The fundamentalist question: “Three young British Muslim men from Luton and Crawley were reportedly killed fighting with the Taliban; a man from Bromley in London tried to blow up an aeroplane mid-Atlantic; an American youth crashed a plane into a Florida skyscraper in the name of Osama bin Laden; a man from California was picked up with the Taliban; two men from Tipton, West Midlands, and one man from Croydon, south London, are being held as al-Qaeda suspects in Camp X-Ray.

To lose one citizen may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose at least nine looks like carelessness. Why is it that these men, born and brought up in Britain and the USA, are gripped to fight for an irrational, religious dogma – and seemingly possessed with an absolutist hatred for the infidel West? Why does their experience of living in the West not imbue them with a respect for the virtues of democracy, rational debate and secularism? Why don’t they feel like they belong?” sp!ked

Scientists: Ocean depths being destroyed: ‘In recent years, sturdier winches, stronger cable and more powerful engines have allowed fishing trawlers to extend their reach to depths of 3,000 feet and beyond, biologist Callum Roberts said in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At those depths, growth is so slow that harvested fish can take decades to be replaced and damaged coral may require centuries or more to grow back.

“The pace of life in the deep sea is virtually glacial,” said Roberts, a professor of environment at the University of York in Britain. “What we are destroying now will take centuries to recover.” ‘ Salon

The Illusion of Conscious Will: “Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles.” amazon.co.uk

Afghans’ mental health services badly outdated: “Killings, executions, massive persecution, forced internal displacement, fear from living with hidden land mines, long-term unemployment and security concerns have left an indelible mark on Afghans’ psychological health. People complain of depression, anxiety and insomnia.

But mental health services are outdated and practically nonexistent.” Miami Herald There is a strain of thought that dismisses such concerns in this way — “Well, of course, you’d be depressed or anxious too if…” — erroneously suggesting that a population ravaged by war is not worthy of mental health intervention. And the profession as a whole has not risen to the challenge of dealing with the terror of the 20th and now the early 21st century as a massive public mental health problem. Reconstruction governments in troublespots throughout the world should be inviting in teams of mental health experts to consult on designing nationwide public mental health interventions; and training in dealing globally with a war-torn populace and individually with victims of war trauma, refugees, and asylum-seekers should become commonplace in mental health training programs, since it appears this human problem is not only not going away but growing in magnitude…

The Eskimo Snow Vocabulary Debate: Fallacies and Confusions. Freelance editor and writer Mark Halpern writes in the new issue of The Vocabula Review: “The Eskimo snow vocabulary (ESV) debate concerns the number of words Eskimo languages have for snow and ice in their various forms and situations, compared with other languages. The debate was set off a decade ago by an essay, “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax,” by Geoffrey K. Pullum, professor of linguistics at the University of California Santa Cruz. Pullum there ridiculed the idea that the Eskimo languages used significantly more words for snow than did English, for example. He was motivated to do so, he explained, partly by a wish to correct a specific popular misconception, but much more by a wish to use this canard as a cautionary example of human gullibility, shoddy scholarship, and even latent racism.”

Also in the new VR are quibbles about computer spellchecking, the replacement of “you’re welcome” by “no problem”, of “forgo” by “forego”, and the use of “hey” for “hi” or “hello” (‘Perhaps the best way to discourage people from using hey is to respond with a hearty diddle, diddle?’), as well as numerous other goodies for those who believe in precision, elegance and — yes — an element of tradition in their language…

Scores of Bodies Found Outside U.S. Crematory —

“Officials had counted 80 bodies so far and there could be hundreds, according to the media reports. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted officials as saying the bodies could date back as far as two decades. Authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.

“Some (bodies) had been there just days, still dressed in their funeral clothes. Others were so old they had become mummies,” the Journal-Constitution said. Some of the bodies were found in long-rotted coffins.

The operator of the Tri-State Crematory in Noble, about 85 miles (137 km) northwest of Atlanta, told police the bodies were not cremated because the incinerator was not working, according to the media reports, which said the operator was charged with five counts of theft by deception for allegedly charging relatives for cremations that were not performed.” Reuters via Yahoo!

Estimates of Mentally Ill Too High, Study Says: “A new study suggests that mental disorders may be less prevalent among adults in the United States than was thought.” The profession’s most reliable estimates of the prevalence of mental illnesses have been based on an extraordinary study, the Epidemiological Catchment Area Program of 1980-85, and another similar study five years later. Door-to-door interview surveys tallied how many people had taken medication, consulted professionals, or reported a degree of emotional distress sufficient to interfere with their functioning. But many mental health professionals, including myself, felt intuitively that the resulting finding that over 30% of the study sample qualified for a diagnosis of a mental disorder was implausible, calling into question the study methodology, the reliability of the surveyors’ conclusions and the prevalent definitions for various diagnoses. Readers have often heard me observe that the profession has a vested interest in maintaining “market niche” in an increasingly competitive field, and I wondered if the discipline’s unconscious biases were contributing to inflation of the estimates. The new study agrees.

Thomas Friedman: An Intriguing Signal From the Saudi Crown Prince

Earlier this month, I wrote a column suggesting that the 22 members of the Arab League, at their summit in Beirut on March 27 and 28, make a simple, clear-cut proposal to Israel to break the Israeli-Palestinian impasse: In return for a total withdrawal by Israel to the June 4, 1967, lines, and the establishment of a Palestinian state, the 22 members of the Arab League would offer Israel full diplomatic relations, normalized trade and security guarantees. Full withdrawal, in accord with U.N. Resolution 242, for full peace between Israel and the entire Arab world. Why not?

I am currently in Saudi Arabia on a visit — part of the Saudi opening to try to explain themselves better to the world in light of the fact that 15 Saudis were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. So I took the opportunity of a dinner with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, and de facto ruler, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, to try out the idea of this Arab League proposal. I knew that Jordan, Morocco and some key Arab League officials had been talking about this idea in private but had not dared to broach it publicly until one of the “big boys” — Saudi Arabia or Egypt — took the lead.

After I laid out this idea, the crown prince looked at me with mock astonishment and said, “Have you broken into my desk?” NY Times op-ed

It appears, disappointingly however, that the Crown Prince has decided against making this proposal given heigghtened Israeli violence in recent days. He’s been advised by other Arab League members that it would appear, unacceptably to them, as if Sharon’s hard line had successfully won Arab concessions.

Emerging Disease News: Strange Rash Baffles Medical Sleuths

Hundreds of youngsters in at least seven states have broken out in mysterious rashes, and some health investigators suspect it might be caused by a new or yet-to-be-identified virus.

The red, itchy rash appears to be more an annoyance than a serious health threat, but it has managed to temporarily close schools, worry parents and frustrate school administrators, for whom answers have been elusive.

Students in Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, Oregon and Washington state have complained about rashes on the face, arms, legs and body. For the most part, the rash goes away when the students leave school.

“For something like this to occur almost simultaneously in different parts of the country is, to my knowledge, unprecedented,” said Dr. Norman Sykes, who examined about 30 suburban Philadelphia students who came down with the rash this month.

Scores of Bodies Found Outside U.S. Crematory —

“Officials had counted 80 bodies so far and there could be hundreds, according to the media reports. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted officials as saying the bodies could date back as far as two decades. Authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.

“Some (bodies) had been there just days, still dressed in their funeral clothes. Others were so old they had become mummies,” the Journal-Constitution said. Some of the bodies were found in long-rotted coffins.

The operator of the Tri-State Crematory in Noble, about 85 miles (137 km) northwest of Atlanta, told police the bodies were not cremated because the incinerator was not working, according to the media reports, which said the operator was charged with five counts of theft by deception for allegedly charging relatives for cremations that were not performed.” Reuters via Yahoo!