Dissent, Anyone?: “…a slew of incidents further suggest a dark underside to our near-unanimous flag-waving and monolithic support for George W. Bush.” Chris Moody, The American Prospect

Does Osama Have a Nuclear Bomb? ‘Nobody who knows for sure is talking publicly. Yet for much of the last decade, government reports and intelligence experts have been warning that bin Laden has been trying to build the bomb. The reports have been sporadic but persistent: A 1999 article in the Jerusalem Report magazine claims “bin Laden has several nuclear suitcases,” and a 1998 New York Times article says that a bin Laden aide was arrested in Germany on charges of trying to buy highly enriched uranium.’ Wired

No Lye: Docs Probe ‘Soap Lady’: “Sometime in the 19th century, a fat woman died and her body changed almost entirely into soap.

It may sound like an urban legend, but researchers are serious. On Thursday, they performed a CT scan on the woman’s mummified body hoping to learn more about the process that turns some corpses into a waxy, soap-like substance called adipocere.” Wired

Phil Agre answers the common argument, “… we have to give up some

civil liberties in order to secure ourselves against the danger.”

We must certainly improve our security in many areas. I have

said that myself for years. The fallacy here is in the automatic

association between security and restrictions on civil liberties.

Security can be improved in many ways, for example by rationalizing

identification systems for airport employees or training flight

attendants in martial arts, without having any effect on civil

liberties. Security can be improved in other ways, for example

by preventing identity theft or replacing Microsoft products with

well-engineered software, that greatly improve privacy. And many

proposals for improved security, such as searching passengers’

luggage properly, have a minimal effect on privacy relative to

existing practices. The “trade-off” between security and civil

liberties, therefore, is highly over-rated, and I am quite surprised

by the speed with which many defenders of freedom have given up any

effort to defend the core value of our society as a result of the

terrorist attack.

Field Notes: See No Evil: “Philip Jenkins is a dogged debunker of media-fueled frenzies. Americans should not lose sleep, he has argued, over pedophiles in the clergy, kids on ecstasy, or serial killers. Sex fiends don’t lurk in every day-care center, he insisted in Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (Yale, 1998). But today Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University, finds himself in an awkward position: He wants to alert the public to a peril he considers authentic. Lingua Franca

Oh, what the heck, everybody else is doing it, why don’t I link too to this hilarious, poignantly so, article marking the triumphal return of The Onion?

God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule

“Look, I don’t know, maybe I haven’t made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again,” said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. “Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don’t. And to be honest, I’m really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand.”

Caterina is another fan of Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren, about which I have frequently sung praises. She has also mentioned Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger, a formative influence on my thinking about the tyranny of culture, oh, almost thirty years ago. Makes me curious about what else I’d find on her attempt to list every book she’s ever read…