Since I got a broadband connection (yes, I gave up 56K for Lent…), I can finally indulge productively in streaming media on the web. Here are two Oscar-nominated shorts I’ve enjoyed: Fifty Percent Grey (“In this gruesome black comedy about suicide, Sgt. Cray awakens alone in a desolate environment, with only a widescreen TV and a gun for entertainment.”) and Copy Shop (“Viennese director Virgil Widrich obsesses on the implications of replication in this … short composed of nearly 18,000 photocopied frames that Widrich animated and shot on 35 mm.”).

Spike sent this link my way a week ago and I’ve just slogged through my backlog enough to examine it and say thanks. In Put a Psychiatrist in His Corner, A GWU professor of psychiatry argues in the LA Times that Mike Tyson should be compelled to seek mandatory psychiatric care. “We don’t have to accept Tyson’s outrageous acts. For society’s sake, and for Tyson’s own sake, we must open our eyes to the perils of untreated mental disorders.

Instead of continuing to attack this sick man, we need to help him get well.”

Carol Kino: Ceci N’est Pas Surrealism – Even if you don’t know Surrealism, it knows you. “Since September, Surrealist exhibitions seem to be cropping up everywhere: in big surveys in London, New York, San Francisco, and soon, Paris, and in countless smaller gallery shows. Perhaps you feel that life in those and other cities has grown surreal enough already. But there’s a major difference between the little-s and big-S surrealisms: Our everyday use of the term shows how much we owe to the artistic movement of the same name, but it also glosses over its aims and accomplishments. If nothing else, the current explosion of historical Surrealism may help clarify the matter.

Even those who know something about Surrealism (the movement) often get it somewhat muddled…” Slate

Anne Applebaum: In Defense of Colin Powell – He wins friends and influences enemies. ‘…Powell’s ability to bring foreigners around to the American point of view is something this administration, which is carrying out nothing short of a revolution in foreign policy, needs badly—so why should Powell be thought of as a loser or an outsider? White-House-watchers always insist on seeing policy-making as a zero-sum game: If Condi Rice is up then Powell must be down; if Rumsfeld is in then Powell must be out. They should try, instead, to look at foreign-policy-making like a game of golf, in which you use the right iron for the right hole. Send Wolfowitz to scare Saddam. Send Condi to speak Russian to the Russians. Send Powell to build coalitions and keep the allies on board—and stop calling Powell a “fading global eminence.” ‘ Slate

Matt Welch pulls this ‘priceless exchange’ out of a Chicago Tribune interview with Ralph Nader:

Q. Would you have made an effective wartime president?

A. This war would never have happened had I been president, because for 30 years we have had an aviation safety group, and we have been urging the airlines to toughen cockpit doors and improve the strength of the locks, and they have been resisting for 30 years.

(What can be added to Welch’s reaction, “Good God, man, get ahold of yourself”?) If you’re curious about whether the impression this creates is distorted by being taken out of context, the entire interview is here.

Jomoh Temple: “Head Priest Ishiko of Daioh Temple feels that there is an unnatural balance existing between the reliance on material needs and the lack of concern for spiritual fulfillment. He believes that this imbalance is the reason why most people are not totally satisfied with their lives. Through this virtual temple, he hopes to draw attention to this imbalance and through it’s recognition help us to lead fuller, richer lives.”

Expert says anthrax suspect identified: ‘An advocate for the control of biological weapons who has been gathering information about last autumn’s anthrax attacks said yesterday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a strong hunch about who mailed the deadly letters.

But the FBI might be “dragging its feet” in pressing charges because the suspect is a former government scientist familiar with “secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed,” said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Chemical and Biological Weapons Program.’ New Jersey Online [via David Farber’s IP mailing list]

ex-Monty Python Terry Jones: OK, George, make with the friendly bombs: “To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that I can’t think why no one has thought of it before. It’s so simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today. Guardian-Observer

Another reason to take your vitamin C.

Tabloids: Elvis is Dead: “Bad news: The National Enquirer has become a little less insane.” The American Prospect

Right Wing Myths Exposed: The Red-Blue Myth, The Liberal Media Myth, the Myth of the Homosexual Lifesyle (a work in progress) [thanks to David]. [The myth of Andrew Sullivan? –FmH]

Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad: “The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.” NY Times If you think they were bristling already, what will our (former?) allies in Western Europe and the Middle East think of this??

Hijacking the Brain Circuits With a Nickel Slot Machine — in search of the neural basis of the unconscious:

“…(T)he brain systems that detect and evaluate such rewards generally operate outside of conscious awareness. In navigating the world and deciding what is rewarding, humans are closer to zombies than sentient beings much of the time.

The findings, which are gaining wide adherence among neuroscientists, challenge the notion that people always make conscious choices about what they want and how to obtain it. In fact, the neuroscientists say, much of what happens in the brain goes on outside of conscious awareness.” NY Times

Want a Fight? Pick One Book for All New Yorkers:

‘An ad hoc group of librarians, bookstore owners, educators and others has quietly hatched a plan to turn New York City into a giant reading group. Over the last few weeks, the committee has convened to select a single book that the organizers hope to see assigned in city schools, discussed in groups at public libraries, promoted in local bookstores and read by millions of New Yorkers.

Plenty of other cities have read books together. Last year, Chicago drew national attention with a campaign to read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and since then, dozens of towns have followed suit, usually by selecting novels that impart a civic-minded message of cultural tolerance and racial harmony.

But just what book to recommend to a city of eight million souls where more than 100 languages are spoken has already turned out to be a ticklish question, one about politics as much as about literature. And some say the difficulty of picking a single book suggests that New Yorkers may not be receptive to literary direction.’ NY Times

In search of extra dimensions: Hang on — a new reality may be around the corner.

‘ “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one,” according to the late Albert Einstein. But, “if everything is an illusion and nothing exists,” humorist Woody Allen has observed, “I definitely overpaid for my carpet.”

Hang onto your carpet receipts:

Our understanding of reality – that is, a world where events happen over time within a three-dimensional space – may be turned on its head by the year 2005, scientist Maria Spiropulu said today during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting.

“The way we think about things is about to change completely,” said Spiropulu. “This is truly a revolution in the way we understand our world.”

And: more coverage from the annual meeting of the AAAS is here. EurekAlerts

“I can’t quite imagine what he thinks he’s up to. Although he wasn’t ever brilliant, he used to be an average poet and now he’s turning out twaddle.” — AN Wilson. Is Motion any good? “The poet laureate has written lyrics for a hymn to mark the Queen’s golden jubilee. But do they stand up to critical scrutiny? And what about his recent poems on Princess Margaret and the census? We ask poets, critics, a royal expert and a random 80s pop star for their verdicts.” Guardian UK

Big Brother is watching you read. “Increasingly, the government is demanding that bookstores reveal what books their customers have purchased.” Salon