Justice O’Connor Questions Death Penalty, “add(s) her voice to the growing chorus of skepticism about the administration of capital punishment in the United States.” Washington Post

Reformed snorer is ambivalent after uvulectomy. Washington Post

A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample: “Rhinotillexomania is a recent term coined to describe compulsive nose picking. There is little world literature on nose-picking behavior in the

general population…

Conclusion: Nose picking is common in adolescents. It is often associated with other habitual behaviors. Nose picking may merit closer epidemiologic and

nosologic (sic) scrutiny.” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

He’s Your Inspiration, Not Mine. The Spike Report discussed this important Washington Post op-ed piece by Kathi Wolfe. Blind herself, Wolfe says that Erik Weihenmayer’s feat as the first blind man to climb Everest, and other sagas of superfeats by the disabled, are not welcome and make life harder for the less able. “One of us bursts onto the cultural radar screen as a superhero, and all of us are expected to perform amazing feats. It’s hard to say which stereotype is more annoying: the disabled as helpless victims or as superheroes.” Realistic stories about the less able are excluded bythe ubiquity of “supercrips” .

News Analysis: Critics of Health Industry Shaped Debate on Patients’ Rights. Good news in the struggle against ‘managed care’, an issue close to my heart. And, in case you were curious, for me and most doctors I know it’s not an issue of chafing under restrictions to our earning power, but — really — advocacy for our patients, plain and simple. A ‘patients’ bill of rights’ passed the Senate Friday and looks likely to have enough support in the Republican House as well, despite Li’l George’s scramble on behalf of the industry. Health care reform advocates’ crucial step appears to have been to succeed in driving a wedge between the insurance companies and their traditional allies the employers by immunizing the latter against the lawsuits to which the former will be susceptible. Pitiable contradictions in the HMOs’ arguments are apparent. New York Times

U.S. Charges Internet Operation Was a Huge Scam:

The fantasy world is so detailed that, in one

instance, the government was struggling to

cash a $9 million check posted in the English

case, only to find that the bank on which the

check was drawn did not exist. And then

there are the bizarre individuals connected

to the case, like the purported financier who

claims to be in radio contact with a 9-foot-6

extraterrestrial circling the earth in a

spaceship.

“When you look at what went on here, you

have to willingly suspend any sense of

reality,” said J. Chris Condren, an Oklahoma lawyer appointed by a federal

court as a receiver for EE-Biz. New York Times

Napster Temporarily Halts Service For Upgrade: “Embattled online music service Napster began shutting users

out of its song-swap system this weekend unless they downloaded the

latest version of its software using audio fingerprinting technology, a

spokesman for the company said on Monday. ‘All previous versions

of Napster have been disabled. We’re making this change as part of

our ongoing effort to comply with the court’s orders,’ a message

posted Friday on its website said.”

Trimble’s exit takes Ulster to the brink. Sadly, it appears the Northern Ireland peace process has collapsed; if Trimble thinks his resignation will pressure the IRA to decommission its weapons as it so far appears to have failed to do, it seems very unlikely. The Guardian UK Here’s a BBC timeline of the peace process since the 1998 Good Friday accords, and websites for Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists.

And, while we’re at it, the fragile truce in the Mideast, surely a castle built on sand if ever there was one, totters in the face of the ongoing violence. Sometimes my head hurts from all our collective thinking about who’s right and who’s to blame in this strife. It’s just so unbearably sad that we keep doing this to ourselves. In retrospect, the prospects for peace in these festering hotspots always amounted to hope against hope. To paraphrase Pete Seeger, however, the reason to go on when things are hopeless is only that we may be wrong.

Graphic summary of the international war crimes indictment against Slobodan Milosevic from the Washington Post. The devil is in the details; 500 individuals whose massacre he and top aides ordered during the Serbian conflict against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are named. And Q & A about the legal process in The Hague, where Milosevic refused to legitimize the proceedings by entering a plea, from the BBC.

Report: Danger Lurks in Shark’s Fin Soup — “Sharks are more dangerous dead than alive, experts said on Tuesday,

warning of serious health risks posed by Asia’s love affair with soup made from their fins… Levels of(mercury) found in sharks’ fins for sale in Thailand were as much as 42

times more than safe limits for humans.”

Astronomers Find Solar System Body. Kuiper Belt objects began to be discovered only a decade ago, but they are the most abundant large objects in the solar system. Now one of the largest, rivalling Pluto’s moon Charon in size, has been found. Understanding the nature of the Kuiper Belt has led to the recent debates about whether it is proper to continue to consider Pluto to be a planet. If it is, this discovery indicates that other ‘planets’ may lurk out beyond awaiting discovery. AP

Uploading Life: Send Your Personality to Space. Sociologist W.S. Bainbridge, observing that the prospects for enhanced space exploration are waning, proposes founding a cosmic civilization without flying human bodies to the further reaches of the galaxy. If we start archiving personalities, it’s a good bet the technology for high-fidelity reanimation — into humans, clones, cyborgs, robots or other lifeforms suitable for the alien environments in which they find themselves — will develop. We should begin sending such ‘Starbase archives’ throughout the galaxy. “By offering the stars to people living today, the second wave of the spaceflight movement would

be spurred into being, Bainbridge said. The future demands a powerful, motivational force to

create interplanetary and interstellar civilizations, he said, and a new spaceflight social movement

can get us moving again.” Others propose merely disseminating our genetic code and a way to cultivate life on its arrival elsewhere.