Boing Boing‘s playing that old parlour game: “Which three weblogs would you take with you on a desert island?” I read the discussion on this item, obviously because I wanted to see if anyone had listed FmH. (They hadn’t…) But in so doing I was directed to a few stimulating sites I’d never heard of.

Users of compression technology (.zip, .tar etc) usually consider opening an archive benign. However, even without opening any executables, there are ways to do malicious, virus-like damage with file extraction. Most archivers, here reviewed competitively, are affected by the nasty techniques described here, but I was delighted to see that WinZip, my archiver of choice, received an almost perfect safety record on this issue by the Neohapsis reviewers.

New Cautions Over a Plant With a Buzz — “An obscure hallucinogenic herb from Mexico is gaining a toehold in the

world of recreational drugs, prompting law enforcement officials to

increase their scrutiny of the plant, which is legal, and moving health experts to

issue cautions about the drug, whose jarring effects are not fully understood.

The herb, Salvia divinorum, is a type of sage plant that can cause intense

hallucinations, out-of-body experiences and, when taken in higher doses,

unconsciousness and short-term memory loss. Users have also reported sensations

of traveling through time and space, assuming the identities of other people and

even merging with inanimate objects.” New York Times The newest new thing isn’t really new at all. In fact, although I’m a little rusty on my Castaneda, I think it had a role in the Don Juan books. Let’s try a Teoma search for it… 3000 hits.

Compelling argument for not urinating where you swim [via Factovision]

Rhyming Suicide Notes: “The writings of poets who wound up committing suicide contain words and language

patterns that serve as precursors to their eventual fate, researchers say.” Comparing the language patterns of more than a hundred poems of nine poets who ended their own lives — John Berryman, Hart Crane, Sergei Esenin, Adam L. Gordon, Randall Jarrell, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sylvia Plath, Sarah Teasdale and Anne Sexton — with a similar number from nine demographically matched poets who had not suicided (including, interestingly, the psychiatrically troubled Robert Lowell) revealed that “the suicidal poets gravitated toward words indicating their detachment from other people and preoccupation with themselves,” according to the study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Some of the parameters examined included the ratio of self-reference as compared to references to other people; trends in the frequency of word relating to interpersonal communication; and, of course, words related to death. Wired

India’s ‘Bandit Queen’ MP shot dead. Of mythic folk hero stature, Phoolan Devi’s story reads like an incredible, cinematic, spaghetti Western, and she comes to an appropriately dramatic end. The article does not indicate who might be responsible for her assassination, curiously… CNN

Left-handers at greater risk of bowel problems. Taking my cue from the late great Harvard neurologist Norman Geschwind, I have believed for a long time in a relationship between left-handedness, immune dysfunction, digestive system problems and certain neurobehavioral disorders. Few have found this credible; here’s some empirical data for part of the observed association. Ananova

Is this the rival to Google?

We’ve spent most of the afternoon testing out a new search engine

called Teoma. You may have heard of it but it seems unlikely. Only

this month did it hit the search engine industry’s consciousness (it

first appeared in May apparently), so we suppose its techie sites

like us and then the mainstream.

So what’s the fuss about? Well, it looks as though it may give

Google a run for its money. It’s certainly improves on Google’s

methodology in one sense but it may end up being the ideal search

tool if you know exactly what you are after. The Register

Here’s the Search Engine Showdown review of its strengths and weaknesses. Biggest limitation? No Boolean searching, although it does support the use of ‘”-” (the minus sign) before a search term to exclude it.

A Quick and Dirty Guide to Chaos and Complexity Theory: “three race horses and four hobby horses” [and lots of mixed metaphors…] Skeptics Society

U.S. rejects germ warfare treaty: ‘The United States, again

standing alone against most world opinion, on

Wednesday rejected as unworkable a proposed

international plan for enforcing a 30-year ban

on using germs in warfare. “In our assessment,

the draft protocol would put national security

and confidential business information at risk,”

Washington’s representative, Ambassador

Donald Mahley, said.’

I can’t describe better than this the visceral contempt and rage I feel when I hear these people telling the world what the “United States” can and can’t support as if they are speaking for me or my children, when in fact they make it clear it is the nation’s corporate interests they represent. There’d be an element of shame if I thought the world were so naive as to believe Li’l George had our mandate. MSNBC

Now former President Carter is more ‘politic’ about his feelings, which run more to concern and disappointment. Encouragingly, the meaningless tradition of not criticizing the President while he is out of the country was broken by both Carter and Tom Daschle this week. Rumsfeld and Cheney were not spared Carter’s scorn either. New York Times

The summer ’01 Whole Earth Review, guest-edited by Bruce Sterling and the Viridians (not yet online) has a comprehensive broadside and call to action, “Let the Carbon Wars Begin!”, by Kert Davies, the director of Greenpeace USA’s global warming campaign, that needs to be read. Although it is somewhat fatalistic, the derisive tone is in almost exact resonance with my own feelings. While you’re waiting, here‘s an April 2001 interview with Davies, although without the affect. Stay tuned…

And, not letting up easily, the Guardian gives us this lesson in How to Rule the World:

The leaders of the free world present a glowing example to the

rest of the planet.

Of the eight men meeting in Genoa this week, one seized the

presidency of his country after losing the election.

Another is pursuing a genocidal war in an annexed republic. A

third is facing allegations of corruption. A fourth, the summit’s

host, has been convicted of illegal party financing, bribery and

false accounting, while his righthand man is on trial for

consorting with the mafia.

Needless to say, the major theme of this week’s summit is

“promoting democracy”.

But were the G8 nations governed by angels, they would still be

incapable of promoting global democracy. These eight hungry

men represent just 13% of the world’s population. [thanks to wood s lot]