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.