closed last month claiming that it

had outlived its usefulness. … (But) hate groups are increasingly turning to

newsgroups and email.” Salon

“Maybe what depresses human beings is not the great roar and thrust of history, but the very opposite: its absence.” A generation without a cause: “This week, I’ve come across at least three references in the news to increased levels of depression and anxiety in young

adults. To wit: It is being reported the level of depression and other psychiatric disorders has risen in every group of 18- to

24-year-old Americans — one generation to the next — since the Second World War.

I expect you’ll be hearing more about this as two new books make the rounds. Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life

in Your Twenties by New York journalists Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, describes the aimlessness and anxiety of this

generation of college graduates. The Myth of Maturity, an excellent book by Cambridge sociologist Terri Apter, approaches the

same subject from a more scholarly vantage point, arguing on the basis of careful study that young adults are remaining caught

in a twilight of adolescence, unable to transform their relationships into marriages and their jobs into careers.” The National Post

The sizzling sleepers of summer: “As the mainstream press promotes The Mummy Returns, Pearl Harbor and the other vacuous, shrieking offspring from its

news-tainment corporate parents, a more skeptical part of the audience has quietly been taking in more adventurous sorts of films. Below, Salon’s

critics take a look (in some cases a second look) at the season’s most compelling, if less hyped, films…”

The Pursuit of Happiness: “Lithium helped Fiona Campbell cope with her

childhood traumas, but she says, the drug brings its

own problems.” The problems are worse, or at least the price less worth paying, if as with this author the lithium recipient does not have frank bipolar (manic depressive) illness. The Guardian

Review of Warrior Lovers: erotic fiction, evolution and female sexuality: “Did Starsky have a thing for Hutch? Was Kirk in love with Spock? What if Bodie got it on with Doyle? These

unlikely plots are standard in a cult literary phenomenon known as ‘slash literature’: a genre of romance fiction

that pairs heterosexual characters from television and film in fantasy romantic relationships. (The term ‘slash’

refers to the punctuation mark — Starsky/Hutch — that unites the lovers.)

In Warrior Lovers, Catherine Salmon, an evolutionary psychologist and slash author, and Donald Symons, a

world expert on the evolution of sexuality, place ‘slash’ in the context of our evolved sexual psychology… Sticking close to the science, Catherine and Donald argue that slash provides a unique insight into human

sexuality. By comparing slash with mainstream romance, they reveal the essential ingredients of women’s

sexual fantasies. The ideal is a relationship in which the man does not lose interest as the woman’s looks

fade. Instead the relationship is a lifelong, shared adventure with a committed equal, based not on ephemeral

lust, but on enduring loyalty and trust.” AlphaGalileo

Today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day points to a mind-boggling cosmological event clear across the universe. “Last March, telescopic instruments in Earth and space tracked a tremendous explosion that occurred across the universe. A nearly

unprecedented symphony of international observations began abruptly on 2000 March 1 when Earth-orbiting RXTE, Sun-orbiting Ulysses, and

asteroid-orbiting NEAR all detected a 10-second burst of high-frequency gamma radiation. … Major telescopes across the globe soon began playing along as GRB 000301C came into view, detailing unusual behavior. The Hubble

Space Telescope captured the above image and was the first to obtain an accurate distance to the explosion, placing it near redshift 2, most of the way

across the visible universe… Even today, no one is sure what type of explosion

this was. Unusual features of the light curve are still being studied, and no host galaxy appears near the position of this explosion.”

David Anderson at Metaforage wrote me that a source of his at NASA says the explosion has finally been identified. It was Trent Lott’s reaction to the news that Jim Jeffords was leaving the G.O.P.

The NPR show Marketplace has generated a simple weekly rating of our collective, subjective economic experience by polling “people-components” in various regions and endeavors. This week’s R.E.A.L. Index is 7 on a scale of 1-10.

The Boston Globe resident hi-tech weblogger DC Denison writes about the hippest hangout in my hometown; I’d never heard of it:

“The Rack, that upscale pool hall/celebrity jock hang-out next to Faneuil

Hall Marketplace, is not where I’d normally look for the latest in wireless

technology. But now that I’m here, at 7 p.m. on a weeknight, the idea is

starting to make more sense.

This place is an epicenter of electronic cacophony and techno tack (stuff

that you can do technologically, but probably shouldn’t). Sports highlights

are looping on video screens, a closed-circuit TV is pumping out an

in-house channel, a Fox TV sports kiosk is waiting to capture “fan

comments,” an Internet web cam is scanning the premises, and off in a

corner a band is covering Jimmy Buffett tunes. Oh yeah, and many of the

black-clad denizens have cellphones pressed very tightly to their heads,

trying to communicate over the din. This place is electro-diversion,

short-attention-span heaven (or hell depending on your view on info

overload.)

His point in blinking to The Rack is to talk about its innovative use of handhelds:

But wait, there’s more! Last week the club shoe-horned in a fleet of small

electronic gadgets: Touchpak hand-held wireless entertainment units,

which are intended to divert and entertain customers while they are waiting

for tables: pool or dining. I picked one up from a hostess just inside the

door.

A Touchpak turns out to be a standard PDA, a Compaq iPaq, customized

and loaded up with news, sports, movie clips, shopping sites, and tiny

little ads. Here’s where it intersects with Rack-land: it alerts you when

your table is ready. So it’s a beefier version of the pagers many

restaurants use.

And here’s the tech angle: Touchpak uses wireless LAN technology,

which means there’s now an antenna on the roof of The Rack that allows

the restaurant to communicate with the devices in a confined area

(basically the restaurant and the outdoor patio). Because it’s a closed

system, the bandwidth can be much higher, allowing the streaming of

movie trailers, for example.

For ten minutes or so, I impersonated an anxious patron waiting for a table

and used my unit to navigated between Reuters news, sports, and The

Rack’s menu (eventually The Rack hopes to allow patrons to order from

these units). It was mildly diverting, another option piled on to The Rack’s

squawking collection of electronic boxes.

Note to the criminally minded: The Rack feels reasonably protected from

your larcenous inclinations. First, patrons are asked to leave a credit card

or driver’s license as a kind of deposit. Second, a tracking device sounds

an alarm, and notifies security, when a device gets too close to an exit.

Third, Touchpak is working on a system that will permanently disable

these devices when they are outside the network.”

The Rack’s site has a webcam where the curious can remotely check out the ambience during open hours. [The closest I’m ever likely to get to such a with-it place…]

How to optimize your schmooze technique.

How do you stack up against Nielsen’s stats on average activity by a web user in April 2001?

Over Three Million Chinese Drink Their Own Urine Reuters

Popular Thyroid Drug Faces Deadline. In bizarre FDA news, the manufacturer of the drug Synthroid, which has been used for at least 35 years to treat hypothyroidism, has to file a new drug application and provide proof of efficacy and safety because its active ingredient levothyroxine has never been formally approved for use. AP

New Study Sees U.S. AIDS Rates Jump. On the twentieth anniversary of the Centers for Disease Control’s recognition of the new epidemic, a new government survey suggests that a new generation of gay men numbed by incessant AIDS warnings are contracting it “at alarming rates”. AP

Turn Buried Bodies Into Organic Soil – Scientist. “A Swedish scientist investigating the most

environmentally friendly form of burial has found a way of quickly

recycling corpses into soil enricher, the Swedish daily Svenska

Dagbladet reported on Friday.

The new green method, approved by the Church of Sweden, turns

the human body into organic matter in a few weeks compared with

coffin burial, in which the body takes between 50 and 60 years to

decompose.

It was developed by biologist Susanne Wiigh-Masak, who found that

cremation emits poisonous gases with unknown effects, making it even

less eco-friendly than conventional burial.

In the new green method, the body is immersed in a bath of liquid

nitrogen, producing up to 65 pounds of pure organic matter, which is

put into a thin, easily degradable coffin.

This is then buried near the ground surface and enriches the soil in the

same way as autumn leaves.”

“I bequeathed myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles….”

– Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)

Is Astrology Sociology? 63-year-old French astrology columnist and astrologer to French president Mitterrand has just earned a PhD in sociology at the Sorbonne after successfully defending her controversial 900-page dissertation “The Epistemological Situation of Astrology in

Relation to the Ambivalent Fascination/Rejection of Postmodern Societies”. The news has set off a front-page storm of protest in France between academics concerned about shoddy scholarship and those who feel a maverick discipline is being scapegoated, “… between the followers of Émile Durkheim and followers of Weber. Or, to put it

another way, between positivists who rely on quantitative techniques and

objective measures when assessing social life and phenomenologists who attach

greater importance to subjective experience and emotion. ” New York Times

Scientists View New Wave of Cancer Drugs; “long-awaited payoff from decades of research into the molecular biology of cancer.” New York Times

Happy birthday, Johnny Weissmuller (06/02/04-01/22/84)

Bizarre Versions of How Nepal Royals Died: “Though the streets of Kathmandu were mostly calm, there were

occasional protests against official explanations for the massacre, first

blamed on the crown prince himself and then on an automatic

weapon exploding by accident.

‘According to the information received by us, they were injured

when an automatic weapon suddenly exploded,’ state radio

announced Sunday…. The radio announcement replaced an earlier explanation given by

officials that Crown Prince Dipendra had shot his parents and then

himself in what media reports described as a row over his choice of

bride.

The 29-year-old prince, declared king by the Himalayan country’s

privy council Saturday, was still critically ill on Sunday, the radio said.

His uncle, Prince Gyandendra, named regent since the new king was

in a coma, also issued a statement suggesting the massacre was the

result of an automatic weapon going off by accident. He was out of

town at the time of the killings.” Reuters

To the citizens of the United States:

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Then look up “aluminium” . Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up “vocabulary”.

Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up “interspersed” .

2. There is no such thing as “US English” . We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn’t that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American” football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.

Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game.

Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. Merde is French for “shit”.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day.

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

To the citizens of the United States:

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Then look up “aluminium” . Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up “vocabulary”.

Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up “interspersed” .

2. There is no such thing as “US English” . We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn’t that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American” football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.

Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game.

Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. Merde is French for “shit”.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day.

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

To the citizens of the United States:

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Then look up “aluminium” . Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up “vocabulary”.

Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up “interspersed” .

2. There is no such thing as “US English” . We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn’t that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American” football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.

Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game.

Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. Merde is French for “shit”.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day.

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

The 13 Scariest White Guys in America. Don Hazen: ” The bully is back in American politics. Intimidation, dismissal of

majority opinion, denial of scientific facts and aggressive scapegoating —

these tactics have once again taken center stage. Blatant propaganda

feeds fear and distrust, and the powerful and the privileged wallow in

the spoils.” AlterNet

To the citizens of the United States:

In the light of your failure to elect a President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchial duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Then look up “aluminium” . Check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up “vocabulary”.

Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up “interspersed” .

2. There is no such thing as “US English” . We will let Microsoft know on your behalf.

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn’t that hard.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen, but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up half way through.

6. You should stop playing American football. There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American football is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays American” football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football.

Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game.

Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US rugby sevens side by 2005.

7. You should declare war on Quebec and France, using nuclear weapons if they give you any merde. The 98.85% of you who were not aware that there is a world outside your borders should count yourselves lucky. The Russians have never been the bad guys. Merde is French for “shit”.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 8th will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called Indecisive Day.

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

10. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us crazy.

Thank you for your cooperation.

“Girl pressures. Mafia beefs. High blood pressure. A difficult boss. Listen to what’s bugging two real-life New York gangsters in these secret FBI wiretaps. The ‘Frank & Fritzy Show’ is the inaugural series on The Wiretap Network, with a new episode every week. Great solution for your end-of-season Sopranos jones.

Bad Heir Day. In a New York Times op-ed piece, Paul Krugman calls the Bush tax plan “bizarre”, “weird”, “a joke. But if the administration has its way, the joke is on

us. For the bill is absurd by design. The administration, knowing that its tax cut

wouldn’t fit into any responsible budget, pushed through a bill that contains the

things it wanted most — big tax cuts for the very, very rich — and used

whatever accounting gimmicks it could find to make the overall budget impact

seem smaller than it is. The idea is that when the absurdities become apparent —

when mobs of angry junior vice presidents from New Jersey start demonstrating

against the A.M.T., or when elderly multimillionaires develop a suspiciously high

rate of fatal accidents — Congress will always respond with further tax cuts. And

if the result of all those tax cuts is to prevent the government from ever providing

the things Mr. Bush promised during the campaign, like prescription drug

coverage under Medicare or increased aid to education — well, that was also

part of the plan.”

Many in G.O.P. Remain Bullish in Face of Senate Loss: “Confronting the loss of the first

all-Republican government in nearly 50

years, after a scant four months in power,

many conservatives profess to be

undaunted… Conservatives have concluded that it is Mr. Jeffords who is to blame for the

sudden Senate power shift, not them — an argument that Mr. Lott was more than

happy to embrace on his own behalf.” New York Times Mr. Lott even admits he included Jeffords in the ‘Singing Senators’ barbershop quartet to “keep (him) feeling like he was part of the family.” [the ingrate!] And Joe Conason: Ready for Slime Time:Critics Slander

Jeffords. “These conservatives, who in previous years have welcomed every Democratic

turncoat with glee and gloating, didn’t notice how ridiculous they sounded when

they suddenly began to wail about the treachery of the Jeffords move. Nor did they

seem to realize that by spraying him with venom, they might gradually push other

moderate Republicans toward a similar crisis… Mr. Jeffords was well aware that his decision would rupture old

friendships, as he regretfully predicted the other day. After observing how his

party’s enforcers treated the Clintons and anyone else who got in their way in

recent years, he may well have anticipated the treatment he’s getting now.” New York Observer Jeffords receives death threats after party switch, accompanied by plainclothes Capitol Police since his announcement. USAToday

And good ol’ Molly Ivins says in The Nation: “When Texas sent the nation Billy Bob Forehead for President, we did, in fact, try to

warn y’all about (Karl) Rove. He not only goes after Democrats, his record of attacking

Republicans who cross him is equally distinguished. Rumor and slur campaigns are

among his favorite methods. He started using dirty tricks when he was with the College

Republicans and has since been linked to the rumors that Ann Richards is a lesbian (a

perennial for any woman in politics), that John McCain is crazy as a result of his years in

prison camp and several other notable doozies. The campaign against McCain in South

Carolina during the primaries was a Rove classic. McCain was simultaneously rumored

to be gay and a tomcat who cheats on his wife, who in turn was rumored to be a drug

addict. The news that McCain has a black daughter (adopted from Bangladesh) was

spread judiciously under the radar of the national media. Anonymous leaflets put under

the windshield wipers of cars parked at white fundamentalist churches on Sunday are

good for this purpose, as are certain radio call-in shows.”

McCain is Considering Leaving the G.O.P. Trying to build a centrist wing of the Republicans, in a widening rift with the President’s faction, and privately meeting last weekend with at least three prominent Democrats about defecting. Washington Post

FTC’s guide to identity theft [PDF download; via Red Rock Eaters]

John Shirley: along came George W: “And when I was a kid, the movie The Fly, with Vincent Price, truly horrified

me. Especially the part where the little half-fly/half-man was caught in a

spider’s web screaming, “Help me, help meeeee!” as the spider crept closer.

Gave me nightmares. And—I admit it, me a horror writer—that’s why I never

saw the Cronenborg remake.” Spark Here’s John Shirley’s web site.