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.