Dutch doctor identifies a post-orgasmic syndrome “A Dutch doctor said Friday he is studying a rare new syndrome among middle-aged men who complain of flu-like symptoms for up to a week after having an orgasm. Marcel Waldinger, head of the department of psychiatry and neurosexology at Leyenburg Hospital in The Hague, said he planned to publish a report on “post-orgasmic illness syndrome” in the U.S. Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy this month.” CNN

Sins of Petition: “how the Left got tricked into opposing cloned embryo research”. — Chris Mooney The American Prospect

Therapeutic cloning should not be banned: “We the undersigned recognize that the cloning of cells offers scientists the chance to advance medical research and perhaps one day treat devastating illnesses such as juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s by replacing lost or debilitated cells.

Congress should not outlaw this research despite recent pressure from various political factions. Nor should Congress impose a moratorium on this research, which would have the effect of halting the advances that are currently being made…” Sign the petition online if you agree. The Franklin Society

On Death’s Trail, a Detective Larger Than Life: “Once someone has seen Dr. Pornthip Rojanasunand, 47, the country’s most famous pathologist, on television or on the cover of one of her best-selling books, it is impossible to forget her. She may be the strangest looking woman in Thailand. Outlandish outfits. Platform shoes. Hair that seems to say, “Surprise!” in orange, rust, scarlet, mauve, chestnut. And, most unnerving, an absolutely straight face… Almost single-handedly she has expanded the nearly nonexistent field of forensic pathology, has belatedly introduced DNA testing to Thailand and has brought some order to the procedures of her calling, detective work on the dead.” NY Times [thanks, Abby]

Review of professor of geohazards (sic) Bill McGuire’s A Guide to the End of the World, “hysterical account of our planet’s future…” New Scientist

Florida Marine Research Institute update on the ‘blackwater event’ offshore in southwestern Florida (turns out it is a nontoxic algae bloom).

Hubble Astronomer Creates Spectacular Galaxy Collision Visualization for the National Air and Space Museum. Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)

Lara Croft Auction: “The original Lara Croft outfit will be auctioned for charity on eBay.co.uk.

Bidding will commence at 12:00 Noon (GMT) on the 26th of April 2002 and last for 10 days.” Proceeds benefit UNICEF.

Easy theft: radioactive bomb parts Christian Science Monitor

Hawaii’s Wake:

‘A warm “counter current” rushes toward Hawaii all the way from Asia — one result of the island’s surprisingly-long wake. The current traces a watery highway that likely helped ancient mariners settle the islands of the Pacific, including Hawaii itself.’ NASA

Bush “deepening U.S. ties with countries that commit human-rights abuses”. Maryland sunspot.net op-ed [via Red Rock Eaters]

“Bush arming troops to protect Occidental Petroleum in Colombia.” MSNBC/Newsweek [via Red Rock Eaters]

Update on Astrobiology: “Just three weeks before E.T. flew back into movie theaters to celebrate his 20th anniversary, a group of interdisciplinary scientists, science fiction authors, teachers, and others interested in the real quest for extraterrestrial life assembled in the Silicon Valley for the 19th annual CONTACT conference.” The Scientist [requires free registration]

Sorting the chimps from the men:

“A team of molecular biologists have taken a step towards defining what makes us human. It is not so much our differing gene sequences that distinguish us from our primate cousins, but how active those genes are, the team has discovered.

Chimp and human genomes vary by only 1.3 per cent and only a tiny fraction of this actually affects genes. The new research shows how variation in the amount of product of a gene may be as significant to our recent evolution as structural changes.

The greatest changes in gene expression have been in the brain, say the researchers, perhaps explaining why human mental capabilities have evolved so rapidly.” New Scientist

“The new science of artificial societies suggests that real ones are both more predictable and more surprising than we thought. Growing long-vanished civilizations and modern-day genocides on computers will probably never enable us to foresee the future in detail—but we might learn to anticipate the kinds of events that lie ahead, and where to look for interventions that might work.” The Atlantic

Drug firms hype disease as sales ploy, industry chief claims: ‘A senior pharmaceutical company executive says estimates of the prevalence of diseases are often exaggerated.

Using the example of his company’s promotion of “social phobia,” Fred Nadjarian, managing director of Roche in Australia, said: “The marketing people always beat [hype] these things up. It’s just natural enthusiasm.”

The candid comments come as the pharmaceutical industry intensifies its push to loosen European regulations on direct-to-consumer promotions involving both “disease awareness campaigns” and straight advertisements for drugs.’ British Medical Journal US drug marketing is far ahead of European wit respect to this inflationary trend, which is not surprising given that direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing is way ahead here.

Mozilla poised for revival: “Mozilla is an unlikely candidate for a comeback, given that it is barely sliding out of the box.

But a comeback is exactly what the open-source project hopes to pull off in the next few weeks, when the Netscape Communications-backed effort releases the first official version of its Web browser. After four years in development, the pending event has renewed excitement in a project that once was hailed as a possible Microsoft killer–only to tumble into obscurity after lengthy delays.” CNET

When Dad Marches to a Terrifying Drummer: “Frailty, which opens today in the New York metropolitan region, is the directorial debut of Bill Paxton, who stars as Dad. It is a meditation on faith of several different kinds. Religious faith and a belief in the miraculous is one. Faith in oneself and one’s convictions is another. But by far the most important and troubling faith the movie explores is the instinctive faith children place in their parents.

Mr. Paxton’s Dad may be the most terrifying father to appear in a horror film since Jack Nicholson went crazily homicidal in The Shining. But at moments, he is also one of the most caring and solicitous. Intensely devoted to his sons, he is a proud and protective father so long as they follow his agenda.” NY Times

The Hole in the Reactor: Incredible revelations from the former director of the Union of Concerned Scientists about how the Atomic Energy Commission did business in the face of known doubts about reactor safety:

It’s appropriate now, I think, several years after his death, to identify the Deep Throat who helped acquaint Henry Kendall and me with the problems in American nuclear power plants. In 1974, at the Cosmos Club in Washington, Kendall and I were handed a briefcase full of papers by John F. O’Leary, the director of licensing of the A.E.C. He believed in nuclear energy, he said, but only if it were done right. And it wouldn’t be unless more details of the problems got out and better regulation was demanded. We studied the papers and distributed them to journalists. Major reports ran in the national press. Maintenance, quality control, equipment testing and inspection — these had been described as bywords of nuclear safety. But most nuclear plants, according to the commission’s own internal audits, were failing badly on all counts.

When we asked O’Leary how he could possibly sign off on more and more plant licenses, he offered his personal rationale: Things would leak before they broke. There would be some warning, and the surrounding area could be evacuated in time.

The Bush Doctrine, R.I.P.

‘As a statement of principle set forth by an American chief executive, the now defunct Bush Doctrine may have had a shelf life even shorter than Kenny Boy’s Enron code of ethics. As a statement of presidential intent, it may land in the history books alongside such magisterial moments as Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 pledge not to send American boys to Vietnam and Richard Nixon’s 1968 promise to “bring us together.”

(…) But even as he fudges his good/evil categorizations when it comes to Mr. Arafat and other players he suddenly may need in the Middle East, it’s not clear that Mr. Bush knows that he can no longer look at the world as if it were Major League Baseball, with every team clearly delineated in its particular division. “Look, my job isn’t to try to nuance,” he told a British interviewer a week after the Passover massacre in Netanya. “My job is to tell people what I think. . . . I think moral clarity is important.”

Mr. Bush doesn’t seem to realize that nuances are what his own administration is belatedly trying to master — and must — if Colin Powell is going to hasten a cease-fire in the Middle East. Mr. Bush doesn’t seem to know that since the routing of the Taliban his moral clarity has atrophied into simplistic, often hypocritical sloganeering. He has let his infatuation with his own rectitude metastasize into hubris. ‘ NY Times

Similar opinions from the blessed Molly Ivins: The moral simplifier: “Bush is ill-suited for a peacekeeping role in the Middle East.” workingforchange [thanks, Adam]

Renegade View on Child Sex Causes a Storm: “When the University of Minnesota Press agreed more than a year ago to publish a book called Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, it was clear that it would be controversial.” Written as an attack on the abstinence-only school of sex education, it has been roundly criticized as an apologia for pedophilia, which it does not in fact endorse. But, arriving in the midst of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, it has prompted attacks on its publisher which has responded by agreeing to an unprecedented review of the way it selects books for publication. Civil libertarians are alarmed at the implications for publishing. NY Times