Stanley Kauffmann reviews Todd Field’s In the Bedroom, adapted from an André Dubus story. “In the Bedroom leaves us with the happy knowledge that with Field the American film scene, continually deplored as scraggly, can boast another admirable directing talent.” Quite rightly, Kauffmann also alludes to Egoyan’s Sweet Hereafter. The New Republic

‘Designer babies’ to save siblings get UK go-ahead — ‘The production of babies genetically selected to save the lives of their seriously ill siblings is now permitted in the UK. The controversial procedure, which has led to claims of the creation of “designer babies”, is already legal in the US.’ New Scientist

Lifting the lid on jar problem: Dutch scientists have finally solved that age-old problem, by finding the optimal torque to apply to a jar lid to close it to the maximum tightness that everyone can open. New Scientist

Did Noah really need the ark? Doubts cast on 1997 findings of a cataclysmic Bosporus flood around 7000 BC that may have been the historical basis of the Deluge myth. Globe and Mail

Are men emotional mummies? Psychologists line up across a great divide over ‘normative male alexithymia’. APA Monitor

Brain links pain with pleasure. New research suggests that areas of the brain that react to pleasure also respond to pain. Surprising finding only to Western dichotomists. BBC

France debates right not to be born Christian Science Monitor

Underwater phonebooth??

The tailor who created the emperor’s new clothes: ‘Artists have been challenging what we perceive to be art for nearly a century, from Marcel Duchamp’s provocative placement of a signed urinal in an open-submission exhibition in 1917, to Yves Klein’s empty white gallery exhibited as The Void in 1958. Perhaps we should be grateful that in Creed’s Turner Prize artwork, the lights go on and off every five seconds – in 1966, Arte Povera artist Alighiero e Boetti unveiled his Yearly Lamp, which flickered into life on only one unspecified day per year.’ Charlotte Mullins, former editor of Art Review and anti-minimalist, on the Turner Prize. Independent UK

Mobiles meet primal urge to gossip: ‘A study into the evolution and effects of gossip found that it was an inherent need in order to maintain our social, psychological and physical well-being and that the mobile phone was the primary way of satisfying that need.’ Telegraph UK

When It Comes to Romance, Listen to Your Friends — ‘When it comes to predicting whether or not a heterosexual romantic relationship is going to last, the female partner’s friends seem to be particularly astute, according to new study findings.’ Reuters Health

September 11 research claims ‘evidence’ of global consciousness: “Researchers say computers set up to generate random numbers produced a mysterious pattern on September 11.

They say it may be evidence of a global consciousness which affected the world around us.” Ananova

Human Life Span Will Continue to Increase, Researchers Suggest

— ‘University of California, Davis researchers propose that, among humans and other social species, a long life span is a desirable trait that has developed through the evolutionary process. In fact, their model of longevity suggests that long life spans among social species offer benefits conducive to even longer life spans in successive generations. Extension of the life span is a “self-reinforcing” process, they propose.’

Anti-Taliban Commanders Issue a New Ultimatum. Lessee, the deadline’s Tuesday, no, the deadline’s Thursday, no, we’ll go on fighting them, no ultimatum… LA Times

New York Times editorial: The bin Laden Tapes: “Having discouraged American

television news organizations from

broadcasting videotapes made by

Osama bin Laden, the White House now

finds itself in the awkward position of weighing what to do with a new

recording that it obviously wants the world to see. It should make the tape

public, as it seems inclined to do. The White House never should have

gotten into the news management business in the first place…

When

information is not to the government’s liking, discouraging broadcast and

publication may seem enticing to officials. But the tables can quickly be

turned, as the White House is now learning. That’s just one of the reasons

why the initiative was misguided. There are other, more important reasons

as well, including an implicit lack of faith in the press freedoms that help

sustain American democracy. News organizations can make their own

judgments about the value of bin Laden tapes. The American people can

certainly handle whatever he has to say. “

Court: Online Scribes Protected. ‘Online journalism is the same as print, radio and TV news when it comes to free-press protections against charges of libel.

That’s the decision of the New York State Supreme Court in the widely watched case of the National Bank of Mexico against Narconews.com. [which I discussed when the suit was first filed –FmH]

The court ruled that online journalists reporting on matters of public importance, like their colleagues in other media, can only be found guilty of libel if their actions are deemed malicious.’ Wired

Google announces availability of twenty-year usenet archive. The announcement page has links to a number of noteworthy posts in the archive like Tim Berners-Lee’s announcement of the worldwide web. Today is the tenth anniversary of the posting of the first U.S. page on the web, at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, by the way, according to this evening’s All Things Considered. Happy anniversary.

In 27 Cities, U.S. Carries Out Raids in Software Piracy Case NY Times

U.S. Nearing ABM Treaty Withdrawal. As you know, I’ve been railing against this plan since soon after Dubya took the throne and began making noises in this direction. Abrogating this treaty and pushing the ill-conceived national missile defense scheme was, prior to Sept. 11th, just about the Administration’s only foreign policy agenda. Sadly, it’s coming to pass, and we’re likely to see the newly-destabilized arms race restart. Back to the glory days again, I guess, and I can’t hope to convey how damnable it is for him to hold my children and their generation nuclear hostages for a brain-dead pipedream like NMD that isn’t needed and could never work anyway. Reuters

“The treaty banning biological weapons is in disarray, after the US disrupted a meeting of treaty members in Geneva with a last-minute demand it knew other governments would reject.

European Union countries, stung by US failure even to warn them of the move, will now be questioning whether they can continue working in alliance with the US on international arms control treaties.” New Scientist

Mechanism of short term memory loss revealed

When the brain forms new short-term memories, it creates new neurons in a region of the hippocampus called the dendate gyrus. This process also clears outdated memories, making room for more new ones, say Joe Tsien of Princeton University, and his colleagues.

Patients with Alzheimer’s disease lose cells in the hippocampus, and one suggested treatment is to transplant stem cells into the region to replace the dead cells. But the new work suggests that the addition of new cells might in fact disrupt memory retention by dramatically altering connections between neurons in the hippocampus and boosting memory clearance, the researchers say.

New Scientist

This is probably something with which we should not be meddling, at least with our current state of ignorance about the ‘black box’ between our ears.

First world map of lightning activity New Scientist

The American Prospect covers the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, “a normally obscure academic enclave that, for obvious reasons, found itself under a bit more of a spotlight than usual this year”, now laboring under a cloud from conservative criticism for not predicting the terrorist attacks led by flagbearer Martin Kramer’s new book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America.

Kramer’s basic thesis — which he repeated in a scathing Wall Street Journal opinion piece that appeared, with exquisite timing, just days before the conference — was simple. According to his bill of indictment, Middle Eastern scholars have adopted a knee-jerk, leftist “third worldism.” They have failed America by consistently downplaying the threat of radical Islamic movements, and by criticizing U.S. foreign policy in Israel and throughout the entire region.

“This very sick discipline,” wrote Kramer in his Wall Street Journal article, “did nothing to prepare America for the encounter with Muslim extremism, and . . . can’t contribute anything to America’s defense.” Martin’s salvo unleashed a wave of similar expressions of disgust from the usual suspects on the right, such as The Weekly Standard and National Review, who lambasted the scholars for not predicting the World Trade Center attacks.

Ultrasound may disrupt fetal brain development, suggests a recent study comparing Swedes exposed to prenatal ultrasound with those who had not been. ’32 per cent more than expected were left-handed. In an average population, around nine per cent of men are left-handed.

[…]

The results suggest that some men who genetically would have been expected to be born right-handed had actually grown up to be left-handed. (The researcher) says this could be due to a disruption of their brain development in the womb: “It’s commonly known among neuropsychiatrists that right-handed people can become left-handed by slight damage to the brain.” New Scientist

How civil rights went wrong:

It is clear that there has been a shift in the meaning of the term racism. It is no longer the legalised persecution and ill-treatment of a supposedly inferior race. It is more a disease of the soul, or a kind of witchcraft that can be divined only by witch-finders armed with anti-racist equivalents of the Malleus Maleficarum (professional anti-racists need their racists at least as badly as the National Front needs them). And it is clear also where this shift in meaning first occurred: in America, whose trends the British follow as faithfully as any dog follows its master, despite the clear historical differences between our two countries: no slavery or legalised segregation in Britain, for example – that is to say a complete lack, pace McPherson, of institutionalised racism.

Anthony Daniels reviews Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn’s Race Experts. Telegraph UK

Does this painting by Walter Sickert reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper? “The American crime novelist Patricia Cornwell was last night accused of “monstrous stupidity” for ripping up a canvas to prove that the Victorian painter Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper.

Even in the context of the crackpot conspiracy theories, elaborate frauds and career-destroying obsessions that London’s most grisly whodunnit has spawned, Cornwell’s investigation is extreme. Not only did she have one canvas cut up in the vain hope of finding a clue to link Sickert to the murder and mutilation of five prostitutes, she spent £2m buying up 31 more of his paintings, some of his letters and even his writing desk.” Guardian UK

Officials Go on Trial for Contempt — ‘Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and an assistant secretary for Indian Affairs went on trial for contempt of court today, the second time in two years that senior government officials have faced charges that they lied to a U.S. District Court judge about a poorly managed trust fund for Native Americans.’ Washington Post

Gulf War Link to Lou Gehrig’s Disease: Soldiers who served in the Gulf are almost twice as likely to develop the progressive neuromuscular degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, eponymously known for its most famous sufferer, as the general public, according to new findings. This disease is a major enigma of neurology whose cause remains a mystery, as the references in this Google search on [ALS + (etiology or pathogenesis)] will show, if you care to explore further. This New York Times article, which observes that the current findings represent the first official acknowledgement of a link between service in the Gulf and a specific disease, focuses largely on the Veterans Administration response in providing disability and survivor benefits commensurate with the finding. To now, the medical literature on ALS has remarked on the uniform incidence of the disease around the world, which has argued against an identifiable environmental agent. What is extraordinary, and receives no mention in the article, is that this study hints at the first robust epidemiological association between ALS and an environmental cause. Even if it is not clear what aspect of battlefield exposure may be to blame, this may prove to be a breakthrough in investigating the etiology of this mysterious and devastating illness. Indeed, if veterans suffered some neurotoxic exposure in the sands of Kuwait, it might affect more in the CNS than the upper motor neurons whose degeneration causes ALS, and might explain other aspects of “Gulf War Syndrome.”

Parity for Mental Health: “The stigma surrounding mental illness is lifting as it becomes increasingly

apparent that millions of Americans who suffer from afflictions ranging

from schizophrenia to depression can obtain treatment that allows them to

lead full lives. The Senate’s bipartisan measure, co-sponsored by 66

members, would force insurance companies to cover mental disorders on

the same terms as they would physical ailments. It would prevent large

employers’ health plans from setting higher deductibles and co-payments

for patients treated for mental disorders than for those treated for

illnesses like cancer or respiratory problems.” NY Times editorial

Slate Editor Kinsley Has Parkinson’s: ‘Journalist Michael Kinsley says he has had Parkinson’s disease for eight years but didn’t go public with the revelation because he was in denial.
[…]

Kinsley, 50, says that only a few people knew his secret “but in the past couple of years, it seems to me, the symptoms have become more evident.”

Kinsley says he was offered the editorship of The New Yorker three years ago but the offer was withdrawn after he told “the owner” that he had Parkinson’s.’

The last paragraph of this AP story errs in saying: ‘Parkinson’s, which results from nerve-cell damage in the brain, causes muscle tremors and stiffness and affects more than 1 million Americans. It is incurable but not usually fatal.’ As Parkinson’s advances, especially when it has had an ‘early’ onset, in causes progressive mental deterioration (dementia). People often do succumb to the effects of this inanition.

Ebola Confirmed in West Africa: ‘An outbreak of fever in the west African nation of Gabon has been confirmed as the deadly disease Ebola, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

It is the world’s first documented outbreak of Ebola since last year in Uganda, where 224 people – including health workers – died from the virus. Ebola is one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind, causing death in 50 to 90 percent of all clinically ill cases.’ AP

This is ill-timed indeed. What would stop terrorists of financial means from quickly rounding up some infected, or exposed, individuals and promising to pay their survivors beyond their wildest dreams if they’ll get on a plane to an American or European city to spread the outbreak there before they die? Or if recruits deliberately infect themselves for the same purpose to die as martyrs to the cause? Could al Qaeda have sleeper cells in West Africa waiting for this next outbreak?

Bin Laden’s sons will kill him on TV: ‘Osama bin Laden plans a TV suicide that will trigger attacks on landmarks in London, Paris and the US.

His estranged wife Sabiha said last night he would order his elder sons to shoot him rather than be captured.

Sabiha, 45, added: “That will be the signal for a new wave of terror. The targets this time would be the Capitol building in Washington, Big Ben in London and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.”

Her claims were broadcast on Russian television as al-Qaeda boss bin Laden reportedly led 1,000 loyalists into forests in Afghanistan after being flushed out of his Tora Bora caves.’ Mirror UK [via Drudge]

Worst-Case Scenario: The U.S. Has None. ‘Constitutional Crisis, Chaos Foreseen if Top Leaders Killed. Imagine the unimaginable: The president, in the White House, the vice president, at the National Observatory, and all Cabinet members, in their respective agency headquarters, are killed in a terrorist attack on downtown Washington. So are all members of Congress, except the few who happen to be out of town.

What happens to the Republic? At the moment, the answer is alarming: chaos.’ Washington Post

The Evildoers And The Misled: Ariana Huffington on John Walker, the captured 20-year-old American who had been fighting with the Taliban.

Psychology Falls Down on WTC Tragedy:

In the wake of the tragedy, I am disturbed more than ever by the professional culture of what passes for modern Psychology. Psychology maginalizes such authentic psychological phenomena as dreams, emotions, and spirituality because these do not lend themselves as readily to empirical methodologies, and Psychology is not willing to tolerate or reward the creative and original adaptations of standard designs that is required. If our military can adjust itself to a “new war,” then academia could show a little flexibility and open-mindedness. So, in the wake of the tragedy, having heard so many claims of precognition prior to the bombings, I decided to recruit participants for an exploration of a broader and possibly more routine form of precognition in dreams.

Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, of the Federation of American Scientists: A compilation of evidence and comments on the source of the mailed anthrax. She concludes: “The recent anthrax attack was a minor one but nonetheless we now see that it was perpetrated with the unwitting assistance of a sophisticated government program. It is reassuring to know that it was not perpetrated by a lone terrorist without state support. However it is not reassuring to discover that a secret US program may have been the source of that support, and that security is so dangerously lax in military or defense contractor laboratories.”

Two from First Monday:
Communicating information about the World Trade Center Disaster:

‘This paper traces a timeline of different aspects of news coverage during the week immediately following the disaster, and then over subsequent, more reflective, weeks. The material is used to show how a single dramatic event happening locally reverberates globally, and the impact of the developing global information infrastructure (GII) on these phenomena, geographically, temporally, and sectorally.’

The Fading Altruism of Open Source Development:

‘The nexus of open source development appears to have shifted to Europe over the last ten years. This paper explains why this trend undermines cultural arguments about “hacker ethics” and “post-scarcity” gift economies. It suggests that classical economic theory offers a more succinct explanation for the peculiar international distribution of open source development: hacking rises and falls inversely to its opportunity cost. This finding throws doubt on the Schumpeterian assumption that the efficiency of industrial systems can be measured without reference to the social institutions that bind them.’

The Right Still Has Religion: ‘After Pat Robertson’s resignation last week as president of the Christian Coalition, much of the commentary focused on the declining importance of the man and his movement. Critics note that the Christian Coalition has been losing members and financial support for years, and that Mr. Robertson lost credibility when, on his television show, “The 700 Club,” he agreed with his fellow conservative religious leader Jerry Falwell that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were God’s punishment on America for tolerating feminists, gays and lesbians, libertarians and certain federal judges. But the fact remains that Pat Robertson has been the most influential figure in American politics in the past decade.’ NY Times

Two from the American Psychological Association Monitor:
A new take on psychoneuroimmunology: ‘Research pointing to a circuit linking the immune system and brain connects illness, stress, mood and thought in a whole new way.’

Why a bad marriage is worse for women than men: “Why is it that married men are physically and mentally healthier than unmarried men, but for women in unhappy marriages, the reverse is true?

The answer may lie in differences in the way men and women process their spouses’ and their own emotions

…”

The Disregard Syndrome: A Menace to Honest Science? Scientific advances published prior to the advent of electronically searchable archives are routinely disregarded in modern science … at our peril. The Scientist

A new take on psychoneuroimmunology: ‘Research pointing to a circuit linking the immune system and brain connects illness, stress, mood and thought in a whole new way.’ APA Monitor

Oxford historian Niall Ferguson: Was Sept. 11th far less of an historical turning point than generally accepted? NY Times Magazine

Thinking of relocating geographically? This page will rank the most hospitable metropolitan areas for you after you weight the importance of various economic, environmental, artistic, social and lifestyle variables.

From Fimoculous, an ever-growing collection of links to year-in-review pages.

Homo erectus ‘was never a teenager’ BBC

‘Big stink over a simple link’ Wired

KPMG.

“Sure, it’s not really The Lord of the Rings … but it could still be a pretty damn cool movie. ” — Peter Jackson. ‘The complete list of changes’ is one fan’s project to document all the films’ reported departures from Tolkien’s books. If you’re planning to see the film and haven’t read LoTR, you should probably steer clear of the spoilers you’ll find here. [thanks to Ghost in the Machine]

sylloge is back.

UK journalist Robert Fisk beaten by Afghan mob:

‘Veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, 55, who writes for The Independent newspaper, was set upon after his car broke down as he drove near the border city of Quetta.
[…]
The Middle East correspondent was attacked when his car overheated and broke down close to a village housing refugees from Afghanistan.
[…]
He knocked a couple of his attackers to the ground but was then rescued by a Muslim religious leader, who forced the mob back and guided him to a police wagon.
[…]
But Mr Fisk said he could understand the refugees’ anger, as many had relatives who had been killed by the US bombing of Afghan city Kandahar last week.

“It doesn’t excuse them for beating me up so badly but there was a real reason why they should hate Westerners so much. I don’t want this to be seen as a Muslim mob attacking a Westerner for no reason. They had every reason to be angry – I’ve been an outspoken critic of the US actions myself. If I had been them, I would have attacked me.” ‘BBC

‘No sign of God, can’t have mass’ — CERN: “The legendary particle that physicists thought explained why matter has mass probably does not exist. So say researchers who have spent a year analysing data from the LEP accelerator at the CERN nuclear physics lab near Geneva.

The elusive Higgs boson is so central to the standard model – the theory on which physicists base their whole understanding of matter – that it has been dubbed the ‘God particle’. If there is no Higgs, they will be left totally unable to explain mass.” New Scientist

Automaker axes ad

after “slant-eyed” slipup:

A commercial for Daihatsu’s extremely successful Max compact car began airing on Japanese TV in the first week of November. It featured a Japanese woman driving the car through the streets of a typical European town.

Each person the woman drove past — from an elderly couple to a young woman to a policeman – greeted her by placing their index fingers on the edge of their eyes and pulling them back to show her a “slant-eyes” face,

which is of course a racist gesture used by whites to poke fun at East Asians. “We only ever wanted to use the gestures to emphasis the sleek design of the headlights on the Max,” a company spokesman says. “Nobody picked up on this in pre-screening tests we did with viewers. However, we are terribly sorry to have upset some viewers in a manner we never dreamed of.”

Mainichi Daily News

Automaker axes ad

after “slant-eyed” slipup:

A commercial for Daihatsu’s extremely successful Max compact car began airing on Japanese TV in the first week of November. It featured a Japanese woman driving the car through the streets of a typical European town.

Each person the woman drove past — from an elderly couple to a young woman to a policeman – greeted her by placing their index fingers on the edge of their eyes and pulling them back to show her a “slant-eyes” face,

which is of course a racist gesture used by whites to poke fun at East Asians. “We only ever wanted to use the gestures to emphasis the sleek design of the headlights on the Max,” a company spokesman says. “Nobody picked up on this in pre-screening tests we did with viewers. However, we are terribly sorry to have upset some viewers in a manner we never dreamed of.”

Mainichi Daily News

Mullah Omar ‘is captured’: ‘Mullah Mohammed Omar was last night apparently being held captive as the Taleban lost control of their spiritual stronghold of Kandahar in a major breakthrough for the American-led coalition.

The Taleban leader was near the city in the custody of a warlord sympathetic to the fundamentalist regime, Khaled Pashtoon, a spokesman for Gul Agha Sherzai, a Kandahar commander, said.’ The Times of London

Shifting Fronts, Rising Danger: The Afghanistan War Evolves NY Times

Caveman vs. Caveman: From his underground bunker, Cheney directs a cavern-by-cavern search for Bin Laden. LA Times

If anyone’s career may have been saved by the Sept. 11th shift in national preoccupations, it’s this guy. Washington Post

Al-Qa’eda arms wives in defence of Tora Bora. [Do they finally get it about women holding up half the sky??] Telegraph UK

‘The only meaning of the phrase “Judeo-Christian,” it seems, is the fusion of these two otherwise unrelated holidays into one big seasonal spree.’ Christmas for Jews – How Hanukkah became a major holiday. Slate

Who’ll Replace Arafat? ‘Prime Minister Ariel Sharon won’t order Arafat’s assassination anytime soon — the missile that exploded 50 yards from Arafat on Tuesday was a signal, not a miss. The rest of the world, including the United States, wouldn’t brook Arafat’s murder, and Sharon isn’t willing to make his nation a pariah again. Still, Israelis are ready for the devil they don’t know to replace Arafat. Palestinians, too, are worrying about who’s next when the frail 72-year-old Arafat does go, whether by Israeli missile, Palestinian coup, or sickness.

The short answer to the question “Who’s next?” is: Who knows? There’s no obvious heir.’ Slate

Mickey Kaus: “What is becoming increasingly, glaringly clear — even as, with U.S. troops engaged in combat, it remains unmentionable — is that the continuation of the war works in Bush’s political interest. It’s not just that Bush, as an effective wartime leader, is popular. It’s that as long as there is a war, Bush doesn’t have to worry about McCain. As long as there is a war, he doesn’t have to worry about anyone focusing too intensely on his nonexistent domestic agenda.

[…]

Prediction! Kausfiles will be roundly condemned as unpatriotic for this item. But within two months the essential point—that it’s in Bush’s political interest to keep the war going—will be such a staple of punditry that you will switch channels when you hear it.” Slate

Xmas Fir Trapping: ‘Before you shell out beaucoup bucks on a fir, pine, or spruce, you should know a tree’s reputation: “How long before its needles drop? Before its color pales and its scent dies? How do you spot a stale, must-avoid tree? Should you buy from a lot, cut your own, or order over the Web? And last, should you buy the same old Scotch pine that you grew up with, or is the tree of your dreams something a little more exotic?” ‘ Slate

Jacob Weisberg: Ashcroft Deconstructed : ‘As someone who was actually prepared to listen to Attorney General John Ashcroft’s defense of military tribunals and other security measures, I have to say that I was completely disgusted by his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. It was an arrogant, bullying performance that went a long way to substantiating the views of his harshest critics. Ashcroft declined to be drawn into any kind of substantive discussion of military tribunals or anything else. To fair question after fair question, his answer was essentially, “Don’t you realize there are people trying to kill us?” He haughtily dismissed those of his former colleagues who dared to suggest they had some kind of standing to participate in a discussion with him. With his slurs against “Miranda rights,” “flamboyant” defense attorneys, and “Osama TV,” the country’s top lawyer suggested that our entire system of criminal justice is an unworkable sham. Sen. Chuck Schumer was right to point out that the only part of the Constitution that seems to excite his sympathy is the Second Amendment.’ Slate

A Funny New Yorker Map Is Again the Best Defense NY Times

Yes, It’s Been Warm. And Why? “The warm spell that kept New Yorkers in shirt sleeves (until

today) and gave the United States its second-warmest

November and the planet its warmest October on record was

caused by — well, climate scientists cannot quite agree.” NY Times

‘Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater’ (extract)

I am not, thank God, Thomas de Quincey (or Coleridge, Baudelaire, Cocteau, Huxley, Paul Bowles, Carlos Castenada, William Burroughs, Ken Kesey or Hunter S. Thompson, to name but the more usual of the usual suspects), and the irreparable harm that revealing my identity inevitably would inflict, not only upon my professional reputation but upon those whom I love and care deeply for, simply is not commensurate with the benefits liable to redound to me in so doing. Perhaps some day, one day when we all of us are more—what?—grown up? Grown up enough, at least, to be less hysterical and apocalyptic about the subject at hand. But for now, more’s the pity, no..” Granta

Bringing the Holy War Home: ‘Opponents of the “clash of civilizations” thesis are half right. There is such a clash, but it is not between East and West. The struggle of democratic secularism, religious tolerance, individual freedom and feminism against authoritarian patriarchal religion, culture and morality is going on all over the world…’ The Nation [thanks, David]

“The U.S. federal government will begin the work of drawing a “map” of the Internet next month, in an attempt to improve the country’s ability to better respond to future cyber-attacks, according to Richard Clarke, President Bush’s advisor on cyber-security.” Yahoo!

The Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Road Rage Driver Guilty of Murder: Two years ago, a Chicago cyclist and an SUV driver had words after the driver cut off the cyclist. What happened next had been in dispute, but the bicyclist ended up dead under the wheels of the truck several blocks later after what witnesses described as a swerving game of cat-and-mouse. Now a jury has concluded this was a wanton deliberate road rage murder. The webmaster of the Chicago Critical Mass (a bicycling advocacy group) website comments:

“I think the decision was a just one, and that it took a lot of courage for the jury to make it. They could have taken the easy way out by returning the reckless homicide verdict.

“But I don’t feel like celebrating — seeing someone convicted of murder is not a pretty sight. His family committed no crime, but they will suffer just the same.”

‘Plus ca Change’ Dept.: America’s Cup champion sailor Peter Blake, 53, dead. “Peter Blake, who headed the New Zealand crew that won the America’s Cup in 1995 and 2000, was shot and killed by pirates during a robbery of his boat on the Amazon River.”

Gore Vidal: ‘We don’t know where we’re going’ “The United States does not have an interest in Afghanistan. The Bush family does. Oil. As does Vice-President Cheney and Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld. We have a bunch of oilmen running the country. It will be like Vietnam in the sense that it is unwinnable. I suppose we could put in a government in Kabul, but as the guerrilla warfare continues and we have no national interest, we’ll drift away; though Bush can keep the war going until 2004, so he can be re-elected president.” Guardian UK

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ 11/01 policy statement on media violence “contains many misstatements about social-science research on media effects. Your organization’s views about the mass media’s impact on children are entitled to respect, but professional opinion should not be confused with scientific evidence.” An open letter from members of the National Coalition Against Censorship finds that the AAP misreports study results, draws undue inferences, is loose and imprecise in its definition of violence in the first place, and is misleading on crime data, in conclusions about the impact on social violence of media influences.

“Buck

Bush and you buck the era, buddy…” Michael Wolfe in New York magazine: Saint George —

‘To get the willies from George W. Bush, to distrust the man, to have your stomach roll a bit when you hear him speak, is to feel like the most churlish and sullen of adolescents. He’s the unappealing uncle — with his cold eye on you — whose house you’re stuck at this holiday season. While you’re trying to shut out his existence, everybody else is sucking up to him.

If you knew it was just pretend, just a holiday bit — everybody being phony and polite — you could handle it; the problem is in thinking that all this affability, this undisaffected appreciation for the guy, is honest feeling on everyone else’s part. What if 85 percent of the American people actually, deep in their hearts, approve of him — dig him? What does that say about you and where you fit in?’

…makes me want to write a short story called something like “Why I Want to Buck George Bush”…

By 2020, the World Health Organisation expects depression to be the number one health problem, says Oliver Bennett, senior lecturer in cultural policy studies at Warwick University and the author of Cultural Pessimism: narratives of decline in the postmodern world New Sstatesman essay at consider.net

“Osama bin Laden “breached the taboo” limiting the scale of terrorist attacks because he has no state controlling him, an Israeli terrorism expert said Monday in Denver.

Yoram Schweitzer, a researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Inter-Disciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel, was in Denver Monday for a seminar for local emergency personnel.

State sponsors of terrorism generally have national interests they want to protect, and that puts limits on just how far they are willing to go in terrorist attacks, Schweitzer said in an interview at the Rocky Mountain News.”

Via the null device, I learned something about Polari “(also seen as ‘Palare’), a gay slang language, which has now almost died out. It was more common in the 1960’s when gays had more need of a private slang…(I)n the last few years, more and more people have been finding out about it, and several web sites and magazine articles have been written…. (N)ever clearly defined: an ever-changing collection of slang from various sources including Italian, English (backwards slang, rhyming slang), circus slang, canal-speak, Yiddish and Gypsy languages. It is impossible to tell which slang words are real Polari. The page contains a lexicon of Polari slang of varying authenticity. Here is another lexicon with more source notation. Another essay, in some greater detail, is here at World Wide Words.

The poster was visited by the Secret Service for this post on kuro5hin. Since kuro5hin is down (for unrelated reasons), the events are discussed in this thread on Slashdot. And Sean Gullette received a phone call from the Secret Service after an online publication called “Why I Want to Fuck George Bush”, modelled on JG Ballard’s classic 1967 story on Reagan. Gullette says he struck up a good relationship with the agent, who assessed his essay as not representing a threat (whew!). He commented that it would have been a different matter if they had been questioning him about John Ashcroft. [Good to know that, in this dizzying, changed world, it’s still easy to tell the difference between intellectual and moral unpreparedness.]

Get your filthy hands off my CDs

By the middle of next year, the music industry will have … thoroughly embraced copy-protection technology. Major labels and independents alike will embrace products like Macrovision’s SafeAudio and use them to control how fans listen to new songs.

So says one of the minds behind such technology, Marc Tokayer, CEO of TTR Technologies. TTR developed SafeAudio in 1999 and more recently partnered with Macrovision to promote the system to the music industry. However, SafeAudio only became known to music fans when Macrovision and one or more record labels – Tokayer won’t say who – released copy-protected CDs on an unsuspecting Californian public.

That release, designed to test whether real music buyers could hear what SafeAudio does to music encoded on CD and how likely their audio equipment would reject the protected disks, was arguably the first inkling most listeners had that the music giants were serious about preventing PC users ripping songs to their hard-drives and – worse – sending those tracks to other users via the Internet. The Register

Conductor Pierre Boulez held as terrorist: ‘One of the world’s most famous conductors was briefly detained by Swiss police on suspicion of being linked to terrorist activities.

Frenchman Pierre Boulez had his passport confiscated in the town of Basle where he had been conducting at a music festival last month.

Europe has seen a series of anti-terrorist dawn raids since 11 September, but this must be the strangest…

In the revolutionary 1960s, it seems that Boulez said that opera houses should be blown up, comments which the Swiss felt made him a potential security threat.’ BBC

Free Congress Foundation Online — conservative critique of the civil liberties encroachment emergency. I found this page while looking into the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, coming your way soon in most states including my own. Click on the commentary by Steve Lilienthal (“A Bad Idea Coming Your Way”) :

MEHPA is, of course, just what the liberal public health community ordered

to maximize their power. Indeed, the spearhead for this model bill is a

center for public health law at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities

that is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite

its admirable sounding title, the CDC is as much – if not more – concerned

with enacting a political agenda as it is with ensuring public safety.

He pulls together some additional links to explore MEHPA.

Also at this site is an item by Connie Marshner, “Are We Homo Sapiens or Not?”, commenting about the human cloning issue. Interestingly, she echoes what Todd Gitlin said months ago, from the left, about how this will change the political landscape and make left-right distinctions obsolete:

What is it that can get the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (you know, the feminists who gave the world that veritable compendium of the sexual revolution, Our Bodies, Ourselves) to stand shoulder to shoulder with the evangelical Family Research Council? What is it that can get the Friends of the Earth to stand side by side with the Vatican? What can get the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church and the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow singing off the same sheet of music?

When did this happen? At press conferences this very week, and in testimony before Congress last summer, these diverse groups were able to find common ground in their opposition to cloning. And in their opposition, currently in embryonic form to be sure, may be the promise of some new political landscape.

“This is science at its steamiest.”

Left Behind: Jacob Weisberg, in Slate, says that those fulminating about the supposedly inane or offensive comments of the anti-war left — he mentions Susan Sontag’s notorious New Yorker essay in the first paragraph — are missing the boat. There really is no serious anti-war left at the moment. Opposition to the war, he suggests, is confined to stalwart pacifists. those considered cranks even by the left, and “others whose ears hear only evil about the United States.” Even the American Friends Service Committee, he notes, concedes that the anti-war movement “is still in the process of taking shape.” Nothing like the Vietnam opposition, in which prominent intellectuals and radicals explicitly sided with our enemies, the better parallel is WWII, in which opposition sentiment was “marginal and idiosyncratic” … and scant.

Given its insignificance, the fixation of the supporters of the war on the opposition serves their own ulterior motives, which he goes on to explicate — in essence, since there is no serious anti-war movement, the patriots have had to invent one.

I recall blinking with relish to the item about Paul Krassner leading his audience in a rollicking chorus of a cherished obscenity last month in response to Cokie Roberts’ scurrilous, similar observation that there was no opposition that matters. Many of us who think we are earnest opponents of the war will be distressed at Weisberg’s comments, yet there’s something there we should take to heart. His sobering appraisal echoes my own concerns that dissent — to the war or the dramatic attack on our civil liberties that is its concomitant — is not massive or visible, not building up any momentum or impact. The majority of the thinking public does not read AlterNet, ConsortiumNews, tompaine.com or the left-leaning weblogs into which we pour our passion, largely for one another. We seem to be preaching only to the converted…

CIA blunder sparked Taleban revolt that became a mass suicide — ‘Whether it was incompetence, overconfidence or duty that prompted two CIA operatives to interrogate dozens of Taleban on their own will perhaps remain a mystery.

But their decision triggered a revolt that became the single bloodiest engagement since the Afghan war began.’ The Times of London

‘Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called for an urgent inquiry into the killing of hundreds of Taleban prisoners who staged an uprising near the Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif.’ BBC

A village is destroyed. And America says nothing happened. Sarcastic commentary from an Independent correspondent, just as news emerges that five Afghani and three American forces were killed by an errant one-ton bomb dropped from a silent, remote B-52 high above on a sector north of Kandahar which representatives of the newly-formed Afghani government were surprised is even a bombing target. It’s my impression that we’re hearing about alot more targeting errors in this war. It doesn’t seem to me this could be attributed to reporting bias (which finds US military blunders and ‘friendly fire’ casualties sexy to report on in any conflict), and, if anything, journalists have less on-the-ground access than they have in other conflicts, and what information is released by Americna official sources is more highly controlled. Looking for knowledgeable military commentary that could address whether, and if so why, we are indeed having more targeting problems with our munitions as they supposedly get smarter and smarter.

Bush Describes Reaction to 9 – 11. He says his first thought was “There’s one terrible pilot.” He’s down in Florida again, talking to schoolchildren again (actually a town meeting to help his brother’s reelection prospects by stemming the tide of declining tourist revenues for Florida, but answering a third grader’s question), as he was on Sept. 11th when he heard about the attacks. He’s very comfortable explicating his ideas to elementary school students. NY Times

Robert Bork supports military tribunals. Not surprising. But much is being made of this comment toward the bottom of the article: “If there is a problem with Bush’s order, it is the exemption of U.S. citizens from trials before military tribunals.” Much as I’m among those who love to hate Bork, he’s being taken out of context. For someone who rationalizes the tribunals for foreign terrorists, it is not surprising that he also says he supports them for Americans for the same reasons (safeguarding sensitive intelligence data, the risk of them going free if given a fair enough trial, etc.); but he’s talking about American terrorists! It seems to me the Left can’t have it both ways; if we complain that the reactionaries are selective in the terrorists they’re after, and not including in the scope of their proposed repression so-called domestic terrorists (which, these days, comes mostly from the American Right), we can’t also complain about Bork’s equanimity here…

Many people saying bad things: I agree with Phil Agre, who calls this Jon Carroll opinion piece from the SF Chronicle the best response to Cheney’s academic witchhunt against unpatriotic thought. Add me to the list.

The Laws of War Yale University Law School and the Uniform Code of Military Justice

I think I won’t link to Bruce Sterling’s “Geeks and Spooks” speech at the “Global Challenges, Trends and Best Practices in Cryptography” conference at the Information System Security and Education Center, Washington, DC on November 20. Many others are. Oops, I just did. If you read it, persist; he’s slow to get into the meat of things. Viridian Notes

Authority Finder: “Whether you are writing a paper, business plan, speech, or simply looking for reliable research material, use Authority Finder to locate a quote from an authoritative source to support your hypothesis or argument. Use this intelligent tool to instantaneously find, quote, and cite a relevant and legitimate source with a few clicks of a mouse.” This looks like it will be a very useful resource. [via net.narrative environments]

(“It reminds me of the Taliban. If you’re not Muslim, you’re worthless,” said Bob Farnan, the owner of Port Inglis Restaurant. “She just reversed the situation.”) Mayor banishes Satan from Inglis, Florida. Critics are up in arms about the mayor’s crossing the boundary between church and state in her official proclamation, which has been rolled up and placed in hollowed-out fenceposts labelled Repent, Resist and Request at the four entrances to the town. How about just how dumb it is? [Sorry, more eloquent words fail me…]

“Here’s one from the banality of evil file,” Rafe at rc3 comments regarding Bush’s order preventing access to the presidential papers of his predecessors:

“Bush’s goal is obviously to keep records from the Reagan administration sealed. Either the papers contain information so damning that they would ruin his father’s legacy or the careers of some of his current staffers, or they contain trivial information that would be embarrassing to people he doesn’t want to see get embarrassed. If it’s the former then Bush is evil. Americans have the right to know what was done in their name. If it’s the latter, Bush is a small and petty man who’s willing eviscerate a useful and important law to protect people from things they probably ought to be accountable for anyway. John Dean is certainly right about one thing, if Bill Clinton had tried to pull a stunt like this, the Republicans would have been beating down his door with subpoenas.”

Managing Managed Care: Habitus, Hysteresis and the End(s) of Psychotherapy

—

Abstract:

In this paper we examine how clinicians at a community mental health center are responding to the beginnings of changes in the health care delivery system, changes that are designated under the rubric of ??managed care.?? We describe how clinicians? attitudes about good mental health care are embodied in what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls their habitus, i.e., their professional habits and sense of good practice. Viewed in this light, their moral outrage and sense of threat, as well as their strategic attempts to resist or subvert the dictates of managed care agencies, become a function of what Bourdieu terms the hysteresis effect. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by a team of researchers at the mental health and substance abuse service of a hospital-affiliated, storefront clinic which serves residents of several neighborhoods in a large northeastern city. Data consist primarily of observations of meetings and interviews with staff members. We describe four aspects of the clinicians? professional habitus: a focus on cases as narratives of character and relationship, an imperative of authenticity, a distinctive orientation towards time, and an ethic of ambiguity. We then chronicle practices that have emerged in response to the limits on care imposed by managed care protocols, which are experienced by clinicians as violating the integrity of their work. These are discussed in relation to the concept of hysteresis. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry

White House Issues Alert of New Terrorism Threat. Ridge: “The threats we are picking up are very generic. They warn of more attacks but are not

specific about where or what type. We do know that the next several weeks, which bring the final weeks

of Ramadan and important religious observations in other faiths, have been times when terrorists have

planned attacks in the past.” NY Times

Eyes Focus on Trade Center’s ‘Bathtub’ as Debris Is Cleared NY Times

A Fresh Look at a Quick Fix for Heroin Addiction. The New York Times explores the controversial procedure in which withdrawal is precipitated rapidly by giving an opiate antagonist to a patient under general anaesthesia; a number of patients have died in high-profile cases. Critics say it’s a moneymaker for hospitals and clinics to treat high-rolling celebrity addicts. My concern is that, psychologically, addicts are addicted not so much to drugs as to quick fixes — for their ‘jones’, and for coping with stresses. The use of their drug of choice has replaced, or prevented the elaboration of, other options for coping. This new technique is essentially just another quick fix, and will leave the pitiful addict bereft of replacement strategies that would develop during a more gradual rehabilitation from drug dependence. In short, it won’t prevent the unchanged, vulnerable, addiction-prone person from relapsing.

And next question: what position will health insurance providers, who historically want to do as little as possible for their chemically dependent customers, take on paying for the treatment? Two possible scenarios: (1) Despite evidence that doing the procedure safely (after all, it does involve general anaesthesia, and it has killed people…) necessitates inpatient hospitalization, they may refuse to cover costs; (2) They may push people toward the procedure, despite its physiological and psychological dangers, as more expedient than the detox admissions they now pay for. Over the past decade, I’ve seen inpatient detoxes whittled down from 21 to 7, 5 and now most commonly 3 days under managed care pressure; here’s a great opportunity for cost-savings by pushing the envelope down further.

This search connects you to previous FmH discussions of opiate addiction, including a reference to the investigation of the physician whose patients were dying during rapid detoxification.

When I read the Times‘ headline above, I thought for an instant I might find mainstream press discussion of ibogaine, the powerful (and toxic?) hallucinogen the administration of which is reputed in underground circles to ‘cure’ opiate addiction, about which I’ve previously written. The difference between this and the rapid naloxone withdrawal the Times discusses is that ibogaine, according to published accounts, might precipitate a searching reappraisal of the self creating change in the psychological as well as the physiological grounds for the addiction-proneness. Here’s a Google search on ibogaine.

U.S. budget deficit projected until 2005. Grim economic reminder that not only was the government stolen from us but it’s proceeding to sell us down the river with glee: ‘Bush promised during the presidential campaign to avoid tapping Social Security except in cases of war, recession or a national emergency.

“Lucky me. I hit the trifecta,” Bush told Daniels shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the budget director.’ Miami Herald [with diolchgarwch — that’s gratitude in Welsh (grin) — to wood s lot for the link]

“So, will it (a.k.a Ginger and Segway) revolutionize urban life as the press-hype surrounding its initial disclosure dared predict? Probably not.

First off, it’s expensive. On top of that, it weighs 65 lbs, making it a real monster to drag home on an empty battery. But then again, it’s not so heavy that it can’t easily be grabbed and tossed into the back of someone else’s pickup truck.

And anyway, they’ll be banned from municipal sidewalks the split second some 18-month-old toddler gets crushed and paralyzed for life. Teenagers will re-jigger them, make them go very fast, and break their necks in Extreme Ginger exhibitions in front of admiring babes, leading to further restrictions by official killjoys. Small children will ride them down stairs, to very bad outcomes.” At least, The Register concludes, dogs will love them.

On the topic, someone on a mailing list I receive comments that they must not have had their acronym checker working the day they decided to call this the Segway Human Transporter.

Weekend Fireballs: “Pieces of a Proton rocket disintegrated in Earth’s atmosphere this weekend, startling sky watchers in western Europe and at least seven US states.” science@NASA

David Morris, v-p of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance: “Kenneth Lay is living proof that one person can change the world. His company, Enron, may be in shambles. In three months, it may no longer exist. But for the rest of our lives we will live in a world redesigned by Kenneth Lay.” The Man Who Screwed the World:

Why was Lay so successful? The Economist magazine described Enron as an “evangelical cult,” with Lay its “messiah.” It didn’t hurt that Lay was preaching the gospel of deregulation, a gospel widely shared by both political parties.

And this missionary had clout. Lay had worked for FERC and was Deputy Undersecretary for energy matters for the Department of Interior. In the 1980s he became a principal fund raiser for President Bush and later his son. His board of directors included Wendy Gramm, wife of Senator Philip Gramm of Texas. A month after they left office, Enron put former Secretary of State James Baker and former Secretary of Commerce Robert Mossbacher on the Enron payroll. Lay golfed with President Clinton.

AlterNet

Tamim Ansary: An Afghani Primer: “What journalists need to know in order to keep expectations in tune

with what’s likely to unfold in Afghanistan.” AlterNet