Why won’t Britain jail this war criminal?” The UK has been a haven to 400 Nazi murderers. All

but one have got away with it.” Guardian UK

‘We’re going to get them’: “Israel hunts terrorists amid controversy. An inside look” at ‘targeted killing’.

Israel says it is not only in a war against terrorism, but it’s also in a war

against international opinion. It insists it has a legal and religious right to kill

its enemies. USA Today

“Is starting a weblog like declaring yourself a pundit?”

Book review: Grammars of Creation: Is the Future Just a Tense?: “It is difficult not to be impressed by

George Steiner. Part literary critic, part

existential elegist, he presents himself as

the polymath’s polymath. The erudition is

almost as extraordinary as the prose:

dense, knowing, allusive. In Steiner’s work

the suggestion of total cultural mastery,

from the pre-Socratics to the postmodern,

is inescapable.” New York Times

The monk and the fly.

Live Jail Cam — “This is a real life transmission of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Madison Street Jail. Instances of

violence or sexually inappropriate behavior by detainees during the booking process may occur. Viewer

discretion is advised. This is a jail not a simulation. The persons in this transmission are either

employees of Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, other police agencies in Maricopa County or arrestees.”

Vic Tandy, a lecturer in law and international relations at Coventry University, believes that extremely low-frequency sound — ‘infrasound’ — may explain hauntings. Twenty years ago, after he and co-workers had been experiencing an unsettling presence in their office, he identified a standing sound wave of ~18.5hz from a ventilation fan as the culprit; the lower limit of human hearing is around 20hz. The sense of presence disappeared when the fan was shut off. A ‘haunted’ 14th century pub cellar in Coventry was shown to have an 18.9hz peak when its soundscape was spectrally analyzed. Other research has shown that infrasound around this frequency can cause nausea, fear and panic. Extraordinarily, the human eyeball has a resonant frequency of 18hz, which might explain visions of ghostly presences.

Storms and waves pounding the shoreline can produce infrasound effects travelling hundreds if not thousands of miles. In a 1968 study, a U.S. town receiving infrasound from a storm over 1500 miles distant demonstrated increased traffic accidents and school absenteeism. The military has been interested in possible applications and claims powerful effects to human subjects from low-frequency and low-intensity pulses.

Recently, a team of North Carolina animal researchers has shown that, prior to attacking, tigers stun their intended prey with a roar containing frequencies around 18hz. Some dolphin clicks have long been suspected to have a role in their hunting, but a recent Hawaiian study has filmed them emitting low-frequency ‘bangs’ while chasing and catching fish; these may disorient the fish, damage their hearing, or even paralyze and kill. Researchers have observed Atlantic dolphins emit a buzz which makes buried eels jump out of the sand. Tandy speculates that human sensitivity to infrasound may be an evolutionary vestige of times when we were prey to big cats.

Regarding the best bus shelter in Britain, which has its own website. Times of London

Psychologist says adulthood dawns at 35 not 21: ‘A study claims a generation of “fledgling adults” has

developed who only start growing up at the age of 35.

A psychologist says attitudes, tastes and aspirations of

Americans and Britons change most at that age.

Stephen Richardson says until then people are typified by

the overgrown teenagers of Men Behaving Badly.’ Ananova […and what about the women??]

Stop ignoring the data — “Backed by an explosion of scientific data

underscoring the importance of behavioral and

social factors in health, an interdisciplinary group of

scientists is arguing that the sheer weight of that

evidence demands a restructuring of how social

and behavioral research and interventions are

conducted.

At a May 23 symposium organized by the National

Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of

Medicine (IOM), “Through a kaleidoscope: viewing

the contributions of the behavioral and social

sciences to health,” experts drew on six recent NRC

and IOM reports (viewable here). Each concludes that

the nation’s health can be significantly improved if

the scientific and medical communities–as well as

policy-makers–heed the wealth of data that show

how behavior and social environments shape

health.” American Psychological Association

M.I.T. Professor and author of How the Mind

Works Steven Pinker discusses technology with Richard Johnson.

What has been your worst experience of technology?

A Bang & Olufsen television and phone. They may be in the

Museum of Design, but they send you to the manual for the

simplest task. I am a professor at MIT, and if I cannot figure out

how to use them, then something is wrong with the human

factors. Sunday Times of London

EPIC Alert: “online newsletter of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC. The Alert is bi-weekly

and covers issues related to privacy and civil liberties in the information age.”