Virus May Help Fight HIV — GBV-C, or “hepatitis G”, discovered in 1995, infection with which does not cause any apparent ill effects, occurs in around 2% of the general public, and co-infection with it may be part of the mystery of why some HIV-infected patients can survive decades after contracting the infection. It is not clear how it has this effect. Because the longterm outcome of hepatitis-G infection is not yet known, researchers are cautioning that people not deliberately infect themselves. New York Times

UNIX Approaches Ripe Old Age of One Billion: “In the first year of the new millenium, UNIX will … be one billion seconds old. That’s right, the big One-E-Nine. The UNIX epoch dates from January 1st, 1970. Every UNIX system in the world worth its salt keeps track of time by counting every single second since the midnight just before that auspicious date.” The time is near… In fact, tomorrow 9/8 at 21:46 Eastern time.

Greycommerce – technology you shouldn’t have. A UK-based site founded after its now CEO travelled to the Far East and “found hi-tech consumer electronics and gadgets never seen in the West and never intended to be marketed in the West.”

Whatever happened to the humble home page? ‘ “On the Internet”, the pundits claimed, “everyone will be a publisher!” And for a while, everyone published.

But not necessarily very well. Thinking back, these shameless exercises in ego and HTML weren’t usually very good. Who can forget the garish magenta backgrounds? The poorly chosen font sizes? The endless photographs of Rex the Dog?’ Metro Times Detroit

Wanted: Enemy to Justify $344 Billion War Budget AlterNet

New trial shows cannabis works: “…can have a real role in reducing chronic, long-term pain, according to the first results from a hospital trial.

” This is London

The People’s Prozac. Dissenting scientists see a double standard in the vilification of MDMA (Ecstasy) and the deification of Ritalin and other stimulants for the nation’s school children. Village Voice [via AlterNet]

Winners and losers from the HP/Compaq merger

The Register

Police on alert for Bond-like phone gun — “On the outside, the weapons look like normal cell phones, although they are heavier than most modern models.

The top third of the phone’s body slides open, revealing four small holes where .22-caliber bullets can be chambered, lying flat beneath the phone’s liquid crystal display screen.

When the phone is closed, a small handle on the bottom is pulled back to draw a spring-loaded percussion mechanism into place. The gun is then fired four times in quick succession by pressing the 4, 5, 6 and 7 on the phone’s keypad–one round for each button. The bullets shoot out the top of the phone. At close range, the shots could easily be deadly, law enforcement officials said.” Chicago Sun-Times

Everyrule.com: Every Rule in the Universe-All Categories

Jonathan Franzen’s Big Book:

” In 1996, Franzen made a reckless public vow. He did it in the pages of Harper’s, in a bitter, eloquent, intensely personal essay titled “Perchance to Dream: In an Age of Images, a Reason to Write Novels.” The big socially engaged novel was dead, he declared, killed off by TV. Serious postmodern novelists like Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Don DeLillo were doomed to irrelevance. Contemporary readers wanted entertainment, not news, engaging stories, not ideology. This knowledge filled him with despair.

But he did more than just diagnose the problem. He implied that he could solve it…

His novel is as clever as those of the brainy postmodernists he admires but infinitely more accessible. Like DeLillo and Gaddis, he dazzles the reader with trenchant riffs on contemporary life — everything from mood-enhancing pharmaceuticals to bisexuality to cruise-ship culture. But rather than relay his thoughts about the world through chilly rhetorical pyrotechnics or plots of mind-boggling complication, Franzen embeds them in the lives of affecting human characters.”

Review and preview of The Corrections. New York Times

Bush Cabinet Takes Back Seat In Driving Policy: “Bush’s highly credentialed Cabinet members are finding themselves in an unaccustomed role: that of subordinates. As the administration took office, it was thought that Bush’s Cabinet would be unusually powerful because of its impressive lineup of talent: former governors and senators, veterans of previous Cabinets, top business executives and a popular general. But on most of the big issues, Cabinet members have discovered they have less clout than lesser-known White House aides.” Washington Post

Freedom or equality: the choice is ours. The aristocrats are out of the closet about their entitlement.

… for the past several decades, conservatives and other champions of the privileged have sternly denied that they are snobs who oppose economic equity out of the conviction that some people — they and theirs — are inherently superior to the masses.

Only the late Ayn Rand openly proclaimed that life was a “struggle between the genius and the parasite,” and that public policy should favor the innately superior genius. Other conservatives, even those who fell under her influence (Alan Greenspan, for one), insisted that they were as devoted as anyone to the proposition that down deep, everybody is jes’ folks.

No more. Emboldened by recent success, some right-wing scholars have openly declared that those who do better are better. In his book The Virtues of Prosperity, conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza argues that, “The guy who is worth little has probably produced little of value. By the same token, the guy who’s earning twice as much as you is most likely — perish the thought — twice as good as you are.” Orlando Sentinel

U.S. Concedes Some Cell Lines Are Not Ready — “Nearly

a month after President Bush

announced that he would permit federally

financed scientists to study more than 60

colonies of human embryonic stem cells, the

administration acknowledged today that

fewer than half those colonies were fully

established and ready for research.” New York Times [Is anyone surprised?]

Rock Stars Oppose Bush’s Energy Plan and Ask Fans to Join Them. In addition to reinvigorating Greenpeace (see below), the Shrub in the White House puts rock activism back in vogue, and wonderful old warhorses like David Crosby get a second wind (or a third…?) New York Times

Signs of Hope: Spotlight Turns to Undecided Sen. Thompson (R-Tenn) and Pete Domenici (R-NMex), who have yet to announce whether they will stand for their seats next year. Jesse Helms, Strom Tuurmond and now Texas Senator Phil Gramm are retiring from the Senate. So far, all 14 Democratic Senators whose seats are up for grabs are expected to stand for reelection. A total of 20 Republican seats hang in the balance as well. Reuters [Whether the Democrats take control again or not, I’m loving the prospect of a US Senate without Thurmond and Helms…]

Early School Lunch May Violate Federal Rules The first lunch period at this Boston-area high school will begin at 9:26 a.m.! School overcrowding, of course, is the culprit. Federal regulations, by the way, allow school lunch at 10:00.

Move to Criminalize All Leaks of Classified Data Hits a Snag: “A Senate hearing scheduled for

today on a proposal to make all leaks of classified information

crimes was canceled after the White House told the bill’s Republican

sponsor that it was not prepared to support the legislation.

A senior White House official said that while the administration opposed

leaks, a new law was not needed to safeguard national security.” New York Times [George B— as a card-carrying ACLU member??]