Review of On the Internet by Berkeley philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, who argues that the belief in the adequacy of interactions on the Internet shares the problems of Cartesian mind-body dualism. He invokes a number of (pre-electronic) philosophers, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty, to argue for the importance of not leaving the body behind in interactions; he is especially concerned about distance learning over the net. Taking pains, however, to establish that he is no Luddite himself, he notes that he has recorded his lectures on .mp3 and even broadcast one of his courses on the web. Chronicle of Higher Education

Backstabbers — ‘In Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, pioneering feminist Phyllis Chesler dares to talk about the ways women — including famous feminists — stab each other in the back.’ Salon. As a fan of the work of Carol Gilligan, I’ve always felt the feminist developmental theorists who have made much of the fact that women’s development conspires to accentuate the value of affiliation and embeddedness in relationships go a long way to explain a host of implications for male-female psychological differences. However, this never should have influenced social scientists to have blinders on about female-female aggression, or to discount the possibility of affiliative values in males. Now a veteran of feminist social science takes off her blinders, in a way.

Was this new U.S. postage stamp (the image is of an earlier version of the design) designed by Leni Riefenstahl, or what?

Atomic Apocalypse Barely Averted at the Davis-Besse Reactor CommonDreams

Peter Gabriel’s Passion — music from The Last Temptation of Christ — and his companion compilation, Passion Sources. One of the founts of contemporary worldbeat music and particularly appropriate today, showing how the emergence of Christianity in the Passion was firmly embedded in the timeless rhythms of the crossroads of three continents. Happy Easter, and an ongoing happy Passover.

Peter Gabriel’s Passion — music from The Last Temptation of Christ — and his companion compilation, Passion Sources. One of the founts of contemporary worldbeat music and particularly appropriate today, showing how the emergence of Christianity in the Passion was firmly embedded in the timeless rhythms of the crossroads of three continents. Happy Easter, and an ongoing happy Passover.

Segway auctions close with 6-figure bids. CNET.com

The Push for News Returns. Remember the late lamented PointCast (actually, I thought it was much better as a concept than a reality…)? I’ve been looking at Columbia Newsblaster recently; essentially a natural language summarizer and agggregator of online news sources. This Wired article explains how it does its stuff, as well as pointing to several related concepts:

• Google’s News Search beta
• NewsInEssence from the University of Michigan

Ancestors ‘used drugs to survive’: “Mind-altering drugs may be so popular because they were once used by our ancestors to survive, two leading anthropologists have argued. Dr Roger Sullivan, of the University of Auckland, and Edward Hagen, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, say there is plenty of evidence that humans have sought out so-called psychotropic drugs over millions of years.” BBC

In emphasizing only the adaptive properties of mind-altering drugs, this theory ignores speculation, most prominently that of Andrew Weil (and, as Miguel pointed out in an email, Terence McKenna as well), that humankind’s perennial relationship to psychotropic substances may represent instead a universal and innate affinity for their consciousness-altering properties. Think, for example, of how children love to spin to get dizzy, Weil observes. He argues that drug-taking becomes a problem in society only when pharmaceutical techniques intruded into the process to produce more concentrated and purified psychoactives. In contrast, natural mind-altering substances are full of impurities that act to self-limit the extent and frequency of drug-taking (because you’ll get sick from too much). Think of the difference between chewing coca leaves and freebasing cocaine, or between taking peyote and taking LSD, he notes.

Everyone who has any kind of Yahoo! account has just had your marketing preferences reset by Yahoo! without any input from you, so that you will be receiving promotional notices of all sorts from Yahoo! advertisers if you’re not already. Several bloggers have begun to spread the word, apparently first commented upon at Slashdot, where instructions are posted to reestablish your old privacy settings:

Go to your Account Information screen (for each and every ID you have) and about mid screen you will see “Edit Your Marketing Preferences” link. Click on it and set them back to the way you want them, otherwise get ready for *LOTS* of advertising spam type emails from Yahoo’s advertisers. Note also at the bottom, that you will be marked YES for ‘By US Mail’ and ‘By Phone’ as well.”

I agree with Rafe Colburn’s comments in rc3 about The Great Terror, Jeffrey Goldberg’s long New Yorker article to which I’d been meaning to blink. Largely an investigation of Iraq’s use of chemical and biological warfare against its own Kurdish population, it has attracted much attention for a secondary focus — Goldberg’s interviews in Kurdistan established an ostensible link between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda. In so doing, the article will surely influence the debate about whether attacking Iraq has any justification relative to the W-o-T®. Goldberg asks over and over in the article why no one else in the European or American press has written about the sequelae of the Iraqi attacks on the Kurds. I would turn that question on its head and ask, why now? Without wanting to create the impression I’m turning a blind eye on genocide, was the timing of this piece influenced perhaps by the Government That Never Lies to Us, which has closed its Disinfo Office because of the public outcry… Addendum: Just as it was taboo after 9-11 to wonder too publicly whether anything in US foreign policy had contributed to terrorist ire at us, as if raising such questions dishonored the memory of those who died that day or blamed the victims, such questions about the possible bias and the timing of the Goldberg piece have been called thoughtless and insensitive. Clearly, I think they are neither…

Think Again offers a selection of original graphics that respond to US military action in Central Asia, violence against Arab and Muslim Americans, and to the Bush administrations “invisible war on terrorism.”

Should We Go To War Against These Children?

These “debates” are framed in such a way that Iraq is neither a country nor a community of 22 million human beings, but one man, Saddam Hussein. A picture of the fiendish tyrant almost always dominates the page. (“Should we go to war against this man?” asked last Sunday’s Observer). To appreciate the power of this, replace the picture with a photograph of stricken Iraqi infants, and the headline with: “Should we go to war against these children?” Propaganda then becomes truth. Any attack on Iraq will be executed, we can rest assured, in the American way, with saturation cluster bombing and depleted uranium, and the victims will be the young, the old, the vulnerable, like the 5,000 civilians who are now reliably estimated to have been bombed to death in Afghanistan. As for the murderous Saddam Hussein, former friend of Bush Sr and Thatcher, his escape route is almost certainly assured. — John Pilcher ZNet

School suspends teen on dog’s say-so.  Ottawa Citizen

The Brave New World of Scalar Electromagnetics. I certainly don’t understand how this might work, but this histrionic site claims that the discovery of new electromagnetic waves filling the void can be tapped to (a) generate endless ‘free’ energy and solve the energy crisis; (b) create weapons of mass destruction that dwarf our present capabilities; (c) heal all current diseases; (d) perfect mindcontrol techniques; (e) alter gravity, time, inertia, and the apparent mass of objects, among other claims. “(This information) needs to become common knowledge as fast as possible, for the sake of the survival of life on earth.” The concepts are here related to Nicola Tesla, to UFO’s, the Russian threat and the ‘secret government’, among other things.

A patent has reportedly just been granted for a MEG (motionless electromagnetic generator) device, promising to be in production, and providing free energy, within the year. “The announcement has significance since the patent office has always been skeptical of devices which seem to ‘get-something-for-nothing.’ But according to the new science of scalar electromagnetics, the MEG does not break the law of conservation of energy. It’s just that the energy is conserved in the fourth dimension, time, and not our 3-space world.”

See if this makes any sense to you.

Dennis Fox, a friend of mine who is a psychology professor turned political columnist in the local newspaper in the town where I live writes about an interesting dilemma of dramatic proportions here — because Brookline is both very politically left and very Jewish — but pertinent to our national political debate. Can Brookline Talk About Israel and Palestine? He also mentions this: “…the website of Visions for Peace with Justice in Israel/Palestine, a Boston-area Jewish group with members active in the Brookline Jewish community, contains links to relevant sources.”

Prozac linked to increased cancer growth: New research suggests that serotonin is a natural growth suppressant for some types of tumors, and that SSRI antidepressants may block that effect. Eli Lilly, the manufacturer of Prozac, of course disputes the relevance of the finding. I agree with the researchers’ caveat that this should not make anyone stop their antidepressant, which probably presents a greater risk than the theoretical research finding, which was established in the test tube and is not supported by any epidemiological findings. New Scientist

[If you know a little pharmacology, this finding may at first seem counterintuitive. SSRIs increase the amount of serotonin around by blocking its reuptake, so if serotonin is good for stopping tumor growth, why wouldn’t SSRIs enhance the effect? The answer is that it is intracellular serotonin that inhibits tumors, and the SSRIs increase extracellular serotonin by blocking its transport into cells (“reuptake”). –FmH]

Armed With Radar, Civilians Take Aim at Speeders: latest style of American vigilantism. NY Times

A hacker’s dreamland: wireless networks

Should you be concerned about wireless security? Yes, at least according to Chris O’Ferrell, chief technology officer of wireless technology company Netsec.

He says you should ask any organization you see using a wireless network–including your bank, the airports you visit, and even your tax preparer–if it uses 802.11b and if it employs security measures. Why? Because it could be broadcasting your personal information to anyone equipped with an 802.11 device and sniffing software such as NetStumbler, both of which are becoming more common among malicious users.

Around this time of year, the privacy of your tax information is particularly relevant. You may have noticed that from January through May, large tax-preparation companies hire extra accountants who set up temporary offices around town.

Instead of going through the hassle of installing LAN lines, many companies equip their employees with the latest 802.11b devices. Then they throw up an access point at the server, and suddenly all their accountants can tap into the company network wirelessly. ZDNet

Eminent neuropsychiatrist Dietrich Blumer ponders the illness of Vincent van Gogh:

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) had an eccentric personality and unstable moods, suffered from recurrent psychotic episodes during the last 2 years of his extraordinary life, and committed suicide at the age of 37. Despite limited evidence, well over 150 physicians have ventured a perplexing variety of diagnoses of his illness. Henri Gastaut, in a study of the artist’s life and medical history published in 1956, identified van Gogh’s major illness during the last 2 years of his life as temporal lobe epilepsy precipitated by the use of absinthe in the presence of an early limbic lesion. In essence, Gastaut confirmed the diagnosis originally made by the French physicians who had treated van Gogh. However, van Gogh had earlier suffered two distinct episodes of reactive depression, and there are clearly bipolar aspects to his history. Both episodes of depression were followed by sustained periods of increasingly high energy and enthusiasm, first as an evangelist and then as an artist. The highlights of van Gogh’s life and letters are reviewed and discussed in an effort toward better understanding of the complexity of his illness.

Empire Burlesque: Thanks, Adam, for sending this blink from The Moscow Times. I liked it very much too.

As if we didn’t already have enough reason to marvel at the twisted, tortured reason of Ann Coulter’s mind, there’s this commentary on the Oscars: I Like Black People Too, Julia! Not content to share her loathing for the cult of narcissism, vacuity and superficiality that is Hollywood (which I can get behind…), she hoists herself by her own bigoted narrow-minded petard, both with an absurd race-baiting analysis of Julia Roberts’ adulation of Denzel Washington —

” Whenever white liberals are in trouble, they always run to the blacks… Apparently, Oscars night was Hollywood’s shot at patronizing blacks to generate goodwill — perhaps as wartime penance for its long-standing hatred of America…”

— and with her emphatic belief that Halle Berry only won her Oscar because of affirmative action. Oh, sorry, not just her race; Coulter is also obsessed with Berry’s large breasts. And she seems to have trouble with thefact that Berry has light skin, as if she would be a more genuine African American if truly black.

But she does attempt to ingratiate herself to us with the opinion that Washington, at least deserved his award. Town Hall [Might she even, one day, tell us that “some of my best friends are African American?” –FmH] Others have commented as well that the Oscars did not seem colorblind and that the dual awards, as well as Poitier’s honorary one, seemed tokenizing. I don’t know, I didn’t watch and don’t really find the Academy Awards significant enough to think much about.

Here’s a headline we could see in the papers every day for the next what? ten? twenty? years: U.S. Military Still Hunting Terror Suspects.

The Spike Report pointed me to this ABC news coverage of a sculptor gaining notoriety, and unapologetic about it, making Serial Killer Action Figures. When I was young, I built the complete set of the plastic scale models of the Famous Monsters of Filmland — Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Bride of Frankenstein (who was really the bride of Frankenstein’s monster…), the Mummy, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, King Kong, Godzilla… — but of course back then there was “no such thing as monsters” in real life. Now that there are — and even more on the way, according to the article — I would suggest that those prone to collect figurines of real monsters insert an action figure of themselves into the tableau as a ritual enactment of the potential for good to vanquish evil.

Stanford sleep experts treat medical condition behind violent ‘sleep sex’

In a new study, Stanford researchers describe a treatable medical condition which causes people to commit violent sexual acts in their sleep. Referred to as “sleep sex,” the nocturnal activities cited in the study range from disruptive moaning to rape-like behavior toward bed partners.

The researchers believe this condition stems from glitches in brain waves during sleep. By bringing attention to the disorder, they hope the health-care community will recognize the problem as medical in origin rather than psychological. “Now doctors might know to ask patients about how they’re sleeping,” said Christian Guilleminault, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine.

Guilleminault’s study, released in the March/April issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, outlined 11 patients with symptoms that included loud, disruptive moaning on one end of the scale and sexual assault on the other. Regardless of how unusual or violent the behavior, patients had no memory of the events the next morning. EurekAlert!

More than one hour of TV a day may lead to violence: “Watching more than one hour of television per day may make adolescents more prone to violence in adulthood, according to new research. The study, appearing in the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is believed to be the first to investigate the long-term effects of television viewing on aggressive behavior.” EurekAlert!

Jed Perl decries the cult of manic American adulation of pretentious modern European painters as he views the Gerhard Richter retrospective at MOMA. The New Republic

Brain scans draw a dark image of the violent mind Boston Globe

Presidential Health Picks: “President Bush has finally chosen his nominees for two of the nation’s top health positions, the director of the National Institutes of Health and the surgeon general. Both have compelling personal biographies — rising from obscurity and hardship to great prominence — but are relatively unknown outside their fields. Their views on social and ethical issues are a mystery, but the White House seems certain that neither is likely to challenge Mr. Bush’s policies on hot-button issues like embryonic stem cells, cloning and sex education.” NY Times editorial

Bush Diplomacy Yields Few Promising Signs: ‘The administration is sensitive to any suggestion it has not done enough, or been inconsistent. When a reporter at the daily State Department briefing began a question by noting that “It looks like you pretty well failed to persuade the Israelis,” the even-tempered spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, interrupted him, saying, “Just had to get that word in the first sentence, didn’t you?” ‘ NY Times

Why another Gore campaign would be good for the Democrats:

Despite winning a bare majority of the popular vote, he was a dreadful candidate in 2000, who somehow managed to turn eight years of peace and prosperity into an electoral burden. He is a smug, stubborn, and aloof human being. He will clutter the race in 2004, suck money from other candidates, force some interesting possibilities from the field, run another awkward, tired faux-populist campaign and, if nominated, he will lose, more decisively this time, to George W. Bush. This critique seems reasonable enough in many of its particulars, but not in its conclusion—that life would be a lot simpler if Gore would just go away. Quite the contrary, Democrats should nurture his ambition and cherish his ineptitude. –Joe Klein Slate

Klein’s idea is that the voting public find Gore so craven and contemptible that any Democratic candidate who defeats him in the primaries — in contradiction to the received wisdom that a primary battle is divisive, wasteful and injurious — will be a hero; this may be the only option to defeat an incumbent President riding the crest of War-on-Terrorism® popularity.

Did Early Interest in Eating Meat

Spur Organized Societies?: “Ever wonder why humans evolved into social animals with rules and regulations covering just about everything we do? Meat, most likely.” ABC News Related: Hunter-gatherers ate lean cuts: “Wild meats gnawed by ancient hunters contain healthier fats than modern farmed cattle. This finding backs the idea that a palaeolithic diet is the key to good health.” Nature

Discussing the Nature of Reality, Between Buffets: ‘ “I haven’t been to a meeting before where speaker after speaker says what they think,” said Dr. Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, commenting on the boldness, philosophically and scientifically, of the discussions.’ NY Times

Saudi, in Emotional Plea to Israel, Offers ‘Land for Peace’ Proposal. The impassioned speech at the Arab summit — disturbed by the dispute over Arafat’s nonpresence and, most recently, what has been described as Lebanon’s blockage of a planned Arafat speech by satellite television from the occupied territories — met with even grudging support from hardliner Assad of Syria. The Bush Administration, by the way, was roundly condemned for its inability to exert more influence on Sharon around permitting Arafat to attend. However, privately, moderate Arab states in favor of a straightforward peace initiative may well have welcomed a conference without the risk of unscripted theatrics from the Palestinian leader, analysts speculate. The absence of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and representatives from approximately half of the Arab League, however, may compromise the unanimity of the offer. NY Times No reaction from Israel is reported. Certainly, Sharon’s dilemma is that he is called upon to make a tangible, almost irrevocable move – giving up land — for the promise of a revocable intangible, ‘recognition of Israel’s right to exist.’ On the other hand, does he have another choice? Suicide Bomber Kills 15 in Israeli Hotel; Hamas Makes Claim Reuters via Yahoo!

Selling the Jitters: “The market for energy drinks loaded with caffeine and other additives has exploded, leaving researchers worried about the potential health effects of the potent beverages.” Spectator. On the other hand: FDA Issues Warning on Kava-Containing Supplements:

“Following in the footsteps of Australia, Canada and several European nations, the US Food and Drug Administration (news – web sites) (FDA) warned American consumers on Monday against the use of products containing kava, a herbal ingredient most often promoted for relaxation and the alleviation of sleeplessness.

The FDA said it was issuing the warning because kava has been associated with liver-related injuries in the US and several other countries, including Germany, Switzerland, France, Canada and the United Kingdom.” Yahoo! News [thanks, Nancy!]

Many are painting current events as the enactment of a grand struggle between the opposing forces of Light and Darkness. Of course, the archetypical such conflict, paleontologists are learning, was staged at the dawn of civilization between the Neanderthals and their eventual successors, the Cro-Magnon who would turn out to be forebears of modern humankind. Scientists have recently begun to appreciate that the two humanoid races coexisted in time and space across the European continent, and may have even intermarried to some extent, while vying for the supremacy of their respective ways of being sometimes by geopolitical positioning, sometimes frank combat. We may be considered to be in an analogous situation today. This Reuters wire photo, however, raises serious doubts about whether we’re the Neanderthals or the Cro-Magnon of the day. [thanks,Ted!]

Trading Cards: American Crusade 2001+: “President Bush tried his bestest to simplify the picture as Good vs. Evil, but it’s still a jumble! Who knew all those crazy Dorkistan countries even existed?! Now The Infinite Jest rides to the rescue with a set of educational trading cards.Fun to collect! Fun to trade! Fun to drain a box of inkjet cartridges!” Infinite Jest

Psychologists Get Prescription Pads and Furor Erupts

Psychologists are adept at diagnosing and treating mental illness. But unlike psychiatrists, who are medically trained, they have never been able to prescribe drugs for their suffering patients. As of July 1, however, psychologists in one state, New Mexico, will be authorized to pull out the prescription pad. A new law will grant prescribing privileges to licensed, doctoral-level psychologists who have completed an additional training and certification program. And though the specifics of the plan remain to be worked out, the law is already the focus of a bitter national debate. Proponents argue that the law will provide greater access to quality care at lower cost. Opponents contend that psychology should remain distinct from its medical cousin and they worry that the legislation may place vulnerable patients in danger. Most vehement in their objections are the representatives of organized psychiatry. “Most of the patients we see as psychiatrists have many other medical problems,” said Dr. Richard K. Harding, president of the American Psychiatric Association. “They have hypertension, diabetes, migraine headaches. And the interactions of the medicines we give for these other conditions are often extremely difficult and scary.” NY Times

This is a very very bad idea, in my opinion both as a psychiatrist and a consumer advocate for my patients. First off, let’s remember that most members of the public have only a hazy notion of the difference betwen a psychologist and a psychiatrist. “Are you a medical doctor too?”, I’m constantly asked. This makes me suspect that the quality of the public debate on the New Mexico law was sorely lacking. Moreover, the law requires far less training and supervision of the prescribing psychologists than the pilot study on whose successful results it is predicated. In the time-honored tradition of not even knowing enough to know how little you know, one of the psychologists first trained to prescribe says that the amount of knowledge necessary to prescribe has been overrated. Eminent psychiatrist Joel Yeager comments, “People are going to learn psychopharmacology for dummies. They will learn how to pass tests but will not really have a decent immersion in this material because they won’t have the background for it.”

On the other hand, the argument (above) by the psychiatrist president of the American Psychiatric Association — that most psychiatrically ill patients who require medication are also medically ill and require someone skilled in avoiding drug interactions to prevent disaster — is no more than the typical scare-tactic spin of a professional lobbyist. Far more pertinent than drug interactions or recognizing covert medical illness is the ease with mind-body integration and the familiarity with the rhythm of prescribing, assessing, adjusting that psychiatrists have come by over years of medical training, as Dr Yeager’s comment suggests. And since more of healing, even psychopharmacological, than we ever acknowledge depends on the patient’s unconsciously entering into the shared premise of the healing (a.k.a. the placebo response), treatment success depends too on ineffable qualities of charisma and directiveness that are the unspoken subtext learned in medical training. Needless to say this cannot be galvanized in this shortcut correspondence school approach to getting psychologists up to speed to prescribe. Not to mention that, whereas medical training is a clinical field from the get-go, although there is “clinical psychology” psychology is an academic and research-oriented field — quite a different mindset, and selecting for quite a different personality.

I know this diatribe may offend psychologist FmH readers, but I don’t mean to suggest their ability is lesser — only different. The obvious twin dangers inherent in psychiatrists, MDs, responding in this debate are that they will be tarred with the usual brush of being seen as arrogant and that they will be seen as trying to protect their eroding market share — which is the usual approach of the APA and the reason I no longer belong to that ol’ dinosaur of a lobbying group. Instead, I’m trying to suggest there’s an argument from quality of care as well, a Hippocratic one (“first, do no harm”) if you will. If you see MDs only as overpriced functionaries whose sole distinction is that they have prescribing privileges, then of course it makes sense to try to develop lower-priced alternatives. But you get what you pay for. Caveat emptor, not that the consumer is going to have any say in the matter, or even necessarily know what they are missing, the way modern healthcare is going.

I already find that most of my poor, disenfranchised patients with major mental illnesses, on public assistance, get second-rate prescribing from the nurse practitioners who are allowed to write prescriptions in my state. And, yes, I know that will unleash another firestorm of reproach from any readers who are RNs or sympathetic to them. But, from more than a decade of consulting to, supervising, hiring (and firing), and treating patients referred from nurse clinical specialists, I am comfortable with my conclusion that their lack of global preparation and experience for prescribing results in a job less well done by most of them than most physicians in equivalent clinical roles. And the same will be true with the new law (even more, since psychologists have no experience treating medically very ill patients in general). Of course there are anecdotal exceptions, if you compare a particularly gifted non-MD prescriber with a particularly clumsy MD prescriber — there are NPs to whom I would send a family member for psychopharmacological treatment, and there are MDs I would not, needless to say — but public policy should be based on aggregates, not anecdotes. Okay, I’ve got my asbestos suit on, let the flamewar begin. Actually looking forward to thoughtful disagreement on this issue, so close to my heart and passion…

Senator Helms as an AIDS Savior: ‘Writing in Sunday’s Washington Post, Senator Jesse Helms, long deemed public enemy No. 1 by AIDS advocates, said that he would ask for an extra $500 million to prevent mother-to-child transmission of AIDS overseas, contingent on matching funds from the private sector.

“Some may say that this initiative is not consistent with some of my earlier positions,” wrote Mr. Helms. But he continued, “in the end our conscience is answerable to God. Perhaps, in my 81st year, I am too mindful of soon meeting Him, but I know that, like the Samaritan traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, we cannot turn away when we see our fellow man in need.” There are many in Congress who have talked about adding money to President Bush’s shamefully tight-fisted budget for combating AIDS overseas, but nothing can match the impact of these words from Senator Helms.’ New York Times editorial

Adminimizer Toolbar— if you’re weblogging with Blogger and IE6, you need this free tool! [If you’re not a weblogger yourself, you can probably stop reading here to prevent boredom; and if you’re a weblogger but not using IE6, to prevent envy…]

“So here is the deal. You see your blog in the browser. You want to add to or edit it so… You go to some other app or site to do your blogging. Does this make sense? No. You should be able to edit and save right there, in your browser, on your blog page, WYSIWYG style. No fuss, no muss, no fooling around.

How? Internet Explorer 6 has fabulous XML and text editing capabilities that are grossly underutilized by most people. The Adminimizer Toolbar makes it easy for you to take advantage of them when using your Blogger blog. All you need to do is install the Toolbar in your browser, add 2 lines of code and 2 span tags to your blogger template, and copy an XML file onto your site. You’ll be ready to edit in no time.”

Ever since Blogger’s “remote editing” capacity broke (a long time ago), I’ve been looking for a way to edit posts directly from the browser window without going to my “edit your blog” page at blogger.com. When you install the toolbar in your browser and click on it while you’re displaying your weblog, green lines surround all the editable posts; you just do WYSIWYG editing in situ! Drag-and-drop works too. Watch for the imminent disappearance of the little pencil icon at the end of every post, the old way I was doing it (imperfectly), as soon as the Adminimizer’s shakedown cruise is done..

It would be a perfect world, though, if Evan Williams would hurry up and write a Blogger Pro interface for Mozilla, and the Adminimizer programmers would do the same. I’m feeling abit guilty about my wholesale sellout to M$, but IE is just so much more functional right now.

Internet Sacred Text Archive — “This is a quiet place in cyberspace devoted to religious tolerance and scholarship…”

This week’s parlour game is to count up how many of these books you’ve read; needless to say, the movie adaptations don’t count. For extra credit, who would you promote and demote? I would have ranked several of the characters higher: Gulley Jimson, Molly Bloom, Geoffrey Firmin, Tom Ripley and George Smiley, off the top of my head. Oh yes, and Eeyore.

Volume Control Knob Turns Heads — This Wired item leads with, “Who but a jewelry designer could create a computer product that seems useless but is fast becoming a hit based on its good looks?” Read on, though, and it appears the PowerMate’s appeal is not, by a longshot, limited to its appearance.

“When elephants dance, it’s best to get out of the way. That’s exactly what’s happening now as the entertainment industry—the recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainly—attempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isn’t it?” Proposes a simple fix — recognition of artists’ moral rights to their intellectual property; reversion of the term of copyright to fourteen years, immediately and retroactively; and prohibiting corporations from owning copyrights:

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a “natural person” under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. It’s not too late to fix it.

Can it be done? The author points out how little it took in contributions for the media industry to ‘buy’ the Senate sponsors (Hollings et al) of the pending copy protection bill ( the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, or CBDTPA) and predicts, knowing who is most awash in entertainment industry money in the House, who myght soinsor a companion bill there; could we buy back our rights? Ironically, he notes, since the bill would still have to be signed nto law, “installed President Bush just may be the fly in this particular ointment. Like most conservatives, he sees the entertainment industry as a liberal bastion, remember, and a political force that’s not necessarily aligned with his larger agenda.” Arts & Farces

Tests show no screening improvements post-Sept. 11: “In the months after Sept. 11, airport screeners confiscated record numbers of nail clippers and scissors. But nearly half the time, they failed to stop the guns, knives or simulated explosives carried past checkpoints by undercover investigators with the Transportation Department’s inspector general.

In fact, even as the Federal Aviation Administration evacuated terminals and pulled passengers from more than 600 planes because of security breaches, a confidential memo obtained by USA TODAY shows investigators noticed no discernable improvements by screeners in the period from November through early February, when the tests were conducted. “

‘Friendly Fire’ Deaths Traced to Dead Battery: “…the Air Force combat controller was using a Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver, known to soldiers as a plugger, to calculate the Taliban’s coordinates for a B-52 attack. The controller did not realize that after he changed the device’s battery, the machine was programmed to automatically come back on displaying coordinates for its own location, the official said.” Washington Post [And we want to start using battlefield nukes??!! –FmH]

Painter David Hockney’s new book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters suggests it was not just better brush technique that created the photorealistic precision of Renaissance European painting. American Scientist

The Social Psychology of Modern Slavery: “Contrary to conventional wisdom, slavery has not disappeared from the world. Social scientists are trying to explain its persistence.” Scientific American

Veterinary:

‘I was with him once when he was called in to see a deeply demented patient, God knows for what reason. He repeatedly tried to start his examination, but the patient warded him off with piercing cries.

“This is getting rather too veterinarian,” muttered D., putting his reflex hammer back into his white coat and marching with some pomp back to his own ward.’ Threepenny Review

Surrealist Views From a Real Live One: ‘During the two hours it takes to see (the monumental Surrealist show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Desire Unbound”), Ms. Tanning will prove to be both Surrealism’s poet and its scourge, beginning with Salvador Dali’s “Venus With Drawers,” a modified plaster bust of the love goddess as a cabinet, with grungy white pompon pulls attached to the drawers incorporated into its torso.’ NY Times

Four Secular Questions: “Here are four secular questions that could be asked and answered after the Passover ceremony concludes.” –William Safire NY Times

Extending Life, Defibrillators Can Prolong Misery: “The devices can fundamentally change the end stages of heart disease, giving years of life to people who would otherwise die. Some experts are asking whether the devices are going to create a new generation of patients who die slow and painful deaths.” NY Times

Limit copying and we may end up copying the USSR –John Naughton Guardian Unlimited

Leaders Say Poverty Breeds Terrorism: The developing countries have always had difficulty persuading the industrial powers that it is in their best interest to offer extensive development assistance and other foreign aid. 9-11 may turn out to be a goldmine for them, literally, as they band together with the assertion that poverty breeds terrorism and it behooves the First World to protect themselves by eliminating it. Lycos News It may be true, but does it also smack of crass opportunism if not frank blackmail?

Bleak future looms if you don’t take a stand: “Media conglomerates are in a merger frenzy. Telecommunications monopolies are creating a cozy cartel, dividing up access to the online world. The entertainment industry is pushing for Draconian controls on the use and dissemination of digital information.

If you’re not infuriated by these related trends, you should at least be worried. If you’re neither, stop reading this column. You’re a sheep, content to be herded wherever these giants wish.

But if you want to retain some fundamental rights over the information you use and create, please take a stand. Do it soon, because a great deal is at stake.” –Dan Gillmor San Jose Mercury

Why The Hague is not Nuremberg: “As Slobodan Milosevic makes legal history by becoming the first former head of state to be prosecuted by an international war crimes tribunal, some legal experts and commentators have criticised the tribunal’s procedures.

They point to the admission of hearsay evidence, the use of anonymous witnesses and the absence of a jury as evidence that the tribunal falls far short of Western standards of justice. They attack the alleged cosy relationship between prosecutors and judges, the fact that appeal judges are trial judges with a temporary promotion, and the claim that Milosevic hasn’t been allowed to consult lawyers in private.” spiked

The strange battle of Shah-i-Kot: “Since it kicked off at the start of March 2002, Operation Anaconda has been a minefield of contradictory statements and unanswered questions. Was it an ‘absolute success’ , or a ‘big mistake’? Did it wipe out the last ‘pockets of al-Qaeda and Taliban resistance’, or did al-Qaeda fighters ‘escape’ to fight again? Did America’s first combined ground-and-air offensive of the war kill 800 of the enemy, or about 20? One US commentator says, ‘We don’t know, the Afghans don’t know – and the US military doesn’t seem to know’.” spiked

There’s been much thoughtful response to my “What am I doing here?” post the other day, for which I’m grateful. Among the responses, Ray Davis of the eloquent Bellona Times reminded me, worth repeating:

“Dialogue doesn’t have to be debate to be useful, by the way. (And it’s become horrifyingly clear since the 2000 election that conflating the two is one way we’ve gotten into this mess.) Sharing of information and analysis and rhetorical tools and errors among those-in-agreement seems absolutely necessary if any progress is to be made.”

I’m up for that…

Another reader commented:

“I’m more sanguine (or utopian) than you about the lack of cross-talk among blogs of different stripes. These are early days and we have a long way to go before we can guess the ultimate sociology of blogs (or blogology of society.)… I think our social organism is being completely rewired, as it has been by previous tech revolutions. This rewiring means we will have more synapses, more nerves, more thinking, more engagement. The change, as the Marxists put it, won’t be just quantitative but qualititative.”

To Be Young and Homeless:

“Because these children are not sleeping in parks or begging on subways, the fact of their homelessness is largely invisible — outside the context of a homeless shelter, they just look like children. And while I did meet families in New York who said they’d ridden subways overnight with their very young kids or slept outdoors with teenagers, these parents were taking a big risk — failing to provide adequate shelter for one’s children can result in having them removed from one’s care by the Administration for Children’s Services, New York City’s child welfare agency. Yet because we don’t see homeless kids asleep in our streets — and because the shelters and residences they shuttle in and out of tend to be in the city’s poorer neighborhoods — their plight has not provoked the outcry that the rise in homelessness did in the 1980’s. Nevertheless, these children make up 40 percent of the nation’s homeless population, and for the time they remain without homes, and for who knows how long after, homelessness is the defining fact of their lives.” New York Times Magazine

Life Inside Tall Tin Can in Utah Is All Mars: “The not-so-deadly pretense of living on Mars while hanging out in a tall tin can in southern Utah is the latest wrinkle in a private plan to persuade the federal government to send humans to Mars sooner and for less money than envisioned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.” NY Times

Cost of Laughing Rises 2.9 Percent in Last Year: “Was scarcity a factor? Did the demand for laughs outstrip supply in a time of war?” Yahoo! News

Comet Ikeya-Zhang Streaks Across Northern Sky

Comet Ikeya-Zhang, discovered by two amateur astronomers in February, can be seen streaking across skies over the Northern Hemisphere for the next several weeks, scientists said on Thursday.

No telescope is needed, but binoculars are recommended to see the comet, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a statement.

To find Comet Ikeya-Zhang, look in the western sky shortly after sunset and locate the planet Mars — that will be a red point of light about 18 degrees up from the horizon. (An outspread hand at arm’s length covers about 15 degrees, so Mars is a bit higher than one hand-span.) To the right of Mars are two bright stars in a nearly vertical line. The comet is at the same height as Mars, to the right of the two bright stars about as far again as the distance from Mars to the stars. Observers should be able to see the comet’s bright, star-like nucleus surrounded by a fuzzy cloud of dust and gas called the coma. The comet’s tail streaks points nearly straight up from the horizon.

“Students may be learning more about avoidance strategies than arithmetic in math class.” A new study surveyed more than a thousand sixth-grade students across the demographic spectrum and showed what teacher factors encourage and discourage student avoidance skills. Journal of Educational Psychology

How to be a philosopher: “Technique 1: Begin by making a spurious distinction. Befuddle the reader with your analytic wizardry. The reader will enter a logical trance, from which she will be unable to recall the initial spurious distinction and will feel strangely compelled to accept your conclusions…” The Philosophers’ Magazine

Defense Department Agency Severs Its Ties to an Elite Panel of Scientists

The Pentagon has countless in-house scientists and engineers to assess its security strategy. But since the days of the hydrogen bomb and the “missile gap,” Jason has been one of the few — and certainly the most prestigious — sources of advice outside the defense establishment, looking for developing threats and assessing futuristic weaponry. Its 40 to 50 members include Nobel laureates and some of the brightest young scientists in the nation…

According to members of Jason, the Defense Department agency wanted the panel to accept two Silicon Valley executives and another Washington insider with an engineering degree into its ranks. When the panel refused, the agency, called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, ended the contract.

Though Darpa refused yesterday to confirm the dispute over the nominees, a spokeswoman said the move was in fact a reflection of Jason’s inability to adjust its priorities to a post-cold-war world, where the physical sciences are no longer as important as information and computer sciences to the nation’s security… But Dr. Steven Block, a Jason member who is a professor of biological sciences at Stanford, said those contentions were a smoke screen in front of an attempt to place political appointees to a scientific advisory panel. “Darpa’s attempt to turn Jason into a political patronage job challenges the very independence that makes Jason so useful,” Dr. Block said. Citing what is now regarded as a prescient 1999 study by Jason on bioterrorism, and others on nanotechnology and information, Dr. Block denied that the panel focused too exclusively on physics. The events of Sept. 11, he said, made the group’s blue-sky strategizing even more critical. NY Times [thanks, Abby!]

Mobiles ‘worse than drink-driving’

Talking on a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than being over the legal alcohol limit, according to research.

Tests by scientists at the Transport Research Laboratory said drivers on mobiles had slower reaction times and stopping times than those under the influence of alcohol.

And it said hands-free kits were almost as dangerous as hand-held phones. BBC News

Mobiles ‘worse than drink-driving’

Talking on a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than being over the legal alcohol limit, according to research.

Tests by scientists at the Transport Research Laboratory said drivers on mobiles had slower reaction times and stopping times than those under the influence of alcohol.

And it said hands-free kits were almost as dangerous as hand-held phones. BBC News

Google restores Scientology links: Remember the flap several weeks back about Scientology’s manipulation of its web page content to place its own pages higher than those of detractors in search engines? The enduser response, including mine, was to “bomb” Google with links to xenu.net, a major site critical of Scientology, to get it ranked higher when searching on that term. Well, as of Tuesday, Google removed links to xenu.net from its index. Kuro5hin and others speculated the self-censorship might have been a response to the “googlebombing”, but ZDnet reports that Scientology’s lawyers directly intervened with Google to remove xenu.net from its listings, threatening Google with action under the DMCA for xenu.net’s alleged “copyright infringement”. It does appear that it has been the resultant public outcry that has gotten Google to reverse that decision.I just did the search; the critical site is back in at fourth place again. Care to try to get it higher? Here again is another link to this site critical of Scientology.

Taliban bargaining on 18 US soldiers: According to this Pakistani news source, written with stilted English, the Taliban took 18 American soldiers prisoner during Operation Anaconda. They want to trade them for the Guantanamo Bay detainees. Does the notion of safe passage for the hostage-bearing Taliban and al Qaeda forces explain why Anaconda didn’t kill as many foes as it was billed to do? Reader comments on this news item are largely of the incredulous variety…

Four Pakistanis Missing After INS Wrongly Let Them Enter U.S.:

‘Federal officials are on the lookout for four Pakistani nationals who are in the United States illegally after leaving a freighter that had been docked in Virginia sometime last weekend.

Immigration and Naturalization Service district directors and border patrol chiefs from across the country met on a “crisis management” conference call Thursday afternoon in which it was reportedly revealed that one of the four missing Pakistanis showed up on a “lookout list.” Since then, however, checks run on the Pakistanis suggest that they are on no such lists.’ Fox News

although I’m not sure how much it is to be trusted, given that it is from WorldNetDaily: Suicide-bomber unit shown off in Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood movement has presented eight of its suicide-bombers-in-training to hundreds of demonstrators at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, according to the Lebanese daily Al-Mustaqbal, which is owned by Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri.

The story reports that Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt, presented the eight as members of the new “Martyrdom Organization” on Monday. The Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, translated the article into English.

According to the paper, the group of “young people” has been secretly training for some time, preparing for the “struggle against Israel.”

Taunted by new U.N. classmates, Switzerland already wants to go home SatireWire After all, says the Washington Post (on a more serious note), Switzerland sent some people home too.

Under the influence: “Drug companies spend billions, showering gifts on doctors, to persuade them to prescribe new medicines. Critics say it’s bad for patients’ wallets – and maybe their bodies.” More on something on which I’ve vituperated before. When your MD offers you the latest-and-greatest instead of the tried-and-true, ask why it’s better. Philadelphia Inquirer

From Poynter.org, ‘I see dead people’: a compilation of resources for journalists, useful for the rest of us too, to help figure out whether a given celebrity is already dead or still alive . Avoid making the ‘Abe Vigoda gaffe’. And also from Poynter, I was entertained by these tips for ‘fair and accurate’ reporting on the clergy abuse scandal. Pointers include: avoiding blaming sexual abuse on clerical celibacy; not forgetting the poor wrongly acused priests when tallying the victims of the scandal; keeping in mind that some sexual sins are worse than others; recognizing that the Catholic Church is vulnerable to scapegoating; trying to broaden coverage of Church affairs to get beyond the abuse issue to some of its other involvements; and understanding that the Church is not monolithic and contains a spectrum of opinion and behavior. Pardon my heresy, the (self-professed) Catholic reporter who wrote this article is not exactly a poster child for impartiality; he sounds more like he works for the Vatican’s public relations office…

Forthcoming film of a Philip K. Dick short story is “…like the antidote to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter,” says director.

From the diary of dan sandler, via randomWalks: ‘Now that iPod users have figured out how to use the iPod to store contacts, Apple has added the same functionality with updated iPod software.

There’s a clue, however, that the iPod team may not be terribly happy about having to cram this quite tangential feature into their svelte product. Take a look at the name in that screenshot: Alan Smithee. Where have you heard that name before? Yes, it’s the name used by disgruntled film directors to distance themselves from projects over which they have “lost creative control” to the studio.’

Here‘s the IMdb bio of Alan Smithee, and a list of 47 films he directed.

James Lileks creates the Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots:

“The following page are filled with cast-off mascots – humanoid creatures who once served as advertising emmisaries in newspapers and magazines. Most of these products are dead, leaving their mascots orphaned; in many cases, the mascots were cast off to satiate the public’s taste for something new. None of them were particularly sucessful, or even well-loved. It’s hard to love the frightening face of Pepeco Pete, or want to be embraced by the razor-blade arms of Pal, the Shaving Boy. But they tried hard, day in, day out.

Most of them labored in the food-ad pages of the newspaper. In Minneapolis, the Thursday paper had all the coupons and ads – page after page of tiny ads, each with its own tagline or mascot. On a good fat day the paper might teem with three dozen of these happy folk. Imagine the nervous thrill of a Wednesday night in the mascot world, as they prepared for their one big shot, their weekly attempt to snare the wandering eye to their master’s products. Their payment? Nothing. Not even the promise of some ink the next week. Only the newspaper’s habit of microfilming every page kept them from vanishing altogether. That’s where I found them. Every day I crank up the microfilm machine, and release a few more from darkness.

Now it’s your turn to help. I’m calling on the citizens of the Web to adopt a cast-off mascot and affix him to your own page.”

“Britain is a nation of cyber snoopers. Almost nine in ten (87 per cent) of UK workers have surreptitiously read a boss’s private email on at least one occasion. That’s according to a survey of 200 professionals, sponsored by security firm Indicii Salus, which found that the vast majority of snoopers were motivated by curiosity rather than though of personal gain in accessing their boss’s email.” The Register

Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver’s Licenses — another outrage. I wonder if you get to patronize the business if you insist on being ‘carded’ in the old way, with a visual inspection of the data on the front of the card instead of letting it be swiped in. I object to this for the same reason I don’t use the preferred-customer discount cards at grocery stores and drugstores unless they will agree to issue me one under a pseudonym. If swiping in the driver’s license gets to be a more widespread practice, what would be the downside to taking a penknife [or, as a reader suggested, a strong magnet, although the visible defacement of the card serves a civil disobedience purpose… –FmH] to the magnetic strip on the rear to prevent its data being readily harvested in the swipe?

The Selling of 9-11: ‘It has been six months since 9-11 and already we have had a formal anniversary. Stilted moments of silence, child poets, giant laser beams, and solemn speeches brought out the ghosts that have yet to be put to rest and never will, so long as there is a profit to be made on their continued haunting. HBO, Showtime, and FX have all announced plans to produce TV movies about the events, but on March 10th, CBS took the lead with a commercial-free special, 9/11. An important documentary to some and exploitative reality programming to others, the nearly uninterrupted two-hour broadcast of footage shot inside the World Trade Center provided an insider’s view of the results of the terrorist attacks. Gaining an estimated third of the American viewing population, 9/11 was profitable, but at the expense of many of the victims’ families who felt the timing was inappropriate. Although they publicly voiced their concern, it did not change the network’s decision to air the program.” AlterNet

Bush Acts to Drop Core Privacy Rule on Medical Data: This is an outrage. Read the proposal, formulate your own opinion and find a way to act during the thirty-day period for public comments. While the dysadministration says its concern is for patient care, it seems to me this move has a multifold motive, and none of them are for the good of the patient.

First, it is consistent with Shrub’s ideological battle against privacy as an end in itself. By basing his decision on worst-case scenarios in which upholding privacy rights could have an adverse impact on quality or rapidity of care, he says civil rights are only useful if they are means to an end. Calling his position ‘common sense’ implies that consumer advocates’ principles are nonsense. Second, he continues to dismantle Clinton achievements on principle as an ideological slap in the face to constituents of the Democratic administration. Thirdly, this is another giveaway to big business — in this case, the healthcare industry — at the expense of the rest of us, allowing insurance companies less fettered access to patient information for purposes not of patient care but reimbursement — to improve their cash flow. Finally, it clearly is an ideological tool to further his anti-abortion and pro-family fundamentalist agenda.

Believe me, patient care would not be significantly compromised by patients having to sign another form; there are already massive paperwork transactions involved in any healthcare encounter, and one more consent form will be dealt with as automatically as the rest. From the inside, I can tell you that healthcare facilities have easily taken in stride preparing for the Clinton privacy provisions, and efficient policies and procedures for complying are in place. But the potential for misuse of patents’ medical data if it is not strictly protected are rampant. NY Times

Anti-Copy Bill Hits D.C.: “Sen. Fritz Hollings has fired the first shot in the next legal battle over Internet piracy.

The Democratic senator from South Carolina finally has introduced his copy protection legislation, ending over six months of anticipation and sharpening what has become a heated debate between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

The bill, called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), prohibits the sale or distribution of nearly any kind of electronic device — unless that device includes copy-protection standards to be set by the federal government.” Wired

On the other hand, courtesy of Rebecca Blood, there’s the Digital Consumer Bill of Rights:

1. Users have the right to “time-shift” content that they have legally acquired.
   This gives you the right to record video or audio for later viewing or listening. For example, you can use a VCR to record a TV show and play it back later.
2. Users have the right to “space-shift” content that they have legally acquired.
   This gives you the right to use your content in different places (as long as each use is personal and non-commercial). For example, you can copy a CD to a portable music player so that you can listen to the songs while you’re jogging.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
   This gives you the right to make archival copies to be used in the event that your original copies are destroyed.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
   This gives you the right to listen to music on your Rio, to watch TV on your iMac, and to view DVDs on your Linux computer.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
   This gives you the right to modify content in order to make it more usable. For example, a blind person can modify an electronic book so that the content can be read out loud.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.
   This last right guarantees your ability to exercise your other rights. Certain recent copyright laws have paradoxical loopholes that claim to grant certain rights but then criminalize all technologies that could allow you to exercise those rights. In contrast, this Bill of Rights states that no technological barriers can deprive you of your other fair use rights.

Revisiting the New York Times Magazine music issue, I found I’d missed this article. Band of Outsiders — as someone who’s long been fascinated by outsider art and who never misses a chance to visit the Musée de l’Art Brut whenever I’m anywhere near Lausanne, I should’ve considered there might be outsider music as well, especially because I had heard the Innocence and Despair (Langley School Project) CD and, like this essayist, found it arresting.

A Show Honors the Long Lives of Images of the Dead: ‘”The Last Portrait,” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, includes some 200 images of famous people in the time between their final breaths and the grave.’ NY Times

Norton Blog wrote to tell me about a list of pointers to further reading about Bose-Einstein condensates for those who want to understand ‘this new state of matter’ (about which I wrote yesterday) further.

Color Coded Executive Branch Alerts from San Francisco animator/cartoonist Mark Fiore.

This new “chicken hawk” concept, as rendered by Tom Tomorrow, seems useful. [thanks, David]

I’m continuing to catch up with my favorite-weblogs backlog. Garrett posted on 3-13 that he had just learned of the murder of a friend. I’m not sure if you’re reading, but my thoughts are with you. My best friend and roommate from college was murdered several years afterward — more than 20 years ago now — but it’s still with me, so I may have a firsthand sense of what you’re going through.

Long, thoughtful, must-read reflection on the growing love affair the media have with weblogging, from Turbulent Velvet. As stories about weblogging become more prevalent, he observes, “People are using a small subset of urbane and civilized weblogs in order to draw conclusions about both the medium and the sociology of blogging without acknowledging some far more ugly developments,” by which he means the attack blogs and in particular the “warblogs”. While I’d like to be complacent in the distinctions, as I read I became more and more disquieted by how much the things for which the warblogs are vilified in my circles also apply to the antiwarblogs of my circles:

“The right’s attack blogs are really a very efficient chain of routers, repeaters essentially, multiplying punditry about punditry. I can’t think of one that is adding to the sum of human knowledge.” Bingo. And not only that: there are as many if not more attack blogs out there as urbane dialogic, thoughtful ones. “What worries me is that the cumulative effect [of attack blogs] actually diminishes the value of news…as they drive the fact/opinion ratio down through the floor.”

I’m not comfortable reassuring myself that the repeater phenomenon and the degradation of signal-to-noise ratio are any more endemic to the conservatives than the progressives. I’m not sure if TV is troubled by this when he attempts to pull the following rabbit out of the hat — that it’s more courageous to blog in dissent against the prevailing norms, like support for the War-on-Terrorism®, than in lockstep support of the status quo. As a fervent dissenter, I’d love to think I’m taking an illustrious, courageous stand, but it worries me how easy this is when I’m preaching to the converted. If you don’t like my cynical critique of everything under the sun, I know you won’t be reading FmH regularly for long no matter if I’m the most thoughtful, literate, erudite weblogger on the planet.

There’s very little crosstalk; I’m disappointed that the warbloggers don’t find me to get under their skins enough to flame back, with the exception of Dan Hartung, an early supporter and friend in the weblogging community, and even that dialogue didn’t last long. (They surely do lambast some of the thoughtful, passionate, leftist bloggers out there; why aren’t I on their radar screens? Am I just too much off the beaten path, without sufficient visibility? Or not worthy of replying to?) In this sense, the weblogging community is not at all seeming like the digital equivalent of the speakers’ corner in a pluralistic society it is sometimes made out to be. More often, it is seeming like a sad reminder of our atomization and solipsism. So what do I want here? to find comfort in a likeminded countercultural community? to have some influence if I’m ever, for a moment, thoughtful and original enough that I can transcend the usual sanctimoniousness of my dissenting views? to provoke a fight and unleash my reservoir of rage against the machine? to surpass mere passive whining and help build a vigorous opposition movement again in this nation of sheep? I think so, at least a little, in each instance. ’60’s and ’70’s lefties like myself, with the experience of inhabiting a viable countercultural and politically dissenting context, have not thought through the challenges and opportunities to community-building that the digital age provides. The weblogging world should be a deliberate part of that…

But I’m not sure I’m really talking about, narrowly defined, political dissent, with which through my life I’ve had quite a dialectical relationship. When I started this, long ago in a galaxy far away (everyone says that 9-11 was a demarcation line, but for me it was only one of twin ‘hits’, along with the theft of the Presidential election the year before, that have moved me — us — into an irrevocably changed alien world) I was in a relatively apolitical period in my life and FmH had a meandering, more eclectic flavor. I said here, with superior disdain, that I couldn’t be bothered to expend much energy or attention on the Presidential campaign, that there couldn’t be much of a difference regardless which of the Republicrats bought the Office (and I couldn’t get behind Nader’s impaired judgment in any sense…). Now I think at times FmH’s focus has become a bit too narrowly, obsessively, built around political criticism. Not that I’ve had some kind of religious conversion to membership in the Liberal Democratic Church or anything, but just because Bush is so unbelievably bad, such an execrable, befitting figurehead for what is so wrong with American politics and modern life. I am pulled vigorously, too vigorously, to reading the political news first, and often never getting beyond it. I never watch The West Wing (or virtually any television, for that matter), but last night I walked into the room and caught a little vignette in which a White House staffer is amazed that a fearsome political reporter hasn’t taken offense at some deception he suffered in covering the White House. He explains, to paraphrase, that he hates his beat, hates being “a stenographer,” and that she can’t imagine how little he cares about the trivial machinations of Palace intrigue. Sometimes I feel like that…

So, increasingly, I hope what I write here is more than just easy cheap shots and variations on one, obvious, theme. (On the other hand, when I read how well it’s done by some, e.g. blowback, cursor, ethelor rc3, off the top of my head, I’m inspired that there is a quality way to do polit.crit….) Still, I hope to get a bit away from this groove, if I can let go. Who was it who said, surveying the impact of the Shrub hegemony even before 9-11, that the only sane response was to resurrect beatnik counterculture again? It seems even more relevant as we seem to be slipping into this Orwellian age of permanent amorphous war footing and increasing autocratic intrusion. Yet these are not new phenomena. While what we’re subjected to now is unprecedented in magnitude rather than in kind — an opportunist perfection of age-old tendencies toward mind-control and autocratic rule by whatever memes are handy. A deeper, more fundamental critique of consensus reality, a critique of the cultural trance, the perennial human susceptibility to self-delusion, alienation and submissiveness, is called for. That’s what ‘Beat’ must mean. That’s a community to get behind. A political stance flows out of that, as a subsidiary, unavoidably. [Although it might be worthwhile postponing a retreat from politics until we have organized massive resistance to the momentum to attack Iraq… ] In any case, thanks, Velvet, for allowing me to riff off your thoughts; it’s been a useful reflection to me, especially if it means anything at all to you all. (I’m sure the warbloggers would think it doesn’t…)

“I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore. After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a collective hunch.” –Lily Tomlin (parenthetically, there’s an appreciation of the much-beloved Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe over at the bitter shack; and a happy birthday, Brooke!)

Bin Laden likely injured by strikes on Afghanistan: ‘ “He may have been wounded more than once,” one official said. The official said an assessment that bin Laden was wounded had become a “firm belief” by some military analysts.’ The Washington Times [Sounds more like a ‘leap of faith’ than a ‘firm belief.’ –FmH]

Navy report shows polar cap is shrinking fast

The polar ice cap has been shrinking so fast that regular ships may be steaming through the Northwest Passage each summer by 2015, and along northern Russia even sooner, according to a new U.S. Navy report.

Global warming will open the Arctic Ocean to unprecedented commercial activity. The seasonal expansion of open water may draw commercial fishing fleets into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska within a few decades. The summer ice cover could even disappear entirely by 2050 — or be concentrated around northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island.

For the U.S. Navy, this presents an unprecedented challenge: a new ocean.

The nation’s maritime military does not yet have the ships, training, technology and logistics in place to patrol or police a wide-open polar sea, according to the final report from a symposium on Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic. Anchorage Daily News

And an arresting news report today dramatizes the rapidity of these changes: Large Ice Shelf in Antarctica Disintegrates at Great Speed:

A Rhode Island-size piece of the floating ice fringe along a fast-warming region of Antarctica has disintegrated with extraordinary rapidity, scientists said yesterday

(…)

While it is too soon to say whether the changes there are related to a buildup of the “greenhouse” gas emissions that scientists believe are warming the planet, many experts said it was getting harder to find any other explanation. NY Times

Facial expression of pain: an evolutionary account: Amanda C de C Williams, PhD, University of London —

“This paper proposes that human expression of pain in the presence or absence of caregivers, and the detection of pain by observers, arise from evolved propensities. The function of pain is to demand attention and prioritise escape, recovery and healing; where others can help achieve these goals, effective communication of pain is required. Evidence is reviewed of a distinct and specific facial expression of pain from infancy to old age, consistent across stimuli, and recognizable as pain by observers. Voluntary control over amplitude is incomplete, and observers better detect pain which the individual attempts to suppress than to amplify or to simulate it.”

And: Laughter? It’s a funny business: “We laugh more frequently than we eat, sing or have sex. So why do we know so little about it?” Telegraph UK

The Anti-Gun Male: Once I read that Julia Gorin is billed as a stand-up comic, I could grasp that her column was meant to be a parody, but it reads as a chilling, realistic depiction of how the very real NRA types out there think of their opponents.

Burn, Baby Burn!: Not clear why they restricted it to webloggers, but the first round of the Blogger CD Swap is garnering much attention. Basically you put your name into a (digital) hat and draw out five other names at random, each of whom receives a copy of a lovingly crafted CD of summer music you’re going to burn. In return, you receive five such CDs from the people who have drawn your name. Everyone is, of course, oblivious to everyone else’s musical tastes, the beauty of it; perhaps the conceit is that bloggers are all discerning people, so you can’t go wrong? [Read a random assortment of blogs and tell me if you’d agree… –FmH] I’d want to rig the drawing so I got to be one of Chuck Taggart‘s recipients, for sure…

As this page points out, they’ve closed registration for the first round, but other similar swaps are springing up, at Metafilter and the CD Mix of the Month Club and Midsummernight’s Burn. This phenomenon may or may not be “fair use” — there’s a discussion at the Metafilter blink above — but you’d be advised to watch your back for the RIAA. Or just keep using those anonymous P2P networks…

Actually, I would be curious to see postings of the music various participants end up choosing. I’ve already found a few new interesting things from Beck’s iPod.

Experts Argue for Mandatory Organ-Donor System: “Switching to a mandatory system of organ donation–one where viable organs are harvested from the recently deceased without the family’s permission–would alleviate the nation’s donor-organ shortages and prevent people from needlessly dying while waiting for an organ, according to two US and UK researchers. If nothing else, the idea should “at least” be discussed, they argue in an opinion piece in the March issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.” Yahoo! News

FEC To Debate Rules On Net’s Role In Federal Elections: “The Federal Election Commission will hold a public hearing Wednesday to air concerns over its plan to apply existing election laws to online campaign activity. The proposed regulations would exempt from disclosure rules individuals who use computer equipment, software or Internet services that they personally own to advocate a candidate for federal office,” Washington Post