Guinness ‘Clouds’ Fill Irish Sky. Part of an interactive web project by Irish artist Grace Weir, inaugurating a new Guiness-sponsored art gallery that will be a centerpiece of an emerging digital district in central Dublin sponsored by the Irish government, the virtual cloud is visible from many places around the streets of Dublin. Wired

Dead men walking… ” The Islamic world after the terrorist attack of September 11th is teetering on the edge of massive change. There may well be global realignment as extensive as the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in 1989. In retrospect Osama bin Laden may be seen as the most effective terrorist since Gavrilo Princip killed the Hapsburg heir Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914…

What will it really matter if the American coalition conquers the rocky wasteland of Afghanistan only to find Al Queda in control of nuclear-armed Pakistan, or the oil riches of Saudi Arabia — and with strong popular support?” Thomas Lipscomb, Jewish World Review

The Post-September 11 Environment. Public watchdog group OMB Watch is compiling a running list of public information to which the government is removing access since the attacks.

John Berger: A Gratitude Hard to Name: ‘Is it still possible to write more words about him? I think of those already written, mine included, and the answer is “No.” If I look at his paintings, the answer is again—for a different reason—“No”; the canvases command silence. I almost said plead for, and that would have been false, for there is nothing pathetic about a single image he made—not even the old man with his head in his hands at the gates of eternity. All his life he hated blackmail and pathos.’ The Threepenny Review

Keeping a Who’s-Naughty List: ‘London police are planning to register children who exhibit criminal potential in an effort to prevent them from developing into full-fledged lawbreakers… Teachers, social workers, health care professionals, law enforcement agents and other authorities who have contact with troublemakers will contribute information to the database program, which will be rolled out in 11 London boroughs before being implemented nationally, according to a copy of the speech. Special squads formed by police and community workers will supervise the actions and behavior of children included in the registry.’ Wired

Malaria and Cancer Cells Yield to the Same Garlic Compounds: the multiplicity of health benefits of garlic has been indisputable but the basis of its effectiveness mysterious. New research sheds light on the common strands in conditions that may be garlic-sensitive. Scientific American

“Behind the jargon about failed states and humanitarian interventions lie thousands of dead.” The incendiary John Pilger on how liberals tolerate the suffering of innocents as we prepare for the next phase of the good terrorists’ war on the bad. New Statesman

When do we take the flags down? “The question is as complex — and American — as the nation’s relationship with patriotism”, writes Paul Lieberman, a staff writer in the New York Times‘ New York bureau. LA Times On a related topic, and with apologies in advance to any of you Followers who are also flag-fliers, has anyone else noticed that the people who drive like madmen on the road, weaving in and out and cutting others off, etc., the ones I call all kinds of foul names from behind the safety of my closed windows, all seem to be the ones who are flying flags on their cars? It used to be I only had to look out for the people who wore their baseball caps backwards…

Mark Rasch, formerly head of the U.S. Department of Justice Computer Crime Unit, writes on Ashcroft’s Global Power Grab: “A little-noticed provision in the new anti-terrorism act imposes U.S. cyber crime laws on other nations, whether they like it or not… An amendment to the definition of a “protected computer” for the first time explicitly enables U.S. law enforcement to prosecute computer hackers outside the United States in cases where neither the hackers nor their victims are in the U.S., provided only that packets related to that activity traveled through U.S. computers or routers.” Security Focus

Experts Rip Cloning ‘Story’ “Scientists say they’ve cloned the first human embryo, but critics are calling the announcement a shameless cry for funding.”

” Wired The New York Times news analysis piece I posted earlier today more than hinted at the opportunism in the timing and the manner of ACT’s announcement too.

Alien Atmospheres: ‘Astronomers using the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope have made the first direct detection and chemical analysis of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system. Their unique observations show it is possible to measure the chemical makeup of extra-solar planetary atmospheres — and potentially to search for chemical markers of life far beyond Earth.

The Jupiter-sized planet orbits a yellow, Sun-like star called HD 209458 that lies 150 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. Its atmospheric composition was probed when the planet passed in front of its parent star, allowing astronomers for the first time ever to see light from the star filtered through the planet’s atmosphere…Transit observations by Hubble and ground-based telescopes confirmed that the planet is primarily gaseous, rather than liquid or solid, meaning that it is a gas giant, like Jupiter and Saturn.’ science@NASA

Food for Thought : Decaf May Not Always Be Best — ‘Data from a pair of large studies reported in November at the American College of Rheumatology meeting in San Francisco now suggest that a woman’s choice of brew may affect her joints.

The good news for coffee lovers: Both new studies find that caffeine poses no problem. Regular consumption of decaffeinated brews, however, in each study raised a woman’s risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.’ Science News

The Little Engine That Could Be: ‘At about one thousandth the size of a regular power station, the engine-on-a-chip will create about 1 millionth the power level, producing 20 watts of power at 2.4 million rpm from its cubic centimeter-sized package.

“It will give 10 times the amount of power that is generated by the best lithium battery”…

And when the engine runs out of juice you just fill ‘er up again. There’s no need to wait to recharge or run out to the store for new batteries.’ Wired

Israeli Analysis Raises New Doubt About Arafat’s Power

As the Bush administration begins its first intensive drive for peace here, senior Israeli officials have concluded that no solution will be possible until new leaders replace Yasir Arafat at the top of the Palestinian movement.

Palestinians present a mirror- image argument: that no agreement is likely or even possible with Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister.

On the Israeli side, there has been a subtle but important shift in the statements of recent days, from a claim that Mr. Arafat is simply unwilling to crack down on militants to an argument that he also feels too weak politically to do so. NY Times analysis

Afghan South: Different War Than in North

For all the Pentagon’s talk about waging an unorthodox war, the campaign in northern Afghanistan has been fairly conventional, culminating today in the fall of the city of Kunduz. But the situation in southern Afghanistan, where hundreds of United States marines are now deployed near the Taliban’s last stronghold, Kandahar, is strikingly different.

The Pentagon lacks a strong proxy ground force in the south and has a more demanding mission there: to take the fight to the adversary’s heartland and roust Osama bin Laden, his Qaeda fighters and the Taliban from their sanctuaries and pursue them, even if they flee into caves and mountains that make Afghanistan one of the most rugged places in the world. NY Times

A Harvard Professor’s Baffling Vanishing

Gregory Verdine, a professor of chemical biology at Harvard, said, “If bioterrorists were to abduct Don Wiley, they’d be very disappointed,” because his research was in studying the component parts of viruses, and “that doesn’t really help you make a more dangerous version of the virus.”

Meanwhile, scientists ponder limits on access to germ research.

NY Times

Michigan ‘Invites’ Men From Mideast to Be Interviewed NY Times

A Breakthrough on Cloning? Perhaps, or Perhaps Not Yet “Some scientists even suggested that what the company was doing was not cloning at all.

But if there is a future in human cloning, either for reproductive purposes or to create cell lines for use in treating diseases, people may one day say it started in Worcester.” NY Times analysis

Rina Amiri, a research associate with the Women Waging Peace

Initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, writes in a New York Times op-ed piece, Muslim Women as Symbols — and Pawns: ‘It has come to be assumed in much of the Muslim world that to be a proponent of

women’s rights is to be pro-Western. This enmeshing of gender and geopolitics

has robbed Muslim women of their ability to develop a discourse on their rights

independent of a cultural debate between the Western and Muslim worlds.’ NY Times

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