Measuring brain activity in people eating chocolate offers new clues about how the body becomes addicted: “Using positron emission tomography scans to measure brain activity in people eating chocolate, a team of U.S. and Canadian neuroscientists

believe they have identified areas of the brain that may underlie addiction and eating disorders.

…(I)ndividuals’ ratings of the pleasantness of

eating chocolate were associated with increased blood flow in areas of the brain, particularly in the orbital frontal cortex and midbrain, that are also activated by

addictive drugs such as cocaine.

…(T)he brain regions activated

by eating chocolate when it is rewarding are quite different from those areas that are activated by eating chocolate when it is perceived as aversive (as a result of

having eaten too much chocolate).” EurekAlert!

Parents May Influence How Child Relates to Peers: “Despite recent claims that peers are

more important than parents in youth development, a parent’s

involvement with a teenage son or daughter still influences how the

adolescent relates to his or her friends and peer group, researchers

report.” You may find this self-evident, but the idea of parental influence on the development of personality has been under siege in academic psychology.

Chicagoans Are Reading the Same Book at the Same Time: “In a radical

effort to pull an entire city away

from video screens and into the pages of

literature, Chicago officials are asking

every adult and adolescent in the city to

read the same book at the same time.

The book they have chosen is Harper Lee’s

powerfully anti-racist novel, To Kill a

Mockingbird, which won a Pulitzer Prize in

1961.” New York Times

“Palm and Handspring have both had their wireless PDA plans made

public. Details of Palm’s i705 – the successor to the VII family – and

Handspring’s Treo k180 and g180 have been posted on the Federal

Communications Commission’s Web site as part of the process

both companies must undertake to get their devices approved for

wireless use.” The Register

ACLU Action Alerts:

Oppose expanded government secrecy:

“Last year, with little debate and no public hearings, Congress

adopted an intelligence authorization bill that contained a

provision to criminalize all leaks of classified information. A

firestorm of criticism from civil libertarians, major news

organizations, academics and librarians resulted and President

Bill Clinton vetoed the bill. Unfortunately, at the request of

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), this year’s intelligence

authorization bill may include the identical provision.

…The media often plays the crucial role of exposing

governmental misdeeds and the need for reform. To accomplish

this task, most major news outlets base many stories on classified

information.

…This provision would essentially eliminate the check

on government power that public scrutiny of government action

provides.”

Support the right to travel freely:

On July 25, 2001, the House of Representatives approved an

amendment to this year’s Treasury Appropriations Bill (H.R.

2590), offered by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), that would stop the

government from prohibiting travel to Cuba. The Senate is

expected take up a similar measure this fall. In both houses, bills

are pending to repeal the travel ban altogether – the “Bridges

to the Cuban People Act of 2001,” (S. 1017/H.R. 2138)

sponsored by Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Lincoln

Chafee (R-RI) and Reps. Jose Serrano (D-NY) and Jim Leach

(R-IA).

One-click faxing of your opinion to your representatives from ACLU’s site.

Guerrilla Ad Banner Battle Looms: “A showdown over a new piece of software that plasters unauthorized ad banners onto

websites has intensified after the company running the service, Gator.com, sued a major online trade group

that threatens to block the practice.” Wired

“If the music industry thinks it can make money charging for digital

music downloads, it can think again – punters just aren’t interested in

paying for music online.

So concludes G2, yet another subsidiary of research colossus

Gartner Group, after surveying the purchasing plans and habits of

4000 online adults.” Most just don’t use their PCs as hi-fi’s, preferring to listen to music from the comfort of their living rooms than hunched over a computer desk. No surprises there, IMHO. The Register

Court ruling puts Internet on notice:

An Australian judge yesterday threw out arguments by high-flying

London barrister Geoffrey Robertson in a decision with major

implications for publishing on the Internet.

Justice John Hedigan ruled businessman Joe Gutnick can sue US

publishing giant Dow Jones for defamation in Victoria over

money-laundering allegations.

Justice Hedigan threw out a claim that because the allegations were

published by Dow Jones on the Internet, Gutnick’s lawsuit should be

heard in the US. He ruled defamation takes place on the Internet

when a person “downloads” the offending words on their computer,

not when they are “uploaded” on the other side of the world. news.com.au

Emperor-Without-Clothes Dept. (cont’d.): Critic savages ‘pretentious’ US literati

Is the United States a nation of “gullible morons” unable to tell the difference between good literature and pretentious nonsense? Do many literary bestsellers remain unread because they are too “intellectually intimidating”, or because they are unreadable?

These are the questions prompted by a row in the literary pages of American newspapers on what constitutes good writing and whether reviewers are deliberately ignoring readable literature in favour of fashionable pretension.

Among the writers attacked are Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, E Annie Proulx and David Guterson.

The row started with the publication in the latest Atlantic Monthly of “A Reader’s Manifesto”, by Brian Myers. Subtitled “An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose”, the essay described much of the canon of modern American literature as over-praised and, in some cases, meaningless. Guardian UK

Unsettling Rapatronic Photographs, once you realize what the subject matter is. [broadly blinked]

William Buckley reframed as a liberal? Boston Globe

Review of Gareth Medway’s Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism, skeptical [as am I] of this modern ‘epidemic’: “An alternative explanation is that, by the end of the 20th century, we had supped so full of extraordinary horrors that any evil was regarded as possible, and none could be ruled out of court. Contrary to what Mr Medway states, it is not the unknown that modern believers in Satan fear, but the known. They fear that science has removed Divine purpose and meaning from the universe. Better that Satan should exist than that life should be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Telegraph UK

Principia Mathematica III: “Stephen Wolfram says he has created a new kind of science based on simple computer programs rather than equations.” The author of Mathematica now thinks we ought to scrap equation-based modelling of physical processes as inadequate to the task. Since nature apparently uses simple processes to create complexity, we can describe it with simple computer programs.

And, while we’re considering novel computer descriptions of the real world, “an international set of specifications for writing non-verbal human

communications in computer code is being drawn up by a US web

standards group… HumanMarkup Language (HumanML) will allow software engineers

to write abstract, non-verbal human communications in computer

code. This will give computer users the power to communicate their

emotions and gestures to other computer users over the internet… With HumanML, web pages could be used to express meaning to

someone who speaks an entirely different language.” New Scientist

Review of Dreaming of Cockaigne: medieval fantasies of the perfect life by Herman Pleij. Cockaigne “… is the name that people in the middle ages gave to an imagined land filled with all the things that their own lives lacked.

It is the focus of literature in many of the languages of medieval Europe; it is also the subject of a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, part of which is reproduced on the cover of Pleij’s book. Three men lie beneath a tree, one of them fast asleep, the second stretched out on his side and the third gazing beatifically into the air. Round him parade such objects as a pig with a knife in its back and an egg on legs, heading straight for the dreamer. This may have nothing to do with drugs, but the bizarreness of Bruegel’s painting seems easily worthy of them.

” Guardian UK

“I’ll be damned if I let a psychiatrist near my son”, says this Wall Street Journal editor. Shrinking to Excess: “I have a confession to make: I have a mental illness, and it is called Psychobabble Defiance Disorder. Since at this moment I am also afflicted with Ranter’s Syndrome, I intend to have my say on a topic that troubles me. No, let me put that more strongly, a topic that makes me flood the room with rage.”

A Spot of Firm Government “Criticism is becoming a minor offshoot of science fiction, even if it presents the exotic and outlandish only to upbraid such notions as imperialist. ‘We are obsessed with “barbarians”,’ Claude Rawson remarks in this erudite, passionate book”, God, Gulliver and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination 1492-1945. London Review of Books

Interview with UIUC professor of “subjective well-being” New Scientist

Kyoto begins at home: ‘Although the US government refuses to endorse the Kyoto protocol, people could sign up to the treaty at an individual level, a UK environmental scientist suggests.

David Reay of the University of Edinburgh has calculated that simple lifestyle changes and home improvements could go a long way towards achieving one’s “own private Kyoto”. ‘ Nature

Body simulator keeps human kidney alive: “A research team successfully kept a human kidney alive in a machine that simulates a warm human body this weekend, a medical first that could revolutionize organ transplantation.” Nando Times

‘A trendy henna “tattoo” could cause you months of pain and discomfort, and even a lifelong allergy to a common chemical found in dyes, doctors are warning.

Numerous cases of people developing severe skin reactions days or weeks after having a temporary tattoo have been reported.’ New Scientist

Powell Will Not Attend United Nations Meeting on Racism in an official expression of our displeasure about the so-called ‘Zionism-racism equation’. In doing so, the US continues its recent trend of isolating itself from the world community. New York Times And “(r)acism only happens in the little nations”, says Tara Mack in The Guardian.

Sean Penn attacks Hollywood system: “…Penn, 41, who was at the Edinburgh Film Festival for a screening of his new film ‘The Pledge, said anyone was now capable of making a studio movie.

He told reporters he had decided to concentrate on working behind the camera after becoming dismayed at the standard of many of the directors he had worked with.

‘Truly, half the people in this room could work on that level. It takes enormous pressure off to know that if you put two thoughts into your movie, you’re already well up on them. I actually wish I had started sooner’ .” CNN

[Damning himself with faint praise, isn’t he?]

Annals of the Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Rush-hour traffic tied up for hours by I-5 jumper. The 26-year old woman is in critical condition in a Seattle hospital after jumping into the Lake Washington ship canal after a three-hour bridge railing dialogue with police. Interestingly, this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article does not mention that she was apparently persuaded to jump by the irate suggestions of motorists stalled by the standoff. .

This was apparently one of the most notable events while I was away from the media for the past two weeks, say the weblogs. I apologize if it’s already old, boring news to you. “A presidential milestone passed almost unnoticed Friday. For the first time in the history of televised news conferences, a president of the United States made fun of a bald person.

Ribbing the young Texas reporter for his thinning hair fits with a long pattern of Bush making others the butt of his jokes. Sometimes the comments seem playful, such as giving reporters slightly demeaning nicknames. Other times, they have a touch of malice…

Much like this prince taunting the beggars, Bush asserts a privilege to speak condescendingly to commoners in his presence. He puts them down with little jokes that they feel they have no choice but to accept.” Consortium News