Recovery team to leave to raise sunken Russian sub. Footnote to a poignant story. The Guardian UK

Richard Dawkins: the prophet of reason: ‘”Anyone would think I was the only atheist around,” says Richard Dawkins, in tones of mildly frustrated grievance. He isn’t, of course, but if you happen to be

in the market for an atheist, there’s little doubt that the Charles Simonyi Professor in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University is the market

leader – a Rolls-Royce of anti-clerical argument, whose contradictions and counter-propositions slam shut with a perfectly engineered thunk. “… I have respect for religious people in so far as they are asking important questions. They want to know why we exist and why the world exists, and they

don’t just want to know who’s going to win Wimbledon and what’s for dinner. And to that extent I have great respect. But I get irritated at the way those

deep and fundamental and mysterious questions are hijacked – because I think that science can answer most of them, if not all of them.” ‘

Indeed, Dawkins has some (I hesitate to use the term) spiritual kin. John Diamond ‘died four months ago, around 30,000 words

into Snake Oil, which here shows all the promise of a majestic

polemic against the idiocies, wishful thinking and deception —

self- and otherwise — which make up “alternative” (to what?)

medicine, a.k.a. “complementary” (to what?) medicine… The six extant chapters of Snake Oil are filled with splendid

blasts against homeopaths, aromatherapists, iridologists, crystal

healers, reflexologists and plant-remedialists, who, says

Diamond: “make perfect sense on a sort of

flowers-are-harbingers-of-good level which wouldn’t have

grasped the public imagination quite so forcefully, I imagine, if

(Dr Bach had) used 38 types of spider to produce the Bach

Spider Remedies.”

Yet these attacks are incidental at this stage, the blows of a

fighter knocking aside importunate schnorrers as he climbs into

the ring.

The battle to be fought in that ring is nothing less than the fight

for scientific reason against deluded sentimentality (or, in some

cases, cynical exploitation of the sick, the hopeless and the

desperate). When national newspapers devote whole pages to

alternativists puffing blatant quackery without even printing a

warning at the top of the page (“What follows is of the same

degree of intellectual probity as the fashion pages”); when our

cultural and political infrastructure still stumbles about in a

wilfully benighted scientific illiteracy, the battle is one which

needs to be fought.’ from one of those cranky curmodgeons at The Times of London

Abuddhas memes pointed me to this essay by Prof. Hugo de Garis (director of the Starbrain artificial brain project in Brussels) which was solicited for but not used by The New York Times as an op-ed piece. Building Gods or Building Our Potential Exterminators:

‘Robot artificial intelligence is evolving a million times faster than human intelligence. This is a consequence of Moore’s law which states that the electronic

performance of chips is doubling every year or so, whereas it took a million years for our human brains to double their capacities… (I)t is not surprising that someone like me is preoccupied with the prospect of

robot intelligence surpassing the human intelligence level… (N)ot only do I believe that artificial brains could become smarter than human

beings, I believe that the potential intelligence of these massively intelligent machines (which I call “artilects” (artificial intellects) could be truly trillions of trillions

of trillions of times greater… These artilects could

potentially be truly god like, immortal, have virtually unlimited memory capacities, and vast humanly incomprehensible intelligence levels.

I foresee humanity splitting into two major ideological, bitterly opposed groups over the “species dominance” issue, i.e. should humanity build artilects or not… As the planet’s pioneering brain builder, I feel a terrible burden of responsibility towards the survival of the human species and the creation of godlike

artilects, because I am part of the problem. I am quite schizophrenic on this point. I would love to be remembered after I’m gone as the “father of the

artificial brain”, but I certainly don’t want to be seen in future historical terms as the “father of gigadeath”… The decision to build artilects or not will be the toughest decision that humanity will ever have to make. Personally, I’m glad to be alive now. As I said in a

recent European Discovery Channel documentary on my work and ideas, “I fear for my grandchildren. They will see the horror, and they will be destroyed

by it”.’

His presentation of his ideas is abit too intertwined with his narcissism — understandable that the NYT killed the piece — but provocative.

NextDraft — “Written by award-winning writer

Dave Pell, it’s informative, it’s pithy, it’s funny,

it’s available, it’s decent looking, it practices

safe newsletter.” Daily weblog-like commentary on news across a spectrum of categories — “politics, pop culture, business” — with plenty of links, but “newsletter” because each day’s post replaces the previous on the webpage. You can subscribe for daily delivery of a text version by email. Dave argues that it’s perfect preparation to break into the know-it-all clique at the dinner parties or the water cooler. He damns himself with faint praise, however; be sure to scroll down to the bottom of his content for a longer more reflective essay. Today, for example, it’s on “one of those stories that

erase all cynicism and simply make one wonder at

human spirit and innovation” — the breakthrough TV ad for a running shoe which features Jami Goldman, world-class runner with two prosthetic legs. “Equal opportunity exploitation”, he says but hastens to add he does not necessarily mean that critically.

Dave, like myself, went to the Graduate School of Education at Harvard in a former life, but he did it to teach while I used it to springboard to medical school and psychiatry. Nevertheless, he says he’s “generally an advocate of psychotherapy (see only tangentially related link here Psychiatric News), but not opposed

to medication when symptoms dictate.” Unlike me, he went into the business world and probably got rich at least once; this site, which lists some of his recent business commentary articles, pegs him as the managing partner of an investment firm who “has invested in and advised more than

thirty internet start-ups.” He also writes davenetics, a daily briefing for internet professionals.

Here’s one of Dave’s nextdraft links, with too enticing a kicker to pass up reprinting: 43 celebrates 55 with 41. CNN

I happened upon this reflective site which bears “comments on current ideas and events” by Virginia Postrel, author of The Future and its Enemies. Right now, for example, she has her reproving ruminations on A.I., a lament for the passing of Apple’s G4 Cube (“What is the value of stunning design in what I argue… is a new age of aesthetics?”), a reflective exploration of reactions to the Yates ‘postpartum-depression’ child murders, and some thoughts on digital copycats (“Is plagiarism by professionals [as opposed to term-paper ‘writers’] more common in the digital age — or is it just easier to catch and easier to protest?”).

Welcome to Overlawyered.com: “Overlawyered.com explores an American legal system that too often turns litigation into

a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards

sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public’s expense, and resists even modest

efforts at reform and accountability.”

Andrew Sullivan has an interesting essay on the ‘gotcha’ attitude in contemporary journalism and politics. Here’s the denouement:

“… critics are increasingly leery of taking on politicians for

deep, real reasons and try to nail them for minor ones instead. Is Michael Portillo

gay? Did Karl Rove sell his Intel stock in time? How much did Hillary Clinton pay

for her New York office? Did George W. Bush once get busted for DUI? How

much did Bill Clinton pay for his haircut on the LAX runway? Did former President

Bush really not know what a checkout scanner was? Did Al Gore say he invented

the Internet? Did Clarence Thomas rent porn videos? At best, these issues

illustrate deeper worries about the people involved. But such worries would be

better expressed directly. Let’s discuss whether Portillo is too liberal; Rove, too

close to corporate America; or the Clintons, deeply corrupt; and so on. These are

the real issues and the real scandals. Too often, the mini-distractions are simply

ways to wound people for partisan or personal gain.

The same goes for administration nominees. I think New York Senator Charles

E. Schumer was on the mark when he argued this week in The New York Times

that the Democrats should scrutinize Bush’s judicial appointees’ ideology rather

than look for petty little scandals or minor gaffes in their paper trails. Perhaps it’s

because, as a culture, we have grown so leery of wholesale demonstrations of

ideology–everyone’s for bipartisanship now–that we often miss the ideological

forest for the ethical trees. I’m not saying we should ignore petty instances of

corruption. I’m saying they have become the central way we debate our

differences. This doesn’t merely trivialize our politics. It robs it of real meaning.”

Hard to believe some White House intern was allowed to post this transcript of Duh-bya’s unrehearsed July 2nd Remarks During Visit to the Jefferson Memorial on the White House website:

Q: What does the 4th mean to you, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s an unimaginable honor to be the President

during the 4th of July of this country. It means what these words say, for

starters. The great inalienable rights of our country. We’re blessed with such

values in America. And I — it’s — I’m a proud man to be the nation based

upon such wonderful values.

I can’t tell you what it’s like to be in Europe, for example, to be talking

about the greatness of America. But the true greatness of America are the

people. And it’s another reason we’re here, is to be able to say hello to

some of our fellow Americans who are here to celebrate.

Who’s Really President? Rove or Cheney?

This week has

brought more

conflicting evidence. Rove has almost single-handedly

blocked the administration from permitting stem-cell research.

Most Americans, Health and Human Services Secretary

Tommy Thompson, and lots of top Republican politicians say

it’s a scientific and ethical good. Rove says it could alienate

Catholic voters. Cheney, meanwhile, rushed back to the

office a day after heart surgery, a frantic return that confirmed

the Democratic suspicion that the White House—and

President Bush—would collapse without him. Slate

It’s Raining Tigers and Dragons in the Land of Film: “In the copycat

world of cinema, it was inevitable that

someone would try to replicate the success

of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang

Lee’s romantic martial arts epic.

But as film buyers from around the world

gathered here last week for the Hong Kong

International Film and Television Market,

they gaped at the shamelessness of the

efforts to imitate the film.” New York Times

Petulant Clown Prince ‘may take his ball and go home if he doesn’t get his way’: With a ten-point drop in his approval ratings and the defection of moderate Republicans on the healthcare reform bill, as well as a looming defeat in the campaign reform struggle, and his failure to get European leaders to love him, to change their minds on the Kyoto accords or to embrace NMD on his first overseas trip,

Bush “continues to send a signal that, ‘I’m going to do what I want to do, and if

nobody likes it, I’m going to go back to Crawford’,” ( LATimes political writer Ronald) Brownstein wrote, quoting (a)

lobbyist. Presumably, Bush would serve out his four-year term

before returning to his ranch.

Republicans present these “back to Crawford” threats as a sign of Bush’s principled

leadership, but the warnings could sound to others like a petulant child vowing to take

his ball and go home if he doesn’t get his way.

Some might see a tinge of megalomania – or at least conceit – in the threat, as if Bush

thinks he is so vital to the nation that his departure in a huff must be avoided at all costs.

This attitude has shown through in other recent remarks in which he expresses unbridled

confidence in his skills as president, including his presumed ability to judge the character

of other leaders he barely knows. Consortium News

[If the consequences weren’t so dangerous, we could dismiss W. as merely pitiable and laughable.]

Several new books make it clear that the Supreme Court’s notorious Bush vs. Gore ruling “wasn’t as bad as it seemed at the time. It was worse.” In order of increasing bombastics:

Sunstein and Epstein’s The Vote, a collection of essays by legal scholars from the left and right, demonstrates “how weak, cramped and unconvincing the arguments made by the majority’s defenders are. Not a single writer

finds himself able to defend the ruling in its entirety, and some of the concessions they make are huge.”

Alan Dershowitz’s Supreme Injustice argues that the Court violated the judicial oath of impartiality. Heads should roll.

And “Vincent Bugliosi’s The Betrayal of America is prime porterhouse. Bugliosi asserts

that the majority justices are common criminals.” Salon

Intern Opportunities: “Whether interning in Modesto, Merced, or Washington D.C., working in one of Rep. Condit’s offices can be an extremely rewarding

experience.”

‘Life imitating art’ dep’t.: ‘Sopranos’ actor arrested on robbery charge. CNN

A new kind of drive-by shooting:

It is hard to reconcile traffic camera tickets with a free society. There is no due process and

no right to confront your accuser. Imaginative police chiefs are already coming up with new

uses for the technology. Tampa, Florida’s Ybor entertainment district has 36 mounted

cameras that can capture images of up to eight people at a time and compare them with a

computer database filled with the facial features of people wanted on active warrants.

What’s next? Cameras to catch those smoking, using cell phones or not wearing seat belts?

We’re all for traffic enforcement, but there is a danger that this technology could ultimately

be used to monitor the comings and goings of citizens. Wall Street Journal opinion

Notion of nice heads for new extremes: “A raft of civility laws, hyper-tactful public officials, and “behave yourself!” warnings to Seattle

Mariners fans are among the signs that leave some residents wondering if Seattle is evolving into

America’s Singapore, where gum chewing can bring a $6,000 fine, and everyone is always nice – or

does hard time.” Christian Science Monitor

Sleepwalk theory on man found hanged; “…might have hanged himself while

dreaming about a death scene from the film

Schindler’s List, an inquest was told yesterday.

Michael Cox, 37, had been a sleepwalker since

childhood and often dreamed about films he had just

watched, the hearing was told. He was found dead

at home a few days after telling a friend he would

watch the holocaust movie, which has a hanging

scene at its climax.” Telegraph UK

Sweet Nothings Are Better Heard in the Left Ear: “Lovers take heed. If you are going to whisper sweet nothings to your sweetheart, make sure it is through the left ear. …Study (shows) that emotional words got through to people better when spoken through the

left ear, not the right.”

“She doesn’t fear anything. Rabid dogs sit next to her and calm down.” Indian Guru Seeks to Love the World Personally:

“From dawn to late at night people stream toward her.

One-by-one they place their heads on her breast or belly or shoulder for a hug. She pats them on

the back, chucks their chins, listens to their woes, smoothes their hair, smiles broadly and whispers

heartfelt blessings into their ears, sometimes drying their tears.

Rapidly growing in popularity and a sought-after guest, Amma, 46, goes where she is summoned

and does not publicize her visits. She stays where people offer lodging, asks for nothing, eats little

and spends up to 18 hours a day — rarely moving from her seat — hugging, praying for, and

blessing anybody and everybody who comes to her.” Reuters [via Robot Wisdom]

Thanks to higgy, who points to Lew Welch’s Ring of Bone:

I saw myself

a ring of bone

in the clear stream

of all of it

and vowed

always to be open to it

that all of it

might flow through

and then heard

“ring of bone” where

ring is what a

bell does

Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper: “In the end, a year of hard work boils down to this: Echelon exists and the

Europeans don’t like it, but there isn’t much they can do except wring their hands in impotent fury as the

Americans continue spying on whomever they please.” Wired [via Progressive Review] And here’s a Wired news collection, Privacy Matters.

A Saucer From Mars? Nope, Canada. A new book details a secret ’50’s U.S.-Canadian project to develop a flying saucer. Bill Zuk, the Winnipeg-based historian who wrote Avrocar: Canada’s Flying Saucer, wants the two surviving prototypes repartiated back to Canada from American museums. Wired

Annals of the Invasion of Privacy (cont’d.): Nowhere left to hide. “Whether you’re in jail or at the supermarket, your image

might be shown on the Net, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.” Salon

“Michael S. Joyce is an ultraconservative ideologue. For years, prior to

his recent retirement, he headed” the Milwaukee-based Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation, “one of the most effective right-wing

foundations in America. Joyce recently answered President Bush’s call to

resuscitate his floundering faith-based initiative. If anyone is up to that task,

it’s Joyce.”

(Bradley) Foundation support for conservative writers included

grants to: Dinesh D’Souza for The End of Racism, a revisionist view of the

history of slavery and racism in America; Charles Murray for The Bell Curve,

an argument for the genetic inferiority of blacks; David Brock for The Real

Anita Hill “which characterized Anita Hill as ‘slightly nutty slightly slutty'”

(Brock repudiates the book in the August issue of Talk magazine); and

Christina Hoff Sommers for Who Stole Feminism. Tompaine.com

Pig Treatment Used to Treat Mentally Ill People

A mineral supplement developed for calming

aggressive pigs has been modified to treat children and adults with

serious mental disorders, a Canadian scientist said on Tuesday.

The concoction of minerals, initially dismissed by the scientific

establishment as “snake oil,” was developed by the owner of an

animal feed company in Canada to help a friend with children

suffering from severe psychological disorders.

David Hardy used his knowledge of animal nutrition to create the

treatment made up of 36 components, most of them minerals, and

the effects on the children were dramatic enough to encourage him to

develop it further.

While stressing the research was preliminary, a leading pediatrician

from Alberta Children’s Hospital in western Canada said it was

convincing enough to conquer her skepticism. Reuters

First Artificial Intelligence to Undergo Formal Human Psychological Evaluation: “For the first time a standard psychological test known as the

MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) used by clinicians world wide in the

evaluation and treatment of adults will be administered to a machine based artificial personality.

GAC (Generic Artificial Consciousness) – pronounced ‘Jack’ – is the artificial personality being

developed at the Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project (www.mindpixel.com) with the

collaboration of nearly 40,000 internet users from more than 200 countries worldwide. GAC will be

evaluated using the MMPI-2 over the next several months to assess it’s learning of human consensus

experience from the Mindpixel project’s large and diverse group of users from many different

cultures. The test will be supervised and interpreted by Dr. Robert Epstein, one of the world’s

leading experts on human and machine behavior.”

Fireworks leave polluting afterglow; happy Independence Day. “The spectacular fireworks that mark

public events like the Olympics and the

new millenium, leave a nasty afterglow of

the air pollutant ozone according to new

research.”

Emotional controversy (as emotional as it gets in the sober letters column of the Journal of the American Medical Association) over a study reporting that St John’s Wort was ineffective for the treatment of major depression.

Review of Nell Casey (ed.)’s Unholy Ghost: writers on depression:

This powerful collection of reflections on depression includes some well-known authors,

such as Ann Beatie, Susanna Kaysen, and William Styron, but for the most part the less

well-known writers outshine the big names. Possibly that is because editor Nell Casey

had more influence over the less prestigious writers, and encouraged them to crystallize

their ideas. Nearly all of these pieces are new, while a few have been printed

previously in magazines, and just two are extracts from previously published books. All

the authors have been in close contact with depression, either personally or though

helping a family member deal with a crisis. The experience of these writers gives their

contributions authority and depth, and their ability to reflect on this experience makes

this collection both thoughtful and moving.

There’s a common misconception (which I encounter all the time in contending with the families, spouses, employers and friends of the depressed people I treat) that clinical depression is just like the ‘down’ times that the rest of us experience. Untold fractiousnessness and second-level suffering results from the message to the depressed patient that they should just “snap out of it” by “force of will” and “get on with their life”, and the like. For those tolerant of a literary approach, this book is the best antidote I’ve found (I used to recommend William Styron’s Darkness Visible, which is excerpted in this anthology.) to give the skeptic some perspective on the qualitatively distinct suffering of a person in the throes of a deep depression.

Consider this, poet Jane Kenyon’s “Having it Out with Melancholy”, especially the brutal, starkly riveting stanza 7 whose central image has burned its way indelibly into my consciousness since I first encountered this poem many years ago:

If many remedies are prescribed

for an illness, you may be certain

that the illness has no cure.

–A. P. CHEKHOV, The Cherry Orchard

1 FROM THE NURSERY

When I was born, you waited

behind a pile of linen in the nursery,

and when we were alone, you lay down

on top of me, pressing

the bile of desolation into every pore.

And from that day on

everything under the sun and moon

made me sad — even the yellow

wooden beads that slid and spun

along a spindle on my crib.

You taught me to exist without gratitude.

You ruined my manners toward God:

“We’re here simply to wait for death;

the pleasures of earth are overrated.”

I only appeared to belong to my mother,

to live among blocks and cotton undershirts

with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes

and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.

I was already yours — the anti-urge,

the mutilator of souls.

2 BOTTLES

Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,

Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,

Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.

The coated ones smell sweet or have

no smell; the powdery ones smell

like the chemistry lab at school

that made me hold my breath.

3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND

You wouldn’t be so depressed

if you really believed in God.

4 OFTEN

Often I go to bed as soon after dinner

as seems adult

(I mean I try to wait for dark)

in order to push away

from the massive pain in sleep’s

frail wicker coracle.

5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT

Once, in my early thirties, I saw

that I was a speck of light in the great

river of light that undulates through time.

I was floating with the whole

human family. We were all colors — those

who are living now, those who have died,

those who are not yet born. For a few

moments I floated, completely calm,

and I no longer hated having to exist.

Like a crow who smells hot blood

you came flying to pull me out

of the glowing stream.

“I’ll hold you up. I never let my dear

ones drown!” After that, I wept for days.

6 IN AND OUT

The dog searches until he finds me

upstairs, lies down with a clatter

of elbows, puts his head on my foot.

Sometimes the sound of his breathing

saves my life — in and out, in

and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .

7 PARDON

A piece of burned meat

wears my clothes, speaks

in my voice, dispatches obligations

haltingly, or not at all.

It is tired of trying

to be stouthearted, tired

beyond measure.

We move on to the monoamine

oxidase inhibitors. Day and night

I feel as if I had drunk six cups

of coffee, but the pain stops

abruptly. With the wonder

and bitterness of someone pardoned

for a crime she did not commit

I come back to marriage and friends,

to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back

to my desk, books, and chair.

8 CREDO

Pharmaceutical wonders are at work

but I believe only in this moment

of well-being. Unholy ghost,

you are certain to come again.

Coarse, mean, you’ll put your feet

on the coffee table, lean back,

and turn me into someone who can’t

take the trouble to speak; someone

who can’t sleep, or who does nothing

but sleep; can’t read, or call

for an appointment for help.

There is nothing I can do

against your coming.

When I awake, I am still with thee.

9 WOOD THRUSH

High on Nardil and June light

I wake at four,

waiting greedily for the first

note of the wood thrush. Easeful air

presses through the screen

with the wild, complex song

of the bird, and I am overcome

by ordinary contentment.

What hurt me so terribly

all my life until this moment?

Along these lines, you might be interested in The Literature, Arts, & Medicine Database, a multi-institutional project initiated in the summer of 1993 at the New York University School of

Medicine — an annotated bibliography of prose, poetry, film, video and art which is being developed as a dynamic,

accessible, comprehensive resource in Medical Humanities, for use in health/pre-health and liberal arts settings.

Health effects, reproductive issues and effects on short-term memory from caffeine; an excerpt from Weinberg and Bealer’s The World of Caffeine: the science and culture of the world’s most popular drug (Routledge, 2001).

If, like the great

majority of people in the world, you use caffeine regularly, you are faced with

a complex, confusing, and often apparently contradictory cacophony of

traditional and contemporary claims about its effects on human health. … In

the last half of the 20th century, an explosion of general medical knowledge

and a large number of controlled experiments have shed scientific light on

many of caffeine’s effects. It has been often and truly said that caffeine is

the most studied drug in history. Yet, because of its nearly universal use, the

variety of its modes of consumption, its presence in and effects on nearly all

bodily systems, and its occurrence in chemically complex foods and

beverages, together with the complexity of the social and psychological

factors that shape its use, caffeine may also be one of the least adequately

understood. Tompaine.com

Both intrusive parenting and children’s scatological preoccupations are going high-tech.

It’s the thirtieth anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death; now he’s back. Jerry Garcia’s already returned.

UFO Cult May Sue U.S. FDA Over Human Cloning: “Brigitte Boisselier, a French biochemist who belongs to the international Raelian Movement, told

Reuters on Tuesday that her company Clonaid still plans to produce a cloned child within the next

year despite a recent crackdown by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

Oxy Craze Makes Way to Cities. Are the media discovering a scourge, fabricating or fantasizing about one, or helping to precipitate it?

Ky. Patient Gets Artificial Heart. Near death without it, the titanium and plastic device which is expected to extend his life by around a month is the first self-contained artificial heart without external connections. The heart allows a patient to pursue normal activity up through moderate exercise. About half of people awaiting heart transplant die before a suitable donor heart is available. The expectation is that this patient will die with the artificial heart.

Israeli target (lower right)?

State nixes GPS highway robbery. “There is no legal ability for them to charge a penalty when there has

been no damage,” says the State of Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection, ordering the auto rental company to cease and desist and refund penalties to customers who have complained. Surprising ruling. As outrageous as I think the auto rental company’s practice is (was), the renter did sign a contract agreeing to it. The consensus was that he would lose in court. The Register

Ford Wants to Send Drivers of Sport Utility Vehicles Back to School. Now Ford says it’s not Firestone’s fault, not Ford’s fault, but the fault of the SUV driver?? New York Times

Congressman Is Accused of Asking Woman to Lie. Condit’s web of apparent lies around the Chandra Levy disappearance, regarding which he is officially “not a suspect,” deepens. What’s that funny smell? New York Times

Wood Products to Have Arsenic Label: I’ve previously written about the first inklings of danger to children from playing around climbing structures made from treated lumber. Now “consumer warning labels will start appearing

this fall on nearly all the treated lumber in the United States, warning

about an arsenic-laced preservative being used to protect the wood

from decay and insect damage… Also Tuesday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (news – web

sites) took a first step toward possibly banning CCA-treated wood

from playground equipment. It also is commonly used in the making

of decks, railings, picnic tables, fences, posts and docks.” AP

“How easily could a hacker bring the world to a standstill?” The Doomsday Click — “It didn’t

take long for me to see what computer-security experts have known for

years: any fool can enter, alter, and destroy even the most seemingly

impregnable Web sites…. It’s not even against the

law. You don’t have to know how to write, or even understand, the code

to wreck it. ” The New Yorker

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.

Devotion, desire drive youths to ‘martyrdom’: ‘In more than a dozen interviews with former and current members of the militant group Hamas and with Israeli security officials who track them, USA Today was given a rare look into the secretive and terrifying world of suicide bombers and the culture that creates them…

At any time, Israeli officials believe, Hamas has from five to 20 men, ages 18 to 23, awaiting orders to carry out suicide attacks. The group also claims to have “tens of thousands” of youths ready to follow in their footsteps. “We like to grow them. From kindergarten through college.”

In Hamas-run kindergartens, signs on the walls read: “The children of the kindergarten are the shaheeds (holy martyrs) of tomorrow.” The classroom signs at Al-Najah University in the West Bank and at Gaza’s Islamic University say, “Israel has nuclear bombs, we have human bombs.” ‘

Should your child have a tanning doll? All the rage at French beaches this summer, but appalling to cancer experts fearing it undoes all their public health efforts to deglorify dangerous sun-based skin damage. “What will be next, a smoking Barbie?” says one appalled critic.

Inappropriate Cancer Chemotherapy at Life’s End: ‘Many patients with cancer receive chemotherapy at the end of life, even if their kind of cancer is known to be unresponsive to the drugs, according to a study reported at the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists held in San Francisco.

The finding “strongly suggests overuse of chemotherapy at the end of life,” lead author Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics at the US National Institutes of Health, told delegates. “Many are concerned with the quality of end of life care and specifically that patients should not be overtreated with ineffective therapies that won’t improve their quality of life,” he said.’ British Medical Journal

The music world diminished: R.I.P. Chet Atkins, age 77, slick-fingered country and crossover guitarist and producer, inventor of the Nashville sound without which country music would probably never have made it to the pop charts. And lyrical jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson [right] is gone at 64. “You could hear roots coming out of Lester Young, Stan Getz. There was a wailing, a search in his playing. Within just a few notes you knew that it was Henderson.” New York Times

R.I.P. Mortimer Adler, age 98. One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, at least if judged by presence in the public forum. Paradoxically, a passionate populist and yet best known for his insistence that it is familiarity with the classical ‘Great Ideas’ that is the best indicator of quality of thought. Adler was a high school dropout who ascended to the University of Chicago faculty, although for much of his career in departments other than the philosophy dept., where his ideas (or perhaps his personality?) were too contentious.

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post

Disabling Smart Tags on a Web Page — Thanks to boing boing for pointing me to this tip. ‘If you are a Web author, you can disable Smart Tag recognition in Internet Explorer within a Web page by adding a Meta tag to that Web page.

After adding this tag, any Smart Tags that the author has added to the page will continue to work, but Internet Explorer will not dynamically add new tags when users view the page.

The tag is:

<meta name=”MSSmartTagsPreventParsing” content=”TRUE”>‘

How your chocolate may be tainted: this may try the virtue of those of us who try to use our purchasing power to leverage social good. 43% of the world’s cocoa beans come from the Ivory Coast, where its cultivation and harvesting is achieved with adolescent slave labor. Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate; adolescent laborers in the Ivory Coast harvesting the fruit of the cacao tree have never heard of chocolate. Representatives of the industry say the harvests are pooled, so it’s impossible to discriminate products produced by dint of slave labor with those for which a decent living wage was paid.

Roger Clinton Linked to New Clemency Case. Latest in a long series of seeming payments to the ex-first-brother to intervene for Presidential pardons before Clinton left office appears to be some hefty sums directed his way on behalf of a Gambino family heroin dealer. Roger Clinton continues to deny such allegations but has no explanation for his lifestyle in the absence of visible means of support. LA Times

Clinton to Arafat: It’s All Your Fault. More on what Clinton’s up to since leaving office, and it’s not a pretty picture. Reportedly, he regaled guests at a recent Manhattan party with the story ‘that Arafat called to bid him farewell three days before he left office. “You are a great man,” Arafat said. “The hell I am,” Clinton said he responded. “I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.” ‘ MSNBC

‘Furious advocacy groups worldwide have slammed rapper Eminem for trivializing Tourette syndrome by blaming his foul mouth on the disorder.

The Tourette Syndrome Association says Eminem’s claims are “dubious.”

They believe the Detroit-born rapper was “just trying to be provocative” by claiming his lyrics are full of four-letter words because he has the rare brain and nerve disease.’

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post