US Still Waging Disinformation War Against China? Beijing taken in: “Beijing’s most popular newspaper has unwittingly republished a bogus story about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington builds them a new Capitol building with a retractable dome.

The source? America’s celebrated spoof tabloid, the Onion.” Reuters [thanks, Walker] The original Onion story wasn’t funny enough to blink to, but this is…

Burger Heaven: the perfect burger, gone but not forgotten in fast-food nation. NY Times

Dept. of Political Security — Maureen Dowd: “With the most daring reorganization of government in half a century, George W. Bush hopes to protect something he holds dear: himself.” NY Times op-ed

U.S. Lets Drug Tied to Deaths Back on Market. Lotronex, a real advance in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome, was withdrawn voluntarily at the FDA’s request after the manufacturer and the FDA could not agree on marketing restrictions to reduce severe side effects and risk of death which became apparent in post-marketing surveillance. “But thousands of patients protested the withdrawal, saying Lotronex was the only treatment to have aided them. Their pleas helped to persuade the agency and manufacturer to find a way to reinstate it. Lotronex will return, the agency said — with restrictions. The new rules leave considerable responsibility with doctors, pharmacists and patients to use it correctly and to watch for early signs of intestinal problems, which can be fatal.” On the one hand, leaving responsibility with physicians and patients subject to informed consent is a reasonable, laudable approach. On the other hand, I worry about leaving responsibility in the hands of physicians and patients. NY Times

Text of the controversial Harvard commencement address originally titled “My American Jihad” by Zayed Yasin. Thanks to Christopher Anderson, who pointed me to it and noted it is nowhere to be found on Harvard University’s site. It’s actually pretty tame; the overblown turmoil was only about the use of the term ‘jihad’ in the title, on which Yasin relented before delivering the address. BeliefNet

Psychiatrists fight blurring of line with psychologists. Psychiatrists (MDs) say it “feels like an insult” when a psychologist (a Ph.D.) is appointed to head the prestigious Yale University Child Study Center, especially after the controversy (to which I’ve blinked) over psychologists winning the right to prescribe psychiatric medications in New Mexico. Simiar legislation is in the pipeline in at least eleven other states. I agree with the thrust of the article, that this is about jockeying for a shrinking pool of money for mental health care. However, it is an oversimplification to state that prescribing is the ‘last bastion’ of psychiatric monopoly, on two counts. First, clinical nurse specialists have been prescribing for some years. Secondly (and this is precisely why the Child Study Center appointment has shaken the profession), while there is no inherent reason why the discipline with the prescription pad should be in charge of academic, bureaucratic or clinical institutions in mental health, psychiatry’s sense of identity depends on having a traditional edge in such intangible products of medical training as authoritativeness and decisiveness as well. Pained comments in this article include two from (psychiatrist) friends of mine. Boston Globe

☯ And here‘s a letter to the editor of the Globe in response to the above article, of particular interest because it is from someone who has trained and practiced as both a psychologist and a psychiatrist. This is exactly the perspective the public needs to disentangle this messy turf war:

“It is frustrating for psychologists to not have access to a prescription pad, but the public’s well-being should not be put at stake in order to mollify that frustration. Psychologists have many other skills they can offer to mental health.

But they are posing very serious health risks to the public by proposing that they, without medical training, should start engaging in the practice of medicine”,

says Dr. John Brenner Levine.

Text of the controversial Harvard commencement address originally titled “My American Jihad” by Zayed Yasin. Thanks to Christopher Anderson, who pointed me to it and noted it is nowhere to be found on Harvard University’s site. It’s actually pretty tame; the overblown turmoil was only about the use of the term ‘jihad’ in the title, on which Yasin relented before delivering the address. BeliefNet

The top 10 search engines according to the top 10 search engines kottke.org [via Walker]

FmH was pointed to today as one of several “worthy liberal blogs” (“The Utne Reader of blogs… always has fascinating and different stuff”) on Winds of Change. This is a relatively new weblog focusing on world affairs by a gentleman, Joe Katzman, who seems to lean toward Sufi wisdom, appears to observe the Jewish Sabbath, and says,

“If you read my blog and think of words like “thoughtful, “iconoclastic,” and “depth”, I’ll know I’ve succeeded.”

He

identifies his politics thusly:

“Cards on the table: I’m a right wing guy. Most people would call me a neo-conservative. In Canada, I support the Canadian Alliance and really like their new leader Stephen Harper. If I lived in the USA, I’d support John McCain. Much of the Blogosphere right now seems to share those views to some extent.”

I’m not sure I agree with his next assertion, that the predominance of right-leaning thought in the weblogging world is part of a struggle to give a disenfranchised political stance a voice. It has often been argued whether the media as a whole have a leftward bias — the conservative accusation — or a rightward tilt — as per progressives. Oh well, if the sense of being disenfranchised juices up the discourse, I’m all for it.

Several months ago, I opined that there seems to be little dialogue between the ‘warbloggers’ and the ‘peacebloggers’, in a fervent reaction to something on UFO Breakfast. At least here is one self-professed ‘neoconservative’ who appears to find something worthwhile in FmH. Thanks for the flattering nod, Joe… [Could that mean he thinks I’m “thoughtful”, “iconoclastic”, and have “depth” too?]

Here’s what Rebecca, coincidentally, has to say on the issue of claims of media bias today:

“Rhetorica is a terrific resource. Go read this wonderful article on Media/Political Bias. It starts with some terrific observations and tools for detecting bias, and it ends with a bang:

Is the news media biased toward liberals? Yes. Is the news media biased toward conservatives? Yes. These questions and answers are uninteresting because it is possible to find evidence–anecdotal and otherwise–to ‘prove’ media bias of one stripe or another.

Far more interesting and instructive is studying the inherent biases of journalism as a professional practice–especially as mediated through television.

Commercial bias…. Temporal bias…. Visual bias…. Bad news bias…. Narrative bias

Take any news story, consider it from those five perspectives, and you’re well on your way to media literacy. Understand and apply everything in the article, and I would consider you to be a master.”

Rebecca’s book on weblogging, by the by, comes out RSN…

Does 20/20 hindsight mean foresight? Signs of attacks well-known:

‘No one wants to believe that the attacks of Sept. 11 could have been prevented, but we do a disservice to our country if we stay in denial. No one wants to believe that President Bush had more forewarning than he acknowledges, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that he did.

Reviewing that evidence on May 26, The Washington Post‘s ombudsman, Michael Getler, alluded to one very telling sign from a conversation between CIA Director George Tenet and former U.S. Sen. David Boren over breakfast on Sept. 11. When an aide rushed up to tell Tenet of the attacks, Tenet’s immediate reaction was: “This has bin Laden all over it. . . . I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training?” ‘ The Miami Herald [thanks, Walker!]

Nuclear Arms Taboo Is Challenged in Japan: “Alarmed by the rising power of China and anxious about the effectiveness of security guarantees from the United States, some of Japan’s most powerful politicians have begun to consider breaking with a half-century-old policy of pacifism by acquiring nuclear weapons.

In comments that stunned many here, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s top aide told reporters last week that what Japan calls its three non-nuclear principles could soon come under review.” NY Times

Probability proves your horoscope correct:

A Nobel prize may not be essential to becoming a modern mystic, but it helps. Georges Charpak, the physics prizewinner in 1992, has co-authored a rapid guide to becoming a fakir or astrologer and making a fortune by bamboozling a gullible public.

His co-author, Henri Broch, who runs a paranormal research unit at Nice University, went through sessions of firewalking and tongue-piercing to prove that all mystic arts were based on trickery, natural circumstances or mathematical probability. Guardian UK

Gunslinger science:

Fifty years ago, it took a Nobel Prize to get the press and public to pay attention to a crank theory like Linus Pauling’s notion that vitamin C could prevent the common cold. But, increasingly, all it seems to require is a degree in some field related to science and an idea off-the-wall enough to make a good headline–and get the attention of well-heeled backers who find your ideas attractive.

One of the pioneers of this branch of gunslinger science was Barry Commoner… Seattle Weekly

Review: The Dream Drugstore by Allen Hobson: “In broad strokes, his claim is that the neurochemistry of dreaming is quite similar to what we find in these other conditions, and that if we can understand the former, then we can also understand the latter. Even if you don’t quite agree with this broad-strokes claim, there is still lots and lots worthwhile in his book to ponder.” Metapsychology

Andrew Weil: Stop the Federal War on Medical Marijuana

Today, in dozens of cities and towns across the United States, something remarkable happened: Thousands of people battling cancer, AIDS and other terrible illnesses, their families, friends and supporters delivered cease-and-desist orders to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to stop it from blocking their access to a needed medication.

Their request was so simple, so obviously correct that it is heartbreaking that people — many very seriously ill — were forced to deliver their message in this way, with many risking arrest. But as individuals who have found that medical marijuana relieves their symptoms when conventional medicines fail, they felt they had no choice: The federal government continues to fight an irrational war against medical marijuana, and the sick and struggling are its principal victims.

Make no mistake: The government’s demonization of marijuana is irrational. When I first published a study in the journal, Science, on marijuana’s physical and psychological effects back in 1968, I was certain that medical use of the plant would be legal within five years. This is, after all, a medicinal plant for which no fatal dose has ever been established and that has been used in folk medicine for millennia. SF Chronicle [via CommonDreams]

Arianna Huffington: Did The Drug War Claim Another 3,056 Casualties On 9-11? CommonDreams

Stupefying Stance on Global Warming: ‘Throwing around words like “fantastic” and “stupefying” is considered bad form outside the tabloid press. But I’m damned if I know what else to say about the news that the Bush administration has decided that global warming is indeed taking place and they are planning to do exactly nothing about it.’ — Molly Ivins, Baltimore Sun [via CommonDreams]

The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat): “Here’s the main thing about The Fast Runner, a strange and memorable movie that comes to us from the Canadian Arctic and is the first feature ever made in Inuktitut, language of the Inuit people: light. I mean, this is one bright movie, all dazzling expanses of ice and snow and sea and sky; the ghostly interiors of igloos by daylight and by firelight. You could read a book by it. It’s a difficult film to follow and at 172 minutes is maybe a half-hour too long. But simply as a sensory experience The Fast Runner (which opens Friday in New York and Los Angeles) is amazing; I can see why some of my critical colleagues have gone gaga for it. In some of its early scenes, those enormous vistas of brilliant white seem to fill up your ears, your nostrils and the inside of your head. It’s like swimming in illuminated milk.” Salon

Trauma lessons: “Young women working as paramedics in Jerusalem divide their lives between bloody mayhem and the rituals of adolescence.” Salon

ReplayTV Users Sue to Skip Commercials: “Owners of ReplayTV Digital Video Recorders have struck back at media empires with a lawsuit that asserts they can zap commercials and swap recorded programs over the Internet without being sued for copyright infringement.” atnewyork.com

Do Dots Connect to Police State?:

The FBI and the CIA would not be replaced by the new agency, but some of their operations could be given over to it. The agency would envelop 22 other federal agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Border Patrol, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Program, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Secret Service.

…Civil liberty and privacy watchdog groups were grim upon hearing the news, which was only the latest bit of government security tightening to occur in the last couple weeks.

… Several experts have noted that intelligence centrality of the sort proposed by Bush was the main goal of the creation of the CIA — an agency now best known for not letting the FBI know before Sept. 11 that two members of al Qaida had entered the United States. Those men, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.” Wired

Skakel Convicted in 1975 Beating Death of Greenwich Neighbor New York Times

The world’s flags given letter grades — “Caveat: If you are apt to be offended by sarcastic humour directed towards your national flag, I suggest you go no further.” [via boing boing]

Mozilla 1.0 released after four long years The Register

Dennis Fox, professor of legal studies and psychology at the University of Illinois and a co-founder of the Radical Psychology Network, wrote: Cautions for the Left on Israel and Palestine [a.k.a. “The Shame of the Pro-Palestinian Left”]: :…too many activists on the American left, in their zeal to remedy the Palestinians’ plight, don’t apply principles evenhandedly. I see three overlapping challenges facing the developing movement for Middle East peace and justice…”

Even many of Israel’s long-time supporters now understand that, to provide justice to Palestinians — and to salvage democracy and morality within the Jewish State itself — the thirty-five-year occupation must end. Two weeks ago, to further that goal, American Jewish critics of Israel founded the national Covenant of Justice and Peace, building on the work of older groups around the country. On the other side, a recent call by Palestinian human rights lawyer Jonathan Kuttab and Nonviolence International director Mubarak Awad to transform the Palestinian armed struggle into militant non-violent resistance is attracting growing attention.

So let’s remember that justice and liberation, democracy and safety, can only come about if they come to all of us, together. Let’s not deplore only one side’s racism; or propose remedies that discount one side’s valid needs; or accept the argument that one side has the right to kill uninvolved civilians. Recognition that Israel’s occupation oppresses Palestinians is central. But the justice-based left must seek analyses and solutions built on general principles, and reject those that make new forms of oppression inevitable.

Alexander Cockburn wrote a scathing response, Is criticism of Israel anti-Semitic? “On rhetorical border-grabbing in the media” in Working for Change, a slightly different version of which also appeared in Counterpunch and The Nation. “Over the past 20 years, I’ve learned there’s a quick way of figuring just how badly Israel is behaving. There’s a brisk uptick in the number of articles here by Jews accusing the left of anti-Semitism.” In my opinion (and Fox’s as well), Cockburn sets Fox up as a straw man, ignoring considerable areas of agreement in deserved criticism of Israel in his inimitable, shrill, radicaler-than-thou style. Here is Fox’s rejoinder, Cockburn’s Distorting Lens. The more I read of Cockburn these days, the more I marvel at how he chooses to devote his energies…

Hubble’s NICMOS is back in business: “The revived Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has penetrated layers of dust in a star-forming cloud to uncover a dense, craggy edifice of dust and gas [image at right].” NASA

The real bio-threat:

Currently the United States is experiencing shortages of eight of the eleven vaccines required by law for children: measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), varicella (chicken pox), and pneumococcal disease (meningitis). In response, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have revised their immunization schedule from “optimal” to “some protection,” which means that, depending on the vaccine, kids may get the first shot and not the boosters that solidify immunity, or they may not get the first shot at all until several months past the recommended age. In response to the shortages, some states are relaxing their demands that kids get vaccinated before they come to school this September. In Oregon, for example, seven-year-olds will be allowed to forgo chicken pox shots and diphtheria/tetanus boosters; Texas is deferring the diphtheria/tetanus booster shot required for all 14-year-olds. Which is scary, because children aren’t the only ones at risk: Spotty vaccination cycles for diseases such as rubella and chicken pox mean that children may grow to adulthood without immunity, remaining at risk for diseases that cause many more complications for adults and can have devastating effects for pregnant women. The New Republic

Networking: It’s not just for parties anymore: “Newly discovered principles show the similarity between networks of all kinds — from the Internet to Al Qaeda.” Simson Garfinkel reviews Linked by physicist Albert-László Barabási. CS Monitor

Questionable Quotes (Black Tuesday): Snopes is not sure Bush really uttered the incredible “Do you have blacks, also?” quotation attributed to him by Der Spiegel, in an article to which I blinked, during a meeting with Brazilian president Cardoso. [thanks, David]

Blogging Goes Legit, Sort Of: “Blogging, a latter-day home page for some and a place to pretend

you’re a journalist for others, is now part of a major university’s J-

school curriculum.” Wired

Ghost in the Machine has moved.

Economically Incorrect:

“Last week, ABC officially announced what many industry watchers had expected for several months: The late-night talk show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher would be canceled, and replaced in the fall by a new entertainment program hosted by Comedy Central’s Jimmy Kimmel. When the news broke, most media reports pegged Politically Incorrect’s demise on Maher’s “unpatriotic” remarks in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Yet while there’s some truth to the notion, this interpretation ignores other, more powerful market forces that have worked to replace an important televised forum of political dissent with the latest incarnation of “must-sleaze” TV.” The American Prospect

“Student Who Heckled Former President Bush in 1998 Must Go to Trial, Texas High Court Rules.” ABC And: “A U.S. Air Force colonel who called President Bush ‘a joke’ and accused him of allowing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to happen because ‘his presidency was going nowhere,’ has been suspended and could face a court-martial.” Sacramento Bee

Self-Annihilating Sentences

US fighter pilots from the squadron that killed four Canadian troops in an April ‘friendly-fire’ mishap had complained of exhaustion to their commander shortly before the fatal accident, after they had misidentified a bombing target during a prior mission (over Iraq, where they were flying sorties over the southern no-fly zone as well as missions over Afghanistan). They asked for more rest, noting that official standards for the interval between missions were not being observed. Their concerns were dismissed and they were told to speak to the flight surgeon about amphetamines. Vancouver Sun

“Blogtank is an experimental team weblog the purpose of which is to determine whether a group of bloggers from various professions and backgrounds can form a new kind of self-organizing consulting group for debate, research and discussion.” Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be anything captivating about it (yet?). Maybe you had to be there (I’m not.).

Don’t get nutty on your loved one. Yahoo! News

Furor over American Muslim student’s Harvard commencement address with buzzword ‘jihad’ in title NY Times

“You want to write a novel about a world ruled by corporations, you’re going to end up naming a few brands. What happens then if you invoice those companies for product placement? Read about author Jim Munroe’s attempts to get some blood from corporate stone.” AdBusters

Found Letters from Kittyville. Some are quite funny, some poignant, some can’t be made heads or tails of.

Lessons From Madness: “Reviews of two books about mental illness: Mad in America by Robert Whitaker and Madness: A Brief History by Roy Porter… Dissimilar in style, approach, and size, the two works are surprisingly complementary. Porter provides a deft examination of how Western cultures from antiquity through modern times have tried to explain and treat insanity, while Whitaker probes in depth the mostly uncaring and usually ineffective way America has treated the “mad.” Here’s the important part about the “dirty little secret” of American medicine:

Though his book is ostensibly about “madness,” Whitaker delves into drug trials. In doing so, he raises broader questions about the “purity” of academic research and peer-reviewed publications, the standard by which the medical profession judges new findings. Whitaker describes how drug testing became part of a new, for-profit drug testing industry, with some community physicians, hit by the new strictures of managed care and looking for ways to supplement their incomes. Traditionally, academic researchers had conducted drug trials, a process that seemed to ensure impartiality since the studies were carefully designed to eliminate any bias. But the process was slow and delays were costly to drugmakers.

The Atlantic

Related: Medical journal statistics potentially “misleading”:

Reports of treatment trials in top international medical journals usually include only the most flattering statistical result, a new analysis reveals. This could mislead doctors and patients into believing a drug or procedure is more effective than it actually is, say researchers at the University of California, Davis.

Jim Nuovo and his team studied all randomised controlled trials with positive treatment results published in the British Medical Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Annals of Internal Medicine in 1989, 1992, 1995 and 1998. All 359 papers included the relatively favourable “relative risk reduction” – the percentage difference between the treatment and control group.

But only eight reported the “number needed to treat” – the number of people a doctor would need to treat before the drug prevented a bad outcome, such as stroke, heart attack or death. And only 18 included “absolute risk reduction” – the actual difference between the treatment results compared to the control group. New Scientist

And: Medical press releases may exaggerate results and fail to include study limitations:

Some medical press releases use formats that may exaggerate the perceived importance of findings and do not routinely highlight study limitations, according to DMS researchers in the June 5 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz.

Steven Woloshin, MD, and Lisa M. Schwartz, MD, of Dartmouth Medical School and the White River Junction Veterans Affairs Outcomes Group examined the medical press release process at several high-profile medical journals and reviewed recent releases to evaluate how study findings are presented and whether limitations and potential conflicts of interest are acknowledged.

While medical journals strive to ensure accuracy and the acknowledgment of limitations in articles, press releases may not reflect these efforts, say the authors. EurekAlert

Repaired Space Camera Shows Four-Galaxy Collision: “(A) composite image, released today, from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the collision of four galaxies located 1 billion light-years from Earth and the creation of a torrent of new stars.” NY Times

Weird Sunset: “On June 10, 2002, something extraordinary will happen to the setting Sun

over North America.” NASA

Looking beyond the rhetoric:

“The leaderships on both sides cannot resist playing politics. They cater to certain lobbies or create a camouflage of words to disguise their real intent. President Pervez Musharraf in his speech uses strong words against India essentially to negate an impression that he is giving in to Indian or international pressure on the issue of infiltration. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has been threatening war for some time now without any serious hostile action on the ground. He needs to appear tough to an Indian public angry after terrorist attacks on Parliament and in Jammu. The real action if any is behind the scenes with diplomatic exchanges taking place under the watchful eyes of America.” –Shafqat Mahmood, former Pakistani gov’t official. Rediff.com

Inmate Whose Lawyer Slept Gets New Trial: “The Supreme Court, acting in a case that has come to crystallize arguments over the adequacy of legal representation in death penalty cases, today let stand an appellate ruling that a Texas death row inmate is entitled to a new trial because his lawyer fell asleep repeatedly during his original trial.”NY Times At least he’s still alive for another chance…

More chronicling of intelligence failure in today’s Times. The media are on the bandwagon now, it appears; look for a cascade of this sort of thing with the pending Congressional hearings:

C.I.A. Was Tracking Hijacker Months Earlier Than It Had Said: “The Central Intelligence Agency says in a classified chronology submitted to Congress recently that it picked up the trail of a Qaeda operative who turned out to be a Sept. 11 hijacker months earlier than was previously known, government officials said today.”

A Witness Against Al Qaeda Says the U.S. Let Him Down: “An Egyptian-American pilot who helped prosecutors penetrate Al Qaeda says his life took a harsh turn after he agreed to aid the F.B.I. in its war on terror.”

“Blogtrack is very much a work in progress, but very much done. (It) allows you to check if your favorite websites have been updated …by going to the blogtrack website

or by using blogtrack’s instant messenger interface (for AIM/MSN/ICQ and Yahoo!). It is a free, not-yet open source project which is redundantly alive only to better itself. It is smart about pages with random information/features…”

So God Is Really in the Details? Oxford professor of philosophy Richard Swinburne uses Bayes’ Theorem to prove that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. NY Times [thanks to Richard Homonoff]

Brain injuries from thrill rides LA Times

A New Thinking Emerges About Consciousness:

“The feeling you have as you read this sentence, (Harvard neuroscientist Daniel) Wegner argues, is an illusion pulled off by a complex machine in your skull. It not only reads and understands this sentence, he says, but also makes you feel as if you have experienced the reading of the sentence. In other words, the brain, not content with being a remarkably complex machine, also convinces itself that it isn’t a machine at all.

But why would it bother? The brain, Wegner contends, produces consciousness to give itself a feeling of having done something. This feeling helps the brain recognize similar situations when they arise — the next article in the newspaper, for instance. Being aware of its actions, the brain-machine can better decide whether to read another article.” Washington Post

It’s the cat’s meow: Not language, strictly speaking, but close enough to skillfully manage humans, communication study shows. “Test your fluency in Cat. Click on the cats to hear their meows. One is expressing contentment, the other urgency. Can you tell which is which?”

Incest accusations of the recovered-memory craze tore families apart. Now one of its leaders wants to let bygones be bygones. Review of the new book by co-author of the abuse survivors’ ‘bible’ The Courage to Heal: Thought We’d Never Speak Again: The Road From Estrangement to Reconciliation by Laura Davis Salon

Book review: New British Philosophy: the interviews edited by Julian Baggini and Jeremy Stangroom —

Where have all the philosophers gone? Asked to name a living philosopher, most educated people in Britain might come up with Jacques Derrida. Ask them for something they know about contemporary philosophy, and they might venture the opinion that Derrida is “the one who talks nonsense”. The early 20th century witnessed a bumper crop of great figures such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Less resounding but still significant contributions were made mid-century by the likes of Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, Saul Kripke and others. However, there is little sign of anyone under the age of 40 ready to take their place today. If there are any candidates to emerge in this country, they may well be found in the pages of New British Philosophy, an absorbing collection of interviews with 16 of the nation’s rising stars. Many of them are the right side of middle age and primed to produce their best work. New Statesman

Biologist’s reading of lonely-hearts personal ads reveals what big-city women really want: Men with money. “In densely populated and resource-demanding environments, birds and women may not be all that different.”

Thanks to David Walker for pointing me to this List of American Food Holidays: “Looking to find their niche into the greeting card market, here are some food themed holidays that you should know about.” I’m always looking for another excuse to celebrate…

The World Rock Paper Scissors Society:

“The World RPS Society is dedicated to the promotion of Rock Paper Scissors as a fun and safe way to resolve disputes. We feel that conserving the roots of RPS is essential for the growth and development of the game and the players. The World RPS Society is involved in many areas of the sport, such as; research studies, workshops, tournaments at both local and international levels, book publishing, and much more.”

The site includes a history of RPS, a strategy guide and an online trainer, as well as links to additional RPS resources.

How a Side Effect Might Turn Into Success: interesting story of medical serendipity and biotech ambition — grandiosity? — in its own right, and additionally interesting to me as I went to high school with this guy.

Paul Westerberg reemerges in two-CD Stereo/Mono: ‘Westerberg, 42, hasn’t sounded this carefree, non-attitudinal and delightfully ragtag since 1983’s Hootenanny, one of several cult-beloved albums by his notorious old band the Replacements.’

Following All the Rules in a Close Encounter With a Grizzly: “…The five-minute face-off became painful, she explained in a telephone interview, only after the grizzly released the grip of his jaws, which he had gently clamped on her right thigh.” NY Times I had a similar close encounter with a bear twenty-odd years ago in the Sierras above Yosemite Valley, although fortunately it was not a grizzly…

Hysteria Hysteria

Last fall, something peculiar began to happen at more than two dozen elementary and middle schools scattered across the country. Suddenly, groups of children started breaking out with itchy red rashes that seemed to fade away when the children went home — and to pop up again when they returned to school. Frustratingly for the federal, state and county health officials who were working to explain this ailment, it did not conform to any known patterns of viral or bacterial illness.

The children had no other symptoms: no fever, no runny noses, no headaches or joint pain or respiratory complaints. Moreover, they were not passing their rashes on to parents or siblings outside school. Large groups (a dozen here, several dozen there) came down with it simultaneously, or within hours, rather than over the course of days or weeks, as you would expect with person-to-person transmission of a contagious illness. Then there was the nagging fact that in many of the outbreaks, girls accounted for a majority of the cases. Since neither germs nor the other likely culprit, environmental poisons, make a habit of discriminating by sex, this was puzzling news indeed.

(…)

This year, rashes — or any unexplained physical symptom — made people nervous in a way they did not before 9/11. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was nervousness that helped create the unexplained symptoms. And maybe children were more likely to somaticize a lingering, inchoate anxiety about 9/11. Studies completed on New York schoolchildren this spring, for example, showed that months after the terrorist attacks, many of them still suffered from recurrent nightmares and trouble sleeping. Kids in other parts of the country surely experienced similar anxieties. And maybe, just maybe, this latent disquiet sometimes manifested itself in a curious, corporeal way — in the form of an itch.

NY Times Magazine

Apart from the question of a relationship to 9-11, the article raises fascinating issues about the status of the notion of ‘epidemic hysteria’ or ‘mass psychogenic illness’, difficult to accept but certainly real, with many documented outbreaks in the medical literature, which often affect the skin. (As any dermatologist will confirm, this organ is extremely psychologically sensitive.) It is both conceptually difficult to accept and considered pejorative by most of the public to suggest that a bodily reaction can be caused solely by, and be the sole observable manifestation of, one’s psychological state. More ‘loaded’ has been the political incorrectness of the concept of hysteria from a feminist perspective. The article suggests — and I agree — that there ought to be ways to accept both that this is “all in the head” and that a preponderence of those affected were female, without pejorative connotations.

Heart of Cheapness: “In one of the oddest enterprises in the history of development economics, Bono – the lead singer for the rock band U2 – has been touring Africa with Paul O’Neill, secretary of the treasury. For a while, the latent tensions between the two men were masked by Bono’s courtesy; but on Monday he lost his cool.”  NY Times

A reader asks:

I’m struck by your insight back in 1984 when you suggested that Reagan might be developing Alzheimer’s disease. Would you feel comfortable making such a suggestion again if you thought it were warranted?

I ask because I believe you’ve cautioned against long-distance diagnoses (unless I’m confusing stuff you’ve written from other things I’ve read online and off). You’ve gained 18 years of experience and wisdom since 1984, and I wonder whether you still think it was a good idea to make your long-distance diagnosis about Reagan.

It’s a tricky question because you were correct back then. But, generally speaking, do you think it’s a good idea for a doctor to say of a presidential candidate, “I think he should be checked out because, from what I see on TV, he exhibits signs of X disease or Y malfunction.”? That’s much different from saying, “I believe he should be checked out mentally and physically as a matter of policy.”

Thanks for the question. It is at times like these that I wish I were satisfied by any of the online comment systems for blogs [having flirted with a few, as readers will recall, and uninstalling each for one reason or another…]

In any case, I do indeed have qualms about diagnosing without doing a face-to-face history and examination of a patient. Probably, the public comments I’ve made (on FmH) have been cavils about the ‘parlor games’ of explaining the behavior of long-dead historical personages by a brilliant stroke of diagnosis without any medical evidence, as well as the worrisome proliferation of web-based psychotherapeutic treatment and medication prescribing sight unseen by physicians and allied health professionals I consider unscrupulous and unethical for doing so. Since I’m ‘out’ as a psychiatrist on the web, I have also — not very frequently, it turns out — received emails privately requesting medical or psychiatric advice and have demurred on those same grounds. In essence, my position is that it is (a) unethical to diagnose outside the confines of the doctor-patient treatment contract; (b) more likely to be inaccurate without the iterative process a face-to-face presence allows; and, finally, (c) it may interfere significantly with some existing treatment relationship the patient already has. [This is for a different discussion altogether, but this last point follows from my conviction that much diagnosis is not the delivery of an incontrovertible medical fact to the patient, but rather the weaving of a web of consensus with them. A diagnosis is one, shared, way of making sense of the data the patient has brought you about their current suffering, and its value depends on its explanatory power, which involves not only its scientific plausibility but the interpersonal context in which it is embedded.]

While I turned out to be correct in worrying in 1984 that Reagan had Alzheimer’s Disease, I don’t think I was prescient — now that I know more (much more!) about the diagnosis of dementia — so much as lucky. So much for accuracy, although I was pretty certain he was having some nature of cognitive difficulties by that time. Of course, the public exposure of a political candidate or leader, also, gives a great deal more opportunity for observation and ongoing refinement of diagnostic hypotheses than either a deceased historical personage or a private individual without public visibility.

As for the ethical concerns, I think we have to have a different, a lower, threshold for worrying about the intellectual wherewithal of any man with his finger on the nuclear trigger (or, for that matter, senior officials around him). For purposes of raising public concern, influencing people’s comfort electing someone President and Commander-in-Chief, or provoking interest in further formal examination of his mental status, I would continue today to be far more comfortable suggesting he might have a troubling medical condition than I would with a private individual where the concern was merely the treatment implications of the diagnostic hypothesis.

‘During a conversation between the two presidents, George W. Bush, 55, (USA) and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 71, (Brazil), Bush bewildered his colleague with the question “Do you have blacks, too?” ‘ Der Spiegel [thanks, Jeff]

Local telephone companies have begun sharing customers’ calling habits with corporate affiliates, and you have to know what you’re doing to ‘opt-out’ of the arrangement. CNN

The amazing Sept. 11th $20 Bill trick [via Red Rock Eaters]

When good food goes bad:

‘More than 90% of Americans take leftovers home from a restaurant at least occasionally and 32% take home leftovers on a regular basis. However, when it comes to proper leftover storage and reheating temperatures, or determining if food is still edible, consumers “are playing a guessing game,” according to a new survey conducted by the American Dietetic Association (ADA) and the ConAgra Foods Foundation.

Among other findings, the “ADA/ConAgra Foods Home Food Safety” survey reports that (69%) of Americans are eating at restaurants at least once a week and about 57% are ordering take-out. Yet, barely 6% label and date restaurant leftovers to help them know when to throw foods out. Considering that food may spoil long before it looks, smells or tastes bad, 48% of respondents admit to relying on their senses to determine whether or not to consume leftovers, according to the survey.’ Brandweek [via Spike]

Announcement of the birth of Daniel and Mariane Pearl’s son Adam, with photo of mother and newborn. The Daniel Pearl Foundation [thanks, David]

Related: “The unedited video of journalist Daniel Pearl being murdered is back online. An Internet hosting company in Virginia, which the FBI threatened last week with federal obscenity charges, said on Monday afternoon that it would resume distribution of the horrific 4-minute video.” Wired Make sure you’re really prepared to watch this before clicking on this blink. It is an obscenity but not that kind of obscenity. Having been away for several weeks, I’m not sure — is this old hat? has everyone who wants to already in fact viewed this?

Learning About Leonardo: “…rich multilingual cultural

perspectives on the identity of Mona Lisa, …lesson plans, museum links, current articles online about the

celebration of Leonardo’s Bronze Horse in Milan, as well as a view of

the Mona Lisa Bridge now built in Oslo, Norway.

Our project presents music composed by Leonardo da Vinci, and

we’ve also identified Leonardo’s portrait of an “unknown” Musician. [via an FmH reader]

Heart of Cheapness: “In one of the oddest enterprises in the history of development economics, Bono – the lead singer for the rock band U2 – has been touring Africa with Paul O’Neill, secretary of the treasury. For a while, the latent tensions between the two men were masked by Bono’s courtesy; but on Monday he lost his cool.”  NY Times

That scar on your arm won’t help if the man next to you has smallpox: “If you had a smallpox vaccination as a child and think you’re still protected, think again. Almost everyone vaccinated before smallpox was eradicated in the mid-1970s has now lost their immunity.” EurekAlert!

Angry outbursts linked to brain dysfunction. In my work as a psychiatrist, I have paid much attention to the relatively neglected, related areas of irritability, anger dyscontrol, impulsivity and violence. In the extreme, patients with a degree of impulsive angry outbursts warranting a psychiatric diagnosis are labelled with intermittent explosive disorder. Not surprisingly, IED is associated with dysfunction of frontal lobe areas; the frontal cortex, among other things, mediates inhibition and control of impulsive behaviors.

What is interesting about this study is that patients with IED differ from controls in some other aspects of frontal lobe function, and particularly those mediated by a particular frontal subregion called the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex (OMPF) — observed to be impaired in patients with known OMPF lesions. For example, IED patients do not learn to consistently avoid making choices associated with a high degree of punishment; and they may have impaired recognition of facial expression and a tendency to overinterpret others’ emotions as negative or hostile.

The authors appear to be interested in establishing, from the similarity in neuropsychological deficits between IED and OMPF-lesioned patients, simply that the frontal region contributing to aggression is likely to be the OMPF. But I think the significance of the study is broader. It is easy to see how these other frontal deficits might be additive with impaired impulse control in causing or contributing to anger outbursts, which may thus in a sense be overdetermined neurobiologically. And even in people who have not qualified for a frank IED diagnosis, a lesser degree of similar orbitomedial dysfunction may predispose to an angry temperament.  New Scientist

Here’s the abstract of the journal article, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Why Angry People Can’t Control the Short Fuse: ‘ “People with short fuses are often very self-righteous and unsympathetic about the effect of their anger on other people,” said Dr. (Norman) Rosenthal, author of a new book on the science of feelings, The Emotional Revolution. “Angry people don’t come into psychiatrists’ offices. They think it’s everyone else’s problem…’ NY Times

Obsessive-compulsive disorder linked to piety: “The notion that a strict, possibly even God-fearing, upbringing may contribute to obsessive-compulsive disorder has been boosted by a survey which discovered that devout Catholics were more likely to show symptoms than less religious people.” From reading the article it is not possible to determine the direction of the causal link; I think it is much more likely that people’s obsessive-compulsive predispositions may contribute to their piety. New Scientist

The men who would be McCain: “Despite high-profile recruitment by the New Republic and the Washington Monthly, John McCain has evinced no public interest in the 2004 Democratic nomination for president. But the McCain fans in the Democratic Party needn’t worry. If he doesn’t run, somebody else will run as him.” Slate

Double down: “Tom Waits released two proper records in a decade. Then he dropped two crusted with rust and riotous cacophony in one day.” Salon

Memoirs of a sexual predator: “…(Catherine) Millet was until recently known primarily as the founder/editress of a highbrow art magazine, Art Press. Evidence would suggest, however, that her mind was not always on her job.” Review of The Sexual Life of Catherine M.   Telegraph UK

Philosopher Who Challenged Postmodern Radicalism Is France’s New Education Minister: ‘(Luc) Ferry is sometimes identified as one of the “New Philosophers” — a group of young thinkers who, in the late 1970s, challenged the hold of Marxism and other radical currents on the French intelligentsia. In 1986, in a collaboration with Alain Renaut, Mr. Ferry published an influential critique of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, and Jacques Lacan, treating them as manifestations of what the book’s title called “68 thought.” (The reference to the mass protests by students and workers in May 1968 is unfortunately lost in the volume’s English translation as French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism, published by the University of Massachusetts in 1990.).’ Chronicle of Higher Education

Graying Now, McCarthyites Keep the Faith: “Appleton, Wis. — For more years than he can remember, Jerome Flemming has been coming to St. Mary Cemetery here every May for a memorial service at the grave of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. Like others who make this pilgrimage to McCarthy’s birthplace and resting place, Mr. Flemming, 87, was both a friend to the senator and a supporter of his cold war crusade against what he called communist subversion in Washington.” NY Times

Books for Summer Reading: “This list has been selected from books reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of December 2001. The books are alphabetized under genre headings; the book titles are linked to the original reviews.” NY Times Book Review

‘Scratch an important nineteenth- or twentieth-century thinker and the chances are good that you will find a warm word or two for the work of G. C. Lichtenberg.’ G. C. Lichtenberg: a “spy on humanity”. ‘Lichtenberg once said that he would give part of his life to know what was the average barometric pressure in paradise. He never discovered that quantum, but in his aphorisms we have an extraordinary register of the barometric pressure of the human heart.

As a literary form, aphorisms have the liability of their strength. Aphorisms are insights shorn of supporting ratiocination. Sometimes they are arrived at in an instant, in a sudden illumination; sometimes, as Lichtenberg’s draftings and redraftings of the same phrase or idea reveals, they are arrived at through a process of intellectual and rhetorical honing. Bertrand Russell reports that when he told Wittgenstein that he should not simply state what he thought was true but should provide arguments, Wittgenstein replied that arguments spoil the beauty of insights and that “he would feel as if he was dirtying a flower with muddy hands.” Just so, aphorisms are the blossoms of thought. They may depend on stalk and soil, but their beauty is independent of those prerequisites.’ A 19th century herald of the weblogging spirit? Viz —

…(T)he notebooks were something else, a general repository, an intellectual clearinghouse, “a Book wherein I write everything, as I see it or as my thoughts suggests it to me.” Lichtenberg’s notebooks are a sort of omnibus. As J. P. Stern put it in Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions (1959)—the best book in English on Lichtenberg—they consist of “jottings, extracts, calculations, quotations, autobiographical observations, platitudes, witticisms, drafts as well as polished aphorisms.” Lichtenberg considered publishing at least portions of his notebooks but never did. His feelings about their value seemed to vacillate with his moods, which themselves vacillated wildly. Sometimes he referred to their contents as Pfennigs-Wahrheiten—“penny-truths”—at other times he waxed grandiloquent: “I have scattered seeds of ideas on almost every page which, if they fall on the right soil, may grow into chapters and even whole dissertations.”

…Lichtenberg’s acts of espionage on mankind were unsystematic even about being unsystematic. They were raids on the interesting, conducted as time, mood, and inspiration permitted. There is no unifying thread, though there are recurrent themes. One familiar theme is part description, part admonition: “It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard.”

Court Overturns Law Mandating Internet Filters for Public Libraries.  NY Times

“The U.S. government has alerted airlines and law enforcement agencies that new intelligence indicates that Islamic terrorists have smuggled shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles into the United States” The Washington Times

“As international attention zeroes in on weapons of mass destruction, a new security matter is brewing out of the limelight: terrorist smuggling. Already, German authorities have issued a Europe-wide alert suggesting that at least 30 “important people” from Afghanistan’s deposed Taliban regime and Al Qaeda who may have been smuggled into Europe, are said to be regrouping in Britain.” Christian Science Monitor

Public trust returning to ‘normal’ lows: “New surveys show a resurgence of public criticism of government after the 9/11 crest of support.”  Christian Science Monitor