Happy Halloween! …the only full-moon Hallowe’en between 1955 and 2020.

Paul Krugman:
The One-Eyed Man: “Somewhere I read that to really

understand legislation you have to

look for the clause giving special

consideration to one-eyed bearded men

with a limp — that is, you have to look for

the provision that turns a bill ostensibly

serving a public purpose into a giveaway

for some special interest.” I’ve seen alot of progressive reaction to the “economic stimulus” bill passed last week by the House decrying the giveaway to the GMs and Exxons of the country at the expense of the little folk. Krugman incisively suggests this is a kneejerk response that’s kind of tautological. You don’t have to find it equitable, but the way the economy of the country is structured it wouldn’t be a stimulus package if it didn’t benefit the largest corporate entities, would it? More interestingly, the “one-eyed man” in bill turns out to be a concentration of mid-sized energy and mining businesses based in or near Texas. “In other words, the one-eyed bearded man with a limp looks a lot like Dick Cheney.” NY Times

Particles Are Tiny, but Damage Can Be Great: “From the coal dust that causes black lung

disease to the bacteria-laden droplets that

spread Legionnaires’ disease to second-

hand cigarette smoke and plain old air

pollution, particles from about 0.05

microns to 10 or 20 microns in size have

long been at the focus of (environmental) scientists’

attention…

Those tiny particles crop up in environmental science and germ weaponry

for virtually identical reasons.: NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

EMDR, in the Eye of the Storm: “They swooped in after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the crash of TWA Flight 800 a year later and the killings at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999.

Now proponents of a controversial and increasingly popular treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, are offering free therapy sessions to the latest group of traumatized Americans: survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks at the Pentagon and World Trade Center, relatives of those who were killed and workers involved in the ghastly rescue and recovery efforts.” Washington Post

AOL President: Anthrax Attacks Will Boost Internet Traffic.In an incredibly insensitive remark, Raymond Oglethorpe says he’s excited about the prospect that shutting down post offices will boost internet traffic. Washington Post

The Online Journalism Awards: 2001 Winners & Finalists from the Online News Association and Columbia University. Slate received the top award for “general excellence in online journalism”. The BBC beat out the New York Times, the Washington Post and the WSJ Online. They mentioned some tidbits new to me, for example:

DigitalJournalist.org: 20 Years — AIDS & Photography:

A look at how AIDS has been documented by photographs.

Judges called this an outstanding creative use of the medium, a great piece of journalism that could only exist online. The cliché about a picture being worth 1,000 words was never more meaningful, said one judge. Another said, simply, “I was very, very moved by it.”

Courtesy of The Westerby Report, a new weblog looking quite promising (check it out!): Strangelove in 2001: Kubrick’s Lost Doomsday Scenario

A “suitcase nuclear bomb” being detonated by a “potential enemy” in Washington, DC in a sneak attack?

Film director Stanley Kubrick suggested just such a scenario in 1994.

What seemed wildly implausible before September 11th — like a subplot from the director’s apocalyptic classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb — no longer seems so far-fetched.

Kubrick’s politically-charged essay, which The New York Times refused to publish in 1994, warned of the potential of nuclear attack caused by “accident, miscalculation or madness.”

Penned by the director for the 30th anniversary of Dr. Strangelove, the remarks make no secret of Kubrick’s fear that nuclear peril lay ahead. RetroFuture

High Court Tackles Kid Porn. A 1996 law that extends the ban on depictions of child pornography to acts involving adults who “appear” to be minors goes to the Court, since graphic acts between consenting adults enjoy more free speech protection. Opponents of the law argue that reasonable people can differ about who “appears” to be a minor. Proponents argue that child pornography cannot ever be effectively be fought unless the law encompasses the appearance as well as the reality, both because they can’t tell the difference and because they reason that apparent child porn entices children to participate in the real thing (??). Wired

When you visit this page, take a look at the counter at the bottom of the sidebar column. Write me if you’re visitor number 30,000 (since 9/3/01 when I started counting), sometime soon. (I seem to run a pretty consistent 500 visitors a day. Of course, that’s probably only 20 of you each surfing over here twenty-five times daily…) Update: Thanks, all 30,000 of you. The big round number was Gordon Coale, who runs a pretty good weblog (eponymously named) himself.

Amazon Removes a Startling Book Jacket NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

What Boston Job Means to Levine’s Musical Legacy. Commentary on the import of the momentous selection of a successor to Seiji Ozawa as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”] Interesting to anyone who lives outside of my home city of Boston?

Strange Bedfellows Dept. (cont’d.): 3 New Allies Help C.I.A. in Its Fight Against Terror. The US explores cooperation with Libya, Syria and the Sudan in “defeating terrorism.”

“While we need the intelligence very much, the trick is that some of the

people we’re sharing with are people with whom our partnership will be

very limited,” said Gregory F. Treverton, a former vice chairman of the

National Intelligence Council, a group that oversees American intelligence

analysis. “We are not close friends with all these nations. All the people

we share with have their own interests. And they will cook the books to

pursue their own interests.”

Duh.

NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

The Not-Yet-Ready-for-Prime-Time Novelist “Lurking behind Mr. Franzen’s rejection of Ms. Winfrey is an elemental

distrust of readers, except for the ones he designates.” Verlyn Klinkenborg is made uneasy by Jonathan (The Corrections) Franzen’s reservations about his book’s selection for the Oprah book club; goes abit over-the-top in drawing arch implications. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Underwhelming: Material Seized in U.S. Ground Raid Yields Few Gains — “The collection of

documents, computer disks and other

material seized during a nighttime raid by special

operations forces in southern Afghanistan 10 days

ago failed to produce the intelligence bonanza

that the Pentagon had sought, military and

government officials said today.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Daniel Handler:
Frightening News

‘Under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, I write

books for children. The books chronicle the troubles of the three

Baudelaire siblings, who lose their parents in a terrible fire and are

constantly on the run from the villainous Count Olaf. “If you are looking for

happy endings,” I warn in the first volume, “you would be better off

reading some other book.”

Since Sept. 11, interviewers have asked me if it is appropriate to tell such

stories, when there are plenty of real orphans and villains to worry about.

The answer, judging from the hundreds of e-mail messages and letters I

have received, is that it is more than appropriate; it is necessary.’

Let’s not banish the ghouls and goblins just when we need them most. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”] [Readers of FmH have heard reference to my family’s dedication to the tradition of reading aloud. Coincidentally enough, my son and I started the first of Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events books last week. Highly recommended.]

Why Can’t Lego Click? “(T)he business of engaging children has changed so much that Lego’s core value, inspiring and nurturing creativity and play, doesn’t seem to be helping the company succeed. If you look at what children and their parents are buying ( Lego hasn’t had a toy in the list of top 20 U.S. sellers any year in the past seven ), it’s hard not to conclude that Lego finds itself in a fight for relevance, perhaps even for survival, for which the company’s 70-year history may not have prepared it.” Fast Company The Fast Company website got swamped after a slashdot thread discussed this story.

My son had several years’ fascination with Legos and I’ve been surprised to find, as the article points out, that they’ve become more model-building kits than the freeform construction sets they were in my childhood. Clever marketing, it seemed at first; instead of selling one set of bricks to each child, now they were hooked on an endless series of themed kits tied with web- and print-based adventure tales in what almost amounted to an alternate universe. (I’m still waiting for Lego, the Movie.) To my relief, he soon saw through the yearning for more and more newer and newer kits and, after building a set by the instructions, he would almost immediately dismantle it and, as he called it, “invent,” pooling the pieces with the pieces (tens of thousands of them) he already had. Eventually, he started selecting the new kits he wanted by how unique the pieces would be for his inventing.

Perhaps it is a good sign for soulful play, despite what it means for the corporation, that Lego hasn’t had a topselling toy in a long time, if it means that my son’s saturation steering him to a much more inventive creative play with the toys is not an uncommon experience.

Ashcroft Warns Of New Threat

Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters Monday “there may be additional terrorist attacks within the U.S. and against U.S. interests over the next week.” Ashcroft added that although the administration views the information about the threat as “credible,” they do not have any specific information about when or where such attacks might take place…

Despite reporters’ questions, Ashcroft and Mueller refused to be any more specific about the threat. They reported that only the time of the impending attack was specific.

On Oct. 12, a similar alert was announced more quietly on the FBI Web site.

Mueller said that the Oct. 12 alert may have helped avert another attack, but it is difficult to tell. The alert may have been intended to refer to the current anthrax threat. Mueller said that there is no reason to believe that the current threat is related to anthrax. The Boston Channel

Is the Attorney General toying with us? From our avowals that we had definitive proof the attacks had been masterminded by ObL, to these recurrent threat alerts by the DoJ, to (here in my ‘home port’) the Coast Guard’s assurances yesterday that they have everything under control to prevent an attack on the LNG tanker arriving in Boston Harbor but refusing to share their plans with the Boston Police or Fire Depts., the government response to the terrorist attacks and threats has been managed by assuring us they know things and refusing to share what they know — a clear attempt to reassure and take credit for one’s intel but remain blameless for the failures of one’s intel. Issue omniscient-sounding warnings every few weeks and, several weeks later, follow up by claiming to have averted a major disaster. It reminds me of the joke about the man asked why he (insert outlandish attire or behavior here) everyday. “It’s to keep the stampeding elephants away”, he explains. “But there aren’t any elephants within five thousand miles of here!” replies his questioner. His smug reply: “See how well it’s working?”

It also reminds me of the special line to divinity the leaders claim to have in a theocracy. Expect to see another time-honored theocratic strategy soon, as follows. One theory of the function of ritual in societies is to reconcile believers to awful contingencies they can’t control by prescribing impossibly precise and elaborate rituals. They understand their failure to avert calamity as a failure to execute the ceremonial prescriptions perfectly enough. This holds out the promise of control of the uncontrollable if only the believers worked harder at appeasing divine forces perfectly. Perhaps around the anthrax exposures, where the CDC is the new priesthood, with arcane knowlege, ceremonial garb and impenetrable specialized language — if our rituals of recognition of threat mail, detection of spores in a workplace, sanitization, isolation, antibiotic prophylaxis and irradiation were only done perfectly enough, the juggernaut would lose all power over us?

Marvin Harris, 74, Is Dead ‘Dr. Harris, called “one of the most controversial anthropologists alive” by Smithsonian magazine in 1986, believed that human social life was shaped in response to the practical problems of human existence [“cultural maerialism”, he called it. -FmH]. He argued essentially that cultural differences did not matter much, a novel approach in a discipline dedicated to studying cultural differences.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

We Made Out in a Tree and This Old Guy Sat and Watched Us

Pirates mar local launch of Windows XP

: ‘Illegal copies of the new OS, touted to have 18 major improvements from previous Windows systems, …were available in Malaysia within days of the “gold” version of Windows XP being delivered to PC makers, for them to bundle it with their machines as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).’ Sold for as little as $3US, the pirated copies sidestepped the highly-publicized need to obtain an activation code from Microsoft to install the OS on your desktop

“by copying the OEM version of Windows XP Corporate Edition that was meant for installation over a network. Since such multiple user or site licensing installations may require many — from dozens to hundreds of — PCs being installed with the software, it is believed that Microsoft had done away with the need for an activation code.

This left the way open for the pirates.

Consumer and privacy advocates in the United States had already been complaining about the activation code — the former complained that the anti-piracy measure would only inconvenience legitimate users and would not bar the pirates.

The latter were wary of Microsoft’s scanning of users’ systems.”

About the PBS documentary Undetectable by Jay Corcoran, which ‘examines the realities of life for people surviving on AIDS drug “cocktails,” challenging the widespread assumption that the worst of the HIV epidemic is over. This award-winning film examines over three years the complex physical and psychological effects of multi-drug HIV therapies on men and women of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds.’ [thanks, Abi]

A reader writes with regard to my item about the depraved attempt to develop ethnically specific bioweapons that ‘it has been tried before… The South African Chemical and Biowarfare

program attempted to create “an infertility toxin to

secretly sterilize the black population” ‘. Did this inspire Israeli biowarfare dreams? Not outlandish, considering that ‘South Africa and Israel cooperated

on their nuclear weapons programs in the 60s and 70s.’ [thank you, K.]

Annals of the Erosion of Privacy (cont’d.): Liberties fear over mobile phone details: “One of the fastest growing mobile phone providers is indefinitely storing information that allows its customers’ movements over the last two years to be mapped to within a few hundred metres.” Guardian UK

Seymour Hersh has a long piece in the current New Yorker on various scenarios involving the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, including the strike-counterstrike that would ensue if a group of extremists gained control of part of the arsenal and a jet plane to dispatch it over India. Here the Telegraph UK describes one aspect of Hersh’s report — that a secret US unit trained by Israeli counter-terrorism experts is ready to infiltrate into Pakistan and take charge of, or defuse, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the event that General Musharraf’s control is compromised.

“Osama bin Laden is not a serious revolutionary; he is a poseur, a silly but lethal boy.” Times of London And he may be dead. Last week, a Chinese internet news site reported that Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had been killed by their own guards in an underground Kandahar base on October 16. An interview with James S. Robbins, a professor of international relations at the National Defense University’s School for National Defense Studies, on the evidence for believing these reports. National Review

CIA Weighs ‘Targeted Killing’ Missions. By sleight-of-word, this is not your father’s political assassination: “… the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad grant of authority to hunt and kill U.S. enemies at its discretion, knowledgeable sources said. But the agency is willing and believes itself able to take the lives of terrorists designated by the president.” Washington Post

“For some people, war is terror, disaster and death. For others, it’s a PR problem.” The domestic counterpart to the ad agency I mentioned below that is going to help sell the US-eye view of the conflict to the Islamic world, Spinning the War reflects on the public relations firm the Pentagon has hired “to help… look good while bombing Afghanistan.” Working for Change And a collection of the logos the nightly news broadcasts are using in their spins on:

America Fights Back, America Strikes Back, America Responds, War on Terrorism, War on Terror, A Nation United, America At War, America On Alert, Attack On America, Attack on Terror, America Under Attack, Anthrax…

And (for some balance??), John Pilger:

“ The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks’ bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan.

Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has been terrorised by the most powerful – to the point where American pilots have run out of dubious “military” targets and are now destroying mud houses, a hospital, Red Cross warehouses, lorries carrying refugees.

Unlike the relentless pictures from New York, we are seeing almost nothing of this. Tony Blair has yet to tell us what the violent death of children – seven in one family – has to do with Osama bin Laden.

And why are cluster bombs being used? The British public should know about these bombs, which the RAF also uses. They spray hundreds of bomblets that have only one purpose; to kill and maim people. Those that do not explode lie on the ground like landmines, waiting for people to step on them.

If ever a weapon was designed specifically for acts of terrorism, this is it. I have seen the victims of American cluster weapons in other countries, such as the Laotian toddler who picked one up and had her right leg and face blown off. Be assured this is now happening in Afghanistan, in your name.”

More about Pilger, a journalist with an emphatic viewpoint, here.

“In short, these guys are not that good in a purely military sense. So why have they never been conquered?” How Afghan men fight: Richard Kidd is a West Point graduate who became an international relief worker. He was providing food relief on the Afghan-Tajik border in 1993 and was in Afghanistan again in 1998 with the UN’s mine clearance program. He wonders if the US is prepared to battle these people.

This will not be a pretty war. Our opponents will not abide by the Geneva Conventions. There will be no prisoners unless there is a chance that they can be ransomed or made part of a local prisoner exchange. We may see videos of American prisoners being killed.

It will be a war of wills and, conversely, of compassion and character. We must show our enemies a level of ruthlessness that has not been part of our military nature for a long time. We will have to kill our enemies – members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network, religious fanatics, and those who support them. We will have to bribe fighters away from the Taliban, and sow disinformation and dissent.

But to those who are not our enemies – the proud people of Afghanistan – we must show a level of compassion probably unheard of during war, by providing immediate humanitarian relief and making a long-term commitment to creating a stable Afghanistan. We should do this not only for humane reasons, but also as a matter of shrewd military logic – to keep people from turning against us. Christian Science Monitor

America’s ‘elite’ troops — ‘Colonel David H Hackworth, America’s most decorated soldier, does not mince his words. “I would be reluctant to jump into a battle zone with any conventional American unit. I would hate to take them into battle – they ain’t ready, they are not ‘good to go’.” ‘ Guardian UK

US Broadcasts “Not Being Heard” BBC; Ad Group May Help Sell US to Muslim, Arab Countries LA Times

African Fossil Find: 40-Foot Crocodile. Sarcosuchus imperator had been known since the first discovery of its fossilized bones in 1964, but its size could not be estimated for want of a skull. Now one has been found by a team led by a University of Chicago paleontologist, and it reveals the gargantuan size of this monster. It weighed nine tons, was as long as a schoolbus, had four-foot jaws — “an amazingly nasty animal” able to bring down dinosaurs weighing tons “for lunch”.Washington Post Here‘s a Google search to further information on this behemoth. I heard the scientist who put this all together interviewed on NPR, and it appears he’s promoting the hell out of his find, dreaming of presiding over an empire of licensed Sarcosuchus movies and franchised goods.

(212) 479-7990

A Smarter Web: Tim Berners-Lee and others dream of the semantic web. MIT Technology Review

Microwave beam weapon to disperse crowds: “Tests of a controversial weapon that is designed to heat people’s skin with a microwave beam have shown that it can disperse crowds. But critics are not convinced the system is safe.” Microwave levels of the weapon, which we are assured by its developers are within federal safety guidelines, are undisclosed; the level that would ‘scare’ people is thought by some to be close to the level causing injury; and who trusts the federal guidelines anyway? New Scientist

A guide and study of the comic From Hell and the lore surrounding the Jack the Ripper case

[via Looka!]

US Broadcasts “Not Being Heard” BBC; Ad Group May Help Sell US to Muslim, Arab Countries LA Times

First US ground attack ‘could have ended in disaster’: “The attack was meant to be a purely cosmetic exercise for the benefit of the media and the public against a relatively safe and poorly defended target.

But there had been a failure of intelligence, and the troops from the elite 75th Rangers Regiment ran into such heavy fire on the ground near Kandahar that they had to beat a hasty retreat. A Chinook helicopter airlifting them out lost its undercarriage and had to make a forced landing.

The Pentagon presented the operation as a complete success and evidence that Operation Enduring Freedom was going according to plan. There was blanket and mainly adulatory media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic with the prognosis that the ground war had begun.

But, instead, what happened last weekend made US and British planners at central command in Tampa, Florida, reappraise the military campaign, and continue with air strikes rather than carry out any more missions on the ground. Within 24 hours the Pentagon has requested special forces troops from Britain and Australia. And the British Government was forced to consider a much larger deployment of ground troops than originally envisaged.” Independent UK

Helping the enemy — “Kneeling side-by-side in the West Bank soil, a rabbi helps a Palestinian farmer harvest olives. It is a sign of solidarity during times that are tough, especially for those trying to eke out a living from unforgiving land.

The West Bank village of Haris lies next to the Jewish settlement of Revava. The settlers, citing army security regulations, say the farmers of Haris may not tend trees growing less than 300 yards from the settlement walls.

The Palestinian farmers say they do not challenge this edict for fear the settlers, or the soldiers who guard them, may open fire.

So Rabbi Arik Ascherman and eight other Israeli human rights activists traveled to Haris to give the villagers a Jewish human shield and help them harvest their olive crop.” USA Today

“I do not think your US administration deserves that Iraqis condole with it on what happened, unless it condoles with the Iraqi people on the death of 1.5 million Iraqis who it killed.”

— Saddam Hussein

Saddam’s surprise message — ‘Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has for the first time offered condolences to the American people for those who died in the 11 September attacks.

He was replying to an e-mail from an American who appealed to him to take a stand toward removing terrorism, hunger and strife around the world.

Iraq is the only Arab country not to have condemned the attacks.

Saddam Hussein’s traditional Muslim message of condolence came in what appeared to be an unprecedented personal exchange with an American citizen, published by the Iraqi Information Ministry.

In it, a man called Christopher Love, who described himself as a computer engineer from Pennsylvania, urged the Iraqi leader to seize the moment and, in his words, side with the world.’ BBC

“Conflict index” warns when a nation faces civil war: ‘Their “conflict barometer” gives a week-by-week measure of the scale of unrest. Although the barometer’s forecasting prowess remains to be proved, its developers say it could have presaged the slide of Algeria and Sri Lanka into civil war. They also believe it could help the US and Britain decide how long to fight Operation Enduring Freedom.’ New Scientist

“Given that this is the administration that was touted as being run with

C.E.O. clockwork, perhaps it should be added to the growing list of Things

That Have Changed Forever since Sept. 11.” How to Lose a War: ‘The “America Strikes Back” optimism that

surged after Sept. 11 has now been

stricken by the multitude of ways we’re

losing the war at home. The F.B.I. has

proved more effective in waging turf

battles against Rudy Giuliani than waging war on terrorism. Of the more

than 900 suspects arrested, exactly zero have been criminally charged in

the World Trade Center attack (though one has died of natural causes,

we’re told, in a New Jersey jail cell). The Bush team didn’t fully recognize

that a second attack on America had begun until more than a week after

the first casualty. The most highly trumpeted breakthrough in the hunt for

anthrax terrorists — Tom Ridge’s announcement that “the site where the

letters were mailed” had been found in New Jersey — proved a dead

end. And now the president is posing with elementary-school children

again.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

How to Lose a War: ‘The “America Strikes Back” optimism that

surged after Sept. 11 has now been

stricken by the multitude of ways we’re

losing the war at home. The F.B.I. has

proved more effective in waging turf

battles against Rudy Giuliani than waging war on terrorism. Of the more

than 900 suspects arrested, exactly zero have been criminally charged in

the World Trade Center attack (though one has died of natural causes,

we’re told, in a New Jersey jail cell). The Bush team didn’t fully recognize

that a second attack on America had begun until more than a week after

the first casualty. The most highly trumpeted breakthrough in the hunt for

anthrax terrorists — Tom Ridge’s announcement that “the site where the

letters were mailed” had been found in New Jersey — proved a dead

end. And now the president is posing with elementary-school children

again.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Human Rights in Mexico — “Last week’s killing of Digna Ochoa,

one of Mexico’s foremost human rights

lawyers, had all the markings of a political

execution carried out by powerful interest

groups that are confident they can act with impunity, as they always

have. Ms. Ochoa was shot at close range in her downtown Mexico City

office. A note left behind warned other human rights lawyers that they

would be next.” NY Times editorial[“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

I continue to be amazed, professionally, by the overlay of needless suffering people with psychiatric illnesses go through on top of that they must endure from their conditions. Much of this comes from the central conflict both within the mental health field and in the zeitgeist between the “minders” and the “brainers”, which Followers know I’ve written various takes on.

As a recent example, a therapist friend of mine recently sent me a posting from a Rogerian therapy mailing list to which he belongs. Rogerian therapy, also called client-centered, was pioneered by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers and is based on the primacy of active empathic listening on the part of the therapist. The implicit theory behind it is that the experience on the part of the client of “unconditional positive regard” will heal all ills. A prime directive is that the therapist be non-directive.

In the one-paragraph email message forwarded to me, the Rogerian therapist described the somnolence his client (who had had a history of a psychotic break several years before which had required hospitalization but had been stable since on medication) was experiencing, leaps to the conclusion that it is caused by the medication, and is so concerned by this trumped-up evil that he considers abandoning his non-directive stance and suggesting his client stop the medication.

In my response, which I allowed my friend on the listserv to post to the group, I said that I was amazed the poster had managed to raise as many red flags as he had in one brief paragraph — the automatic assumption that it was the medication, lack of plans on the part of the therapist to collaborate with the prescribing physician, his failure to evaluate the possibility that the client’s stability since such a severe episode of psychosis probably depended upon the medication. It worried me that the therapist’s PDR was so outdated that he admitted he had not been able to find the medications his client was taking to read up on them before deciding to advise his client to discontinue them. I was bothered that the therapist sought consultation about his clinical dilemma from a mailing list where he was likely to get only similar anti-medication biases.

I mentioned that, before medical school, I had trained and practiced in a Rogerian model; passionately so. But I had found it “hopelessly inadequate” (yes, I know, an inflammatory comment) to deal with patients with the major mental illnesses I sought to treat, who I am emphatically convinced need — but need, no matter how unconditional, much more than — empathy and positive regard. (Courts have agreed, by the way, for what it’s worth. No matter how non-medical [or anti-medical] the biases of a given therapist are, s/he is considered liable for failing to raise the issue of medication with a patient who has a degree of psychiatric distress more likely to respond to the addition of drugs than solely to the techniques advocated by the therapist.)

As expected, there was a firestorm of backlash from the members of the listserv. They were convinced my friend was a traitor for sharing the message with me, that I might be a traitor for abandoning my Rogerian roots but that it was more likely that I had never ‘gotten it’ in the first place. It was clear that I could not stand the pain of ‘sitting with’ clients in severe distress and was resorting to medications to salve my own distress. Really. I wasn’t offended, but mightily saddened. For the sloppy thinking and intolerance of these supposedly intelligent and well-meaning people… and for the spectre of the numbers of unsuspecting clients placing themselves in their and similar hands.

This all came back to me when Alwin Hawkins (who undeservedly described himself thusly: “think Drew Carey without the keen fashion sense and subtle wit”), gently suggesting it’s more up my alley than his (he’s a veteran critical care nurse in a coronary care unit), pointed me to this British Medical Journal editorial.

Improving outcomes in depression

:

Around 450 million people worldwide have mental or psychosocial problems, but most of those who turn to health services for help will not be correctly diagnosed or will not get the right treatment. Even those whose problems are recognised may not receive adequate care. In a World Health Organization study of psychological disorders in general health care carried out in 14 countries around the world patients with major depression were as likely to be treated with sedatives as with antidepressants, although antidepressants were associated with more favourable outcomes at three month follow up. This benefit had dissipated by follow up at 12 months; but patients had only been taking drug treatment for a mean of 11 weeks, with a quarter of them doing so for less than a month. About two thirds of patients whose illnesses were recognised and treated with drugs still had a diagnosis of mental illness at follow up one year later, and in nearly a half the diagnosis was still major depression. Indeed, there are no observational studies of routine care for patients with major depression in the United Kingdom or in the United States that have found most patients to be receiving care consistent with evidence based guidelines.

U.S. Planes Bomb a Red Cross Site for Second Time. Error compounds error. In the first bombing, the depot, housing relief supplies for Afghan civilians, was erroneously chosen as a target by military planners. Furthermore, the bombs fell wide and hit the surrounding civilian neighborhood. This time, they used satellite-guided precision weapons to hit a target Pentagon planners put off limits after the first error. Oh, and there are big red crosses painted on the roofs of these buildings. At least there were no deaths in the bombing.

In other words, the pilots dropped their bombs where they were

instructed, and the bombs mostly hit the targets at which they were aimed.

The bomb that struck the residential neighborhood did so, the Central

Command said, when the guidance system malfunctioned on an FA-18 jet.

The Red Cross seemed stunned by the Pentagon’s admission today.

“Whoever is responsible will have to come to Geneva for a formal

explanation,” said Kim Gordon-Bates, the Red Cross spokesman there.

“Firing, shooting, bombing, a warehouse clearly marked with the Red

Cross emblem is a very serious incident. It is a serious thing. It cannot be

accepted, especially since we went through the notification of our facilities

twice. Now we’ve got 55,000 people without that food or blankets, with

nothing at all. Recognizing an error does not exactly solve the

humanitarian problem.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

[If there are other warehouses storing relief supplies around the country with red crosses painted on their roofs, perhaps they should paint over them. They seem to look like bullseyes to pilots and planners… -FmH]

Punk Rock Cooking … add a little anarchy to your cooking. getcrafty

Puff, the Magic Genome: ‘After nearly a decade of hard work, researchers are close to paydirt. They’ve got the genetic sequencing of the Japanese pufferfish about 90 percent complete.

Why all this fuss over such an odd little fish?

Well, it turns out that the pufferfish genome is remarkably similar to the human one, making it a valuable road map for human geneticists. Not only that, but it doesn’t contain all the “junk” found in human DNA, the stuff that makes finding actual genes so difficult.’ Wired

Anthrax Doctor’s Quick Thinking

The elderly man’s labored breathing and fever seemed nothing more exotic than a bad case of pneumonia. But then Dr. Carlos Omenaca got a troubling call.

It was the patient’s boss. A fellow employee had just been diagnosed with anthrax, he said, the deadly inhaled form of the disease.

Hardly a U.S. doctor alive had ever seen a case of inhaled anthrax. Could this be another one? …The patient was Ernesto Blanco, the 73-year-old mailroom worker, who in retrospect turned out to be the first person hospitalized in the anthrax attacks and the first to survive the inhaled form of the disease. Wired

Cribbed from wood s lot, a link to an effort that’s near and dear to my heart. Bad Neuro-Journalism: “…what we find to be among the worst examples of journalism about the brain appearing in the popular press. To be selected as an example of bad neuro-journalism, the article must demonstrate one (or more than one) of the following flaws:

• seriously misrepresents the original science
  

• covers research of dubious value
  

• wildly extrapolates the reported findings
  

• presents an overly simplistic interpretation of a complex finding”

You’ll find links to an archive of past ‘winners’, as well as pointers to neuro-journalism done well.

James S. Mcdonell Foundation

The Neurology Web Forum is hosted by the Harvard Medical School Dept. of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, but is an unmoderated forum to discuss and comment on neurological topics without any input from MGH professionals. Inevitably, it turns into the sort of peer diagnosis and virtual prescribing that is what’s wrong with self-help groups (although, as the friend who sent me the link suggests, many of the stories have a poignancy to them). “Please help; is it MS?” “What could ‘abnormal EEG’ mean?” “Please help — back is getting worse.” “Epilepsy or am I sick?” [thanks, Pam!]

Bin Laden ‘may never be caught’. ‘Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, said that tracking him down would be “a very difficult thing to do” and it would be a mistake to focus the war on terrorism on one man.

He said in an interview with the USA Today newspaper: “It’s a big world. There are lots of countries. He’s got a lot of money; he’s got a lot of people who support him. I just don’t know whether we’ll be successful.”

Mr Rumsfeld was speaking 24 hours after Tony Blair said that bin Laden was unlikely to be brought to trial, expressing the hope that he would be killed during a bombing raid or attack by troops.

The suggestion that bin Laden might never be caught was in marked contrast to the earlier claim by President Bush that the leader of the al-Qa’eda terrorist organisation would be taken “dead or alive”.’ Telegraph UK

Israeli killings of Palestinians escalate in response to the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rechavam Ze’evi last week. Kill nine in West Bank raid: “An Israeli raid on a West Bank village, launched to nab the assassins of a Cabinet minister, yesterday turned into a bloody gun battle in which nine Palestinians were reported killed.” NY Post Five Palestinians killed in latest Mid East violence: “Israeli soldiers have shot dead five Palestinians during worsening unrest in the West Bank.

The Israeli army has sealed off the village of Awarta.

Troops with loud speakers have warned residents that they will be shot if they leave their homes.

The raid comes after Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a car carrying Israeli civilians at a nearby Jewish settlement.

No-one was injured in the ambush, but security forces are on alert.

” ABC

‘During the past week, more than 40 Palestinians have been killed.

On Thursday, four Palestinians were killed in Bethlehem and another in Tulkarem, Palestinian security sources said. Three other Palestinians — including a 2-year-old child — were wounded by sniper bullets in Azza refugee camp, the medical services said.

The Israeli Army said it was provoked by a group of Palestinians who had fired at them.’ CNN Doubts emerge, within the Israeli domestic opposition as well as external critics, about whether these incidents are provoked as Israel claims.

Privileged Children Of Millionaires Square Off On World Stage. No joke: ObL vs. GwB. The Onion

Online Images That Stay True to Form on Any Screen: “Last month the World Wide Web Consortium, which promotes Internet standards, recommended a graphic technology that is designed to make many Web images fit any screen, including the tiny displays on wireless phones. Known as Scalable Vector Graphics, or SVG, and developed with contributions from leading software and hardware companies like Adobe, Corel, Apple and Microsoft, the format is text-based. This allows the graphics to load faster and enables search engines and screen readers to locate printed matter in images.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Panned! Account of death by adventure could use some serious CPR: “Ever wonder what it feels like, really feels like, to drown? Or to suffer hypothermia? Or dehydration?

Keep wondering. While Peter Stark’s supposedly nonfiction account purports to reveal what it’s like to die 11 different ways, all of them adventure-related, what Last Breath really does is perpetrate a fraud upon the book-buying public.” Boston Globe

All creatures great and small The living world is governed by laws based on fractal geometry and on the sizes of organisms, some scientists claim; is there a biological ‘theory of everything’? Nature

Toxic Taste — ‘Morbid repulsion to a particular food, clinically known as taste aversion (also known as “the Garcia-effect,” after John Garcia, the UCLA psychologist who was the first to quantify it), is a common psychological phenomenon well known to dieticians, food manufacturers, pesticide manufacturers, restaurateurs, and physicians. The condition has been observed for centuries, but only in the past 30 years has it been studied in depth by scientists.’

Chris Mooney:
Smart — and Stupid — Profiling. Guess what he thinks of Peggy Noonan’s

WSJ proposal — albeit “an impressive piece of journalism” — for doing it. The American Prospect

China’s Designated Terrorists — ‘China is using the war on terrorism to brand the Uyghurs of Xinjiang

… Since (Colin Powell’s Sept. 21 meeting with the Chinese foreign minister to discuss cooperation between the US and CHinese counter-terrorism specialists), the government has stepped up rhetoric and action in the region. On October 12, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry appealed for international help with their “terrorists” from “East Turkestan” — a Turkic name for the region the Chinese only use when linking its inhabitants to terrorism. The Ministry also suggested there was evidence of Uyghur links to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization. Echoing global press coverage, the state-controlled Chinese press has been telling its population that there is a war on terrorism in Xinjiang.’ The American Prospect

Mother sends son’s ashes to company processing student loan in effort to have it discharged: “Tired of the red tape involved in proving her son dead, a woman sent a baggie containing some of his ashes to the company processing his student loans.

The baggie and accompanying letter arrived at Sallie Mae’s office in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Oct. 12 as concern was growing about anthrax-tainted letters.” SF Gate

Ted Nugent may not be a real Bad American, or he may not be the only one. ‘The Bad American’ has been attributed to alot of other folks. According to the invaluable Snopes (thanks to a number of Followers): “Just about any unsourced list of witty observations about our politics and social mores gets credited to humorist George Carlin these days, even when it doesn’t really sound like anything he would write. Carlin may sometimes use the format of stringing together a few dozen pithy comments about a wide variety of topical subjects, but the tone of his humor is nothing like this reactionary piece. If any doubt remained, Carlin himself swept it away by announcing on his web site that he is not the author of the article.

If not Carlin, then who did write it? This piece has also been credited to a number of decidedly conservative, outspoken media figures, such as rock star Ted Nugent, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, and actor-comedian Denis Leary, but the even if the article may seem to echo the political opinions of these men, it doesn’t quite match any of them, nor does the language used sound quite right for any of these figures. (Leary, like Carlin, has been credited with creating some other Internet favorites, such as a vituperative discourse on e-mail chain letters and the “Are You Man Enough?” essay.”

Contradicting Some U.S. Officials, 3 Scientists Call Anthrax Powder High-Grade — “Scientists in and out of government said

yesterday that the anthrax strike on Capitol

Hill involved an advanced, highly refined

powder that is quite dangerous and not the

primitive form of the germ that some federal

officials have recently described.”

qq

Assertions by some federal officials that the material was not the type that would be used in weapons are

“nonsense,” (one) said. “The only difference between this and weapons grade is the size of the production.

You can produce a very good grade of anthrax powder in the lab. The issue is whether those efforts can

be expanded in scale, so you can make large quantities.”

Richard Spertzel, a microbiologist and former head of biological inspection teams in Iraq for the United

Nations, said he, too, had talked to federal investigators about the Senate powder.

“There’s no question this is weapons quality,” Spertzel said. “It has all the characteristics — fine

particles and readily dispersible.” Particles must be small to penetrate deep into human lungs, where they

can start a lethal infection.

NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Home Front Is Minefield for President: “If the war at home seems more fumbling and disorganized than the war in Afghanistan, there may be a

simple explanation: Americans are watching each anthrax case live on television, where every

contradictory story and bureaucratic misstep is on display, while they are getting the Pentagon’s sanitized

version of the unseen battles half a world away.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Media Beat: The Televised Greatness of George W. Bush: ‘Today’s television environment is, more than ever, warmly hospitable to simple — and simplistic — declarative statements. That’s just as well for Bush, who has

shown a distinct tendency to get entangled in a morass of fragmentary linguistic riffs. Last year, on many occasions, he seemed painfully anxious to make his

way to the end of sentences without further embarrassment. But now, for the most part, it’s a very different story.

For insights about recent shifts of George W. Bush’s persona on television, I contacted media critic Mark Crispin Miller, whose 1988 book Boxed In: The

Culture of TV was a groundbreaking analysis of the tube. In the book, he disputed the customary image of the U.S. president as a “mighty individual” —

and identified that image as “a corporate fiction, the careful work of committees and think tanks, repeatedly reprocessed by the television industry for daily

distribution to a mass audience.” ‘ FAIR

Frans de Waal:
Do Humans Alone ‘Feel Your Pain’? Empathy, sympathy and altruism among the rats. The Chronicle of Higher Education

‘For the first time, astronomers may have spotted energy coming out of a black hole, a spherical chasm in space and time from which nothing was thought to be able to escape.

The supermassive black hole lies in the heart of a galaxy 120 million light years away, where it spins in the middle of a gigantic disk of hot matter and energy. This “accretion disc” drags on the black hole, causing it to slow and lose energy, say researchers working with the orbiting XMM-Newton X-ray observatory.

The lost energy heats the inner edge of the accretion disk so that it produces telltale X-rays… Black holes that consume accretion disks are thought to power astronomical phenomena ranging from quasars to gamma ray bursts.’ New Scientist

Anthrax in a nutshell: Sen. Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.), a heart surgeon, discloses that mailed anthrax spores were milled to a size to facilitate aerosolization and inhalation (“weaponized”?); likely to be a military strain. Surgeon General David Satcher admits “we were wrong” not to move more quickly to protect postal workers once the fact of tainted mail was established. CDC recommends masks and gloves for mail handlers; the USPS considers irradiating all mail, the Postmaster General tells us there’s no need to stop mail delivery, for which some have called. Three more postal workers associated with the Daschle letter come down with symptoms of inhalation anthrax. Officials continue to find ‘rhetorical links’ between the anthrax attacks and the 9-11 terrorist attacks, but the FBI reports no hard evidence of a connection. Dubya continues to thrill and inspire us with vows that these actions “will not stand.” One Florida victim survives the acute phase of inhalation anthrax and is released after a 23 day hospital admission.

“…Osama bin Laden bought samples of anthrax by mail from shady laboratories in Eastern Europe and Asia for as little as $10,000, a former follower has told authorities in Egypt.” NY Post

‘These pictures are taken from the Al-Jazira satellite channel. They were broadcast on October 22, 2001. They show parts of what the Taliban say is a US helicopter that they shot down at Jabal Baba Sahib near Kandahar. The markings indicate that the parts came from a CH-47 Chinook manufactured by Boeing.

It is possible that the helicopter was merely damaged and the parts fell off. The Pentagon denies it has lost any helicopters in Afghanistan. “We have not lost any helicopters in Afghanistan. If they found helicopter wreckage, it wasn’t ours,” Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told the media.’ From ali abunimah, “uncovering media myths about the middle east,” whose site prominently features the fact that he is referred to by one of his detractors as a “Chicago super-charged activist with few credentials but much malicious misinformation.” More on who he is here.

randomWalks has moved. Follow them there…

US and Bayer settle anthrax row: “The two sides held talks on Tuesday amid

pressure from the US Congress to disregard

Bayer’s patent and buy ciprofloxacin, the

generic name for Cipro, cheaper elsewhere.

Late on Tuesday, US health secretary Tommy

Thompson said he had won agreement from

Bayer to slash the price of Cipro to below $1

per tablet.” BBC [This is a dramatic reversal of Thompson’s position of last week, in which he said, shamefully, that he would respect Bayer’s patent rights [read: right to profit from a potential health emergency at the expense of human lives]. Anything other than today’s decision, which presumably results from Thompson’s threats to Bayer that he would allow competing companies to produce cheaper, ‘generic’ ciprofloxacin if he got no concession, would have been a travesty… ]

This is going the email rounds, supposedly written by Ted Nugent, rock singer and hunter, upon hearing that

California Senators B. Boxer and D. Feinstein

denounced him for being a “gun owner” and a “Rock Star”.

Am I a Bad American? Not clear if there’s been any confirmation that it really is by Nugent. I’ll probably get some mail from Fmh readers who know… [thanks, Pam!]

The ‘What-If’s’ of Sept. 11: “Since Sept. 11, the trivial pursuits of American politics have been set aside…(There’s) been little or no reflection about how the feckless behavior of Washington’s political-journalistic elites over the past decade contributed to the deadly crisis the world is now facing. There’s been little or no self-criticism for letting the problems of the Middle East fester while pundits and journalists romped through juicier stories of Paula, Monica, JonBenet and Chandra.” Consortium News [via Robot Wisdom]

Why Napster’s successors seem to have gotten it right, given that “information wants to be free.”

Israel planning ‘ethnic’ bomb: ‘In developing their “ethno-bomb”, Israeli scientists are trying to exploit medical advances by identifying distinctive genes carried by some Arabs, then create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.

The intention is to use the ability of viruses and certain bacteria to alter the DNA inside their host’s living cells. The scientists are trying to engineer deadly micro-organisms that attack only those bearing the distinctive genes.” Sunday Times of London I’m no geneticist but this seems to be an absurd claim whose promulgation serves only racist ends. (Parenthetically, I found the pointer to this on the increasingly lost, rabid Robot Wisdom.). There are no absolute genetic differences between races; in fact, most geneticists are adamant about the fact that race is a social and not a genetic construct at all. Even if one could develop ethnic-specific pathogens, they are not likely to be selective enough to distinguish Arabs from Jews, especially Semitic ones, given their ethnic similarities. Perhaps we ought to target an isolated and racially homogeneous population like the Inuit or the !Kung bushmen…

Investigating a Different Kind of Suicide Mission: “Although virtually unnoticed by the outside world, since last autumn Turkey

has been the site of the longest — and now the deadliest — hunger strike

against a government in modern history. At the time of my first visit to the

houses of resistance in Kucuk Armutlu in mid-July, the 29th striker had just

perished, and the deaths of at least eight more — including Fatma, Yildiz

and Osman — were imminent.

But even these numbers don’t prepare you for the deluge to come…” NY Times Magazine [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

A Summers day — this Boston Phoenix writer is less than impressed by the pageantry of the installation of a new Harvard University president, which is “supposed to be as close to a coronation as America gets”; and no more impressed by the man himself:

…(I)n 1983 he

became one of the youngest tenured

professors in the school’s history

when he took the post of Nathaniel

Ropes Professor of Political Economy.

In 1991, he left Harvard and went to

Washington, taking on a leading role at the World Bank. In 1993, he joined the

Treasury Department, and six years later he was named secretary of the

Treasury. While at the Treasury, Summers became one of President Clinton’s

most trusted advisers — not to mention a frequent tennis partner of Alan

Greenspan.

Summers is the local boy made good — the local boy made bloody great, in fact.

Anything less than this would’ve been a disappointment. Summers was born into

a family of financial wizards. His mother and father were economics professors,

and two of his uncles — MIT’s Paul Samuelson and Stanford University’s

Kenneth Arrow — are Nobel laureates in economics. Summers is the

consummate overachiever, an inveterate smarty-pants. And he’ll have to be to

take on this job.

Don’t Need a Weatherman. After 9-11, is it too late for a reappraisal of the Weathermen? Weekly Standard

This is how it feels to me. “Last week James Wood blasted modern fiction,

calling for a return to feeling from self-conscious

cleverness in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Zadie

Smith, one of the novelists he cited, replies.

The critic James Wood appeared in this paper last Saturday

aiming a hefty, well-timed kick at what he called “hysterical

realism”. It is a painfully accurate term for the sort of overblown,

manic prose to be found in novels like my own White Teeth and

a few others he was sweet enough to mention. These are

hysterical times; any novel that aims at hysteria will now be

effortlessly outstripped – this was Wood’s point, and I’m with him

on it. In fact, I have agreed with him several times before, in

public and in private, but I appreciate that he feared I needed

extra warning; that I might be sitting in my Kilburn bunker

planning some 700-page generational saga set on an

incorporated McDonald’s island north of Tonga. Actually, I am

sitting here in my pants, looking at a blank screen, finding

nothing funny, scared out of my mind like everybody else,

smoking a family-sized pouch of Golden Virginia. Guardian UK

UK ponders troop deployment. British Defence secretary will decide soon whether British troops will be used in an Afghan ground war. Defence sources say that more than 1000 British troops are being readied for deployment; forces currently on exercise in Oman could easily be sent there.

In related news, for those wondering about the official target list, the Defence secretary said that the air attacks in Afghanistan had destroyed all nine al Qaeda training camps. Nine airfields were put out of commission and 24 military garrisons hit hard. BBC

Signs of hope: confirmation of the first act of IRA decommissioning; may forestall imminent colapse of power-sharing between Sinn Fein and the Unionists in Northern Ireland. So what happens next? BBC

Meanwhile, Israel rebuffs US on call to leave newly occupied Palestinian territory and stop West Bank Raids, despite conferences by both Dubya and Sec’y of State Colin Powell with Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres in Washington today. Reportedly, the Americans imposed upon Peres for the sake of the fragility of Arab participation in the ‘coalition against terrorism.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Progress in fight against anthrax?. In separate research developments, a US team has determined how anthrax toxins enter the cells of the body, suggesting a means of blocking their entry; and international researchers have identified the three-dimensional structure of one of the components of the anthrax toxin, pointing to ways to design drugs to block its action. BBC [It goes without saying, however, that such upbeat reports offer no hope for the postal workers currently suffering from inhalation anthrax infection…]

CIA’s licence to kill — ‘(G)iven leave to do “whatever is

necessary” to shut down al-Qaeda, is it

about to return to the business of

assassination for the first time in a

generation?’ BBC

Doug Ireland:
Why the Democrats will Get Trounced in 2002: ‘Five days before the bombing of Afghanistan began—in announcing the reopening of Washington to air traffic—George W. Bush

declared, “This Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan airport.”

It was of this president with the addled tongue whom Al Gore spoke when, deploying the drawl he turns on when trying to seem folksy,

he hollered to Iowa’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner that “George Bush is mah commander-in-chief!”… Gore’s frothy nationalism symbolized the degree to which the Democratic leadership has

abdicated its responsibility as watchdog on a president who is, to much of the world, out of control.’ In These Times via CommonDreams

Arundhati Roy:
‘Brutality Smeared in Peanut Butter’: Why America Must Stop the War Now: “People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.

Governments molt and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and smother thought, and then as

ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions

of their own governments.

Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond – they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable

terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about

anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.” CommonDreams

Officials Worry as Anthrax Spreads to Off-Site White House Mailroom; ‘more “hot spots” had also

been found at the capital’s main mail sorting center,

necessitating intensified treatment of workers.

“I’m confident when I come to work tomorrow that

I’ll be safe,” ‘ says Dubya; does he think we’re mostly worried about his health? Does he think his courage in facing the anthrax scare will inspire those ordinary mortals truly at risk? Does he read, much less open, any of his own mail, or even come close to a mailroom? NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Bioweapons alerts may cause lasting psychological

harm: “Mounting fear over anthrax attacks and the potential for other

biological and chemical weapons attacks could have a long-lasting

psychological effect on many people, even if the incidents

themselves remain sporadic, say medical researchers in the UK

and US.

They warn that authorities in many countries could inadvertently

worsen the situation by over-reacting and proposing

countermeasures, such as chemical sensors on subway systems.” New Scientist

“The first anthrax attack outside the US has been confirmed in

Kenya. Three people in Nairobi have tested positive to the

bacterium after coming into contact with a contaminated letter sent

from the US.” New Scientist

Ambidextrous tendencies may mean better memory: “Having a close left-handed relative makes right-handers better at

remembering events than those from exclusively right-handed

families, new research suggests. There is a downside, however, as

members of these ambidextrous families may be relatively

impaired in their ability to recall facts.

According to the study, having a left-handed sibling or parent means

the organisation of your brain is intermediate between a pure ‘lefty’

and a pure ‘righty’.

Specifically, Stephen Christman and Ruth Propper at the University

of Toledo, Ohio claim that people with ‘lefties’ in the family have a

larger corpus callosum – the connection between the brain

hemispheres. This makes you better at certain memory tasks, but

worse at others, they believe.” New Scientist

Car that detects driver’s emotions unveiled in Tokyo: “…gets to know its driver and can warn them to calm

down or cheer up…” New Scientist

Welcome to any new readers coming our way by virtue of the gracious mentions given by Bellona Times and CuriousLee.

“In the latest move in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) quixotic crusade against cannabis in any form, the agency has published administrative rules that effectively “ban the consumption of food products containing hemp oil, hemp seed, or any other product containing any quantity of THC — no matter how miniscule. THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, but is found in only low concentrations in cannabis plants bred to produce hemp. A common formulation for gauging the consciousness-altering capacity of hemp is “you’d have to smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole to get high.”

In announcing the rules, DEA chief Asa Hutchinson explained that “many Americans do not know that hemp and marijuana are both parts of the same plant and that hemp cannot be produced without producing marijuana… While most of the THC in cannabis plants is concentrated in the marijuana, all parts of the plant, including hemp, have been found to contain THC. The existence of THC in hemp is significant because THC, like marijuana, is a schedule I controlled substance. Federal law prohibits human consumption and possession of schedule I controlled substances. In addition, they are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for medical use. The rules that DEA is publishing today explain which hemp products are legal and which are not. This will depend on whether the product causes THC to enter the human body. If the product does cause THC to enter the human body, it is an illegal substance that may not be manufactured, sold, or consumed in the United States. Such products include ‘hemp’ foods and beverages that contain THC. If, however, the product does not cause THC to enter the human body, it is a non-controlled substance that may lawfully be sold in the United States. Included in the category of lawful hemp products are textiles, such as clothing made using fiber produced from cannabis plant stalks. Also in the lawful category are personal care products that contain oil from sterilized cannabis seeds, such as soaps, lotions, and shampoos.” Drug Reform Coordination Network

The All Species Inventory: “A Call For The Discovery of All Life-forms On Earth… The aim of the All Species Inventory is simple: within the span of our own generation, record and genetically sample every living species of life on Earth. This audacious goal will be accomplished by using one billion or more dollars of philanthropic wealth to fund and train a network of local collectors and naturalists throughout the world, and to employ the latest in information technology to manage this surge of bio-information.”

Yesterday was Jam Echelon Day — why in the world over a weekend when people are less likely to be using the net I don’t know — but it’s probably not too late anyway, since disseminating awareness about Echelon sounds like a more realistic purpose of the event than actually jamming the system:

The primary goal of Jam Echelon Day 2001 is to raise public awareness of the existence of Echelon and stimulate scrutiny of the world’s government agencies that operate it.

We are offering substantial resources for people to educate themselves about Echelon and what it is capable of. This is an educational campaign sponsored by concerned netizens that value personal privacy and firmly believe that everyone has a right to privacy without government intrusion.

The 2001 “Jam Echelon” campaign has kept the name of it’s 1999 predecessor both to honor a great idea and to state an ideal. We acknowledge that the current level of technology being utilized by the Echelon group far exceeds our ability to actually impact it in this manner. We do not intend, nor do we encourage attempting to overload Echelon’s surveillance systems with spam.

In the past, different organizations and individuals have sent out mass emailings using “keywords” designed to trigger Echelon’s filters. In reality, it is unknown if this tactic actually jammed up Echelon’s systems but it is likely that this would only produce an abundance of Echelon related spam and be counter productive. It is our opinion that more can be accomplished by sending people to one of the Jam Echelon mirrors for information.

Our recommendation for action on October 21st is for you to email everyone on your personal mailing list informing them of the existence of Echelon. Then, direct them to one of the “Jam Echelon” sites [full list at the linked site –FmH] for further information. Include some of the “keywords” in your email; it can’t hurt. Who knows? We might get lucky.

anti-RobotWisdom rant at Bloghop.

By the way, you can now give me a Bloghop rating. Somewhere over in the left sidebar you’ll see the series of little face icons, smiley and otherwise:

Vote early, vote often…

Gesture: The Living Medium: announcement of the forthcoming First Congress of the International Society for Gesture Studies, June 2002, Austin Texas. ‘As inaugural congress of the International Society for Gesture Studies, Gesture: The Living Medium is intended to convene the “state of the art” in research and theory on gesture and to serve as a forum for a broad and lively interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, observations, and research findings. One aim of the conference is to take stock of what we know about the transformation of bodily experience and embodied knowledge into gestural symbolism and conceptual patterns in social interaction, work, and other realms of everyday life. However, we invite proposals for papers, panels, and other programs from all disciplines, including technology and the arts, and covering all aspects of the practice of gesticulation.’

David M. Friedman’s A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis “…convincingly suggests that humankind’s various and contradictory attitudes toward the penis have been instrumental in mapping the course of both Western civilization and world…” forthcoming from Amazon

Conservative Texas Rep. Ron Paul suggests the use of that old anti-piracy tool, Letters of marque and reprisal as an anti-terrorist tool: “This constitutional tool can be used to give President Bush another weapon in the war on terrorism. Congress can issue letters of marque against terrorists and their property that authorize the President to name private sources who can capture or kill our enemies. This method works in conjunction with our military efforts, creating an incentive for people on the ground close to Bin Laden to kill or capture him and his associates. Letters of marque are especially suited to the current war on terrorism, which will be fought against individuals who can melt into the civilian population or hide in remote areas. The goal is to avail ourselves of the intelligence of private parties, who may stand a better chance of finding Bin Laden than we do through a conventional military invasion. Letters of marque also may help us avoid a wider war with Afghanistan or other Middle Eastern nations.”

Review of Peter Singer’s Writings on an Ethical Life — ‘The New Yorker has called Singer “the most influential living philosopher,” while his critics sometimes call him the most dangerous man in the world. Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, has challenged our most closely held beliefs on infanticide, euthanasia, and the moral status of animals. This volume presents a comprehensive collection of his best and most provocative writings on animal rights, environmental accountability, abortion, euthanasia, and the ethics of our responsibility for the world’s poor.’ British Medical Journal

The Tehran Times has an alternate view of why the US bought the exclusive rights to images from Space Imaging’s Ikonos satellite, about which I reported below. Since military imaging is already estimated to be 6-10 times more precise than Ikonos’ 1-meter resolution, there’s no intelligence need; the US must be trying to hide something. If the US had used its legal “shutter control” authority instead of buying out the marketing rights to the pictures, the media could have challenged it as ‘prior restraint censorship’. What are they censoring? The Tehran Times suggests it must be evidence that civilian casualties have been far greater than reported. [thanks, Holden]