Review: Consciousness and the Novel by David Lodge: “The dilemma is that phenomenal experience is a first person matter, and this seems, at first glance, to prevent the formulation of a completely objective or causal account.” Science, of course, is a third-person discourse. The first-person pronoun is not used in scientific papers. If there were any hint of qualia in a scientific paper, Edelman says, it would be edited out. But a scientific study of consciousness cannot ignore qualia. His proposed solution is to accept that other people as well as oneself do experience qualia, to collect their first-person accounts, and correlate them to establish what they have in common, bearing in mind that these reports are inevitably “partial, imprecise and relative to… personal context.”

Pentagon to test digital audio device to `play’ taps at military funerals

The Pentagon, chronically short of musicians to play taps at military funerals, is going to test the use of a new “push button” bugle that can be operated by an honor guard member.

A small digital audio device inserted into the bell of the bugle plays a rendition of taps that the Pentagon says is “virtually indistinguishable” from a live bugler. The person using the bugle merely pushes a button and holds the bugle to his or her lips.

“In addition to the very high quality sound, it provides a dignified `visual’ of a bugler playing taps, something families tell us they want,” said John M. Molino, a deputy assistant secretary of defense who announced the innovation Thursday. SF Chronicle [via Spike]

…At Least in Sheep: “A study of gay sheep appears to confirm the controversial suggestion that there is a biological basis for sexual preference.

The work shows that rams that prefer male sexual partners had small but distinct differences in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, when compared with rams that preferred to mate with ewes.” New Scientist

Scientists go beyond physical causes: “Brain researchers revealed some surprising new clues about the nature of chronic pain Sunday, suggesting that subtle changes in nerve endings, early life experiences and social factors — even the mere presence of an overly solicitous spouse — can make the problem worse.” SF Chronicle

“Increased aggression is commonly associated with many neurological and psychiatric disorders. Current treatments are largely empirical and are often accompanied by severe side effects, underscoring the need for a better understanding of the neural bases of aggression. Vasopressin, acting through its 1a receptor subtype, is known to affect aggressive behaviors. The vasopressin 1b receptor (V1bR) is also expressed in the brain, but has received much less attention due to a lack of specific drugs. Here we report that mice without the V1bR exhibit markedly reduced aggression and modestly impaired social recognition. By contrast, they perform normally in all the other behaviors that we have examined, such as sexual behavior, suggesting that reduced aggression and social memory are not simply the result of a global deficit in sensorimotor function or motivation.” EurekAlert!

President’s Risks Are Rewarded at Polls: “Two years after the most bizarre presidential election in American history was decided by the Supreme Court, 14 months after the unspeakable horror of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the nation voted in a mood of evident disenchantment and curious disconnection from the political system.

The American public is faced with a series of potentially life-altering issues, including the prospect of war with Iraq, the possibility of further assaults on national security at home, the reality of a prolonged slump in the stock market and the uncertainty of the economic outlook.” NY Times news analysis

“There have been too many cases in recent years of whales coming to grief in areas where Navy ships have been operating loud sonars to detect submarines.” NY Times editorial

Neuroscientists challenge tenets of intelligence testing. “Many people underscore on IQ tests because the benchmark memory test is inaccurate, a US researcher told the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Orlando, Florida yesterday. Another announced that women’s brain size could affect IQ.

In standard intelligence tests, subjects are asked to remember a string of random numbers. The widely quoted average before stumbling – seven, give or take two – is thought to reveal the capacity of our short-term memory.

This ‘magic number’ is a huge overestimate, claims Mrim Boutla of the University of Rochester in New York. She puts the real size of short-term memory at four digits, plus or minus one – so too do several other studies challenging the gold standard.” Nature

Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America edited by Peter Knight: “Paranoia and conspiracy, as most of the writers in this collection of essays seem to agree, finds it wellspring in two primary sources: the uncertainties inherent in the postmodern condition and the increasingly diffuse nature of late capitalism. In other words, the culturally destabilizing force known as globalization, and all it represents, is the main culprit.”

Daniel Pipes describes the publication by The Arab Voice, an Arabic-language daily in Paterson NJ, of a serialization of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous late-19th century forgery by the Tsarist secret service purporting to document a boastful Jewish plan for world domination. The Protocols has an enduring legacy of being used to bolster and fuel anti-Semitism throughout the 20th century Western world, including its embrace by Hitler as a centerpiece justifying the Final Solution. While I do agree that moderate Arab-Americans, like the rest of us, ought to dissociate themselves from the anti-Semitism the Protocols embodies, I’d like to know more from The Arab Voice about why they are publishing this and how it is being framed before it is used as confirmation, as Pipes does, that “Arab and Muslim institutional life in the United States remains as radicalized after 9/11 as it was before” and that “Arab and Muslim institutions are now the primary advocates of anti-Semitism worldwide, including in the West.” This seems kneejerk inflammatory neocon rhetoric and — dare I say? — could be considered as irresponsible as publishing the Protocols. Do any FmH readers, perchance, read the print version of The Arab Voice (the offending piece is not in the online version)? How is the publication prefaced?

Plane Spotters: Hobbyist or Spy? “British and Dutch aviation enthusiasts are on trial in Greece on

espionage-related charges for cataloging the movements of Greek

warplanes. Defense lawyers are struggling to explain the hobby to

baffled Greek judges.” Wired

Vince K wasn’t able to vote today. He had made a deal with himself that he wouldn’t pull the lever for any candidate whose supporters blocked the subway entrance to hand him propaganda on his way to work. That left no one.

I voted. I drive to work, and I managed to avoid the entire corps of campaign workers handing out all the wasted paper for the duration. I do share his cosmic gratitude that the whoring is over for awhile, though.

The Museum of Online Museums: “Here, you will find links from our archives to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions: Start with a review of classic art and architecture, and graduate to the study of mundane (and sometimes bizarre) objects elevated to art by their numbers, juxtaposition, or passion of the collector.”

A problem that marred the 2000 ballot is back:

One of the most intriguing mysteries of the whole Election 2000 debacle is this: How many Florida voters improperly lost their voting rights because of a statewide effort to scrub felons from voter rolls? This question was at the heart of a post-election lawsuit filed against the Department of State and others. The lead plaintiff, the NAACP, brought the class-action suit because more than half of those on the scrub list were black.

The good news is, all of those lawsuits are now settled. The private company contracted to perform the purge, Atlanta-based ChoicePoint (which in 2001 merged with the original contractor, West Palm Beach’s Database Technologies, or DBT) has agreed to more closely scrutinize the names on the lists it sent out before November 2000 and identify those voters who should never have been removed in the first place. The supervisors of elections who wrongfully removed these voters from the rolls will then reinstate them.

The bad news? This unknown number of nonfelons (dozens? hundreds? thousands?) won’t be back on the rolls in time to vote Tuesday. Some of them might already have been reinstated, and those who show up at the polls can cast a provisional ballot. But the original wrong — the improper removal of their franchise — has yet to be righted. New Times Broward-Palm Beach

FBI has bugged our public libraries: “Some reports say the FBI is snooping in the libraries. Is that really happening?

Yes. I have uncovered information that persuades me that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has bugged the computers at the Hartford Public Library. And it’s probable that other libraries around the state have also been bugged. It’s an effort by the FBI to obtain leads that it believes may lead them to terrorists.” Hartford Courant

Violent threat from South African white right: Recent bombings give the lie to the view that violence by right-wing extremists is a thing of the past, just on the heels of the court appearance of a group of elite Afrikaner right-wingers accused of plotting to carry out armed attacks against the South African government to set up a secessionist Afrikaner homeland. Events indicate a high level of planning and organization, probably by people with military training. Fears of a pro-apartheid military insurrrection haunted the 1994 election that brought black rule to South Africa but it had been generally agreed that the extremists had lost momentum thereafter. It is not clear if these new secessionists have links to the pre-1994 right-wing groups, although some commentators believe there is evidence that they do. Personally, I have always found it naive to feel reassured that the virulence of apartheid-think had appeared to melt away in the afterglow of post-1994 “truth and reconciliation”.

Tim du Plessis, editor of the Afrikaans newspaper Rapport, told BBC News Online that they are part “of a lunatic right-wing fringe” which included serving and former defence force officers.

Their ideas are “very weird”, he said, and some have been known to call themselves Israel Vision and to have their own version of the Bible, which depicts black people as sub-humans.

They do not seriously threaten the government or the security of South Africa, but Mr du Plessis believes that they could cause serious loss of life and damage and sow distrust in what is still a fragile society. BBC

Some blacks have reportedly threatened reprisals against whites, especially farmers, for the recent bombings.

“An American missile fired from an unmanned CIA drone killed six al-Qaeda suspects in Yemen, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The missile strike, which killed a top associate of Osama bin Laden and five underlings, expands U.S. President George W. Bush’s war on terror and is the first overt strike outside Afghanistan.” canada.com

Sultan of skiffle dies at 71: ‘Lonnie Donegan, father of skiffle, first global superstar of British pop and the first to popularise black music, has died on tour aged 71, it was announced yesterday.

His out-of-the blue hits in 1955 with versions of John Henry and Leadbelly’s Rock Island Line at the age of 24 began a revolution in the charts and in the taste of the young.

He remains admired by generations of younger artists, including Mark Knopfler, Brian May and Van Morrison. A spokeswoman for Donegan said: “In a career that covered over 50 years, he inspired nearly every major musician alive today.” ‘ Guardian UK

See if you can beg, borrow or steal a copy of The Skiffle Sessions — Van Morrison, Donegan, and Chris Barber recorded live in Belfast some years ago. It defines joyful and infectious…

“Vivato, a startup company packed with industry veterans including Wi-Fi Forum founder Phil Belanger, will announce new base station technology that can provide wide area coverage for existing Wi-Fi laptops and other computers.

Using a computer-controlled antenna array, Vivato’s prototype bases can reach large groups of users on existing laptops and other computers, with an operating range up to 7 kilometers outdoors, the company claims.” Wired

“While Bush shouts to the world about America’s war against ‘evil’, his statements are being deconstructed in classrooms and lecture halls.” sp!ked

“Developing safe, specific, powerful memory-improving drugs raises many ethical issues about the implications of cognitive enhancement.” The Scientist (requires free registration)

‘Scientists have found that men are more likely than women to be telling the truth if they say: “Not tonight darling, I’ve got a headache”.’ BBC

“(A) new study, published in the November issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, has identified an apparent ‘depression trait marker’ in the brain that may explain why recovered patients remain vulnerable to another depressive episode. The finding could have important implications for developing more targeted treatments that help patients stay well longer AND identifying family members at risk before they have even experienced a major depression.” EurekAlert!

What’s the longest word in the English language? Is it floccinaucinihilipilification (which is one letter longer, and IMHO much more useful, than antidisestablishmentarianism)? Wikipedia

…but his new email begs readers to trust him and click on the attachment! BBSpot [thanks, Walker!]

“The past two weeks have seen several examples of what has become a trend: making comparisons and references to terrorists and Saddam Hussein in order to smear political foes. While such attacks are far from the direct attempts to suppress dissent we have witnessed in the wake of September 11, 2001, the way in which such comparisons have settled into everyday politics is troubling.” Spinsanity

“Intelligent life might be more likely in a Universe in flux. Ever since Copernicus put the Sun, rather than Earth, at the centre of the Universe, scientists and philosophers have suspected that there’s nothing special about our cosmic time and place. But two physicists now suggest otherwise.

Only galaxies about the age of our Milky Way have the right conditions for intelligent life to develop, argue Jaume Garriga of the University of Barcelona, Spain, and Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts1. And that age, they say, might coincide with a fundamental change in the Universe.

What’s more, the search for other planetary systems could tell us whether they’re right or not.” Nature

…but his new email begs readers to trust him and click on the attachment! BBSpot [thanks, Walker!]

Review: Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone (2002): “This crepuscular work offers the most realistic depiction of the infernal workings of a Nazi death camp ever seen in a fiction film. ” PopMatters

“Navy pilots are conducting mock strikes against airfields, towers and other military sites in Iraq, acquainting themselves with targets they may be called on to strike as the Bush administration prepares for a possible military campaign to topple Saddam Hussein.” NY Times

“…(M)ourning has moved from a private and family matter to an increasingly public concern, with the widely televised memorial service for Senator Paul Wellstone, a national day of mourning for the victims of Sept. 11 and avid debates about the appropriate World Trade Center memorial.” NY Times

Kuwait has cordoned off a large area of the country near the Iraqi border for the duration of joint US-Kuwait military exercises [otherwise known as “mobilization for war” — FmH].

The closed areas in the northern and western parts of the country make up about one third of its territory.” BBC

“Astronomers may have detected the oldest star in the Milky Way galaxy, which could date back to the beginning of the Universe more than 12 billion years ago.” Independent UK

Nothing. But He Was Right. “Eighty years before 20th-century cosmologists hammered out the math, Edgar Allan Poe came up with a rudimentary version of contemporary science’s best guess for explaining how the universe began.” NY Times

‘The saying itself is not new. Use it and you might draw a dismissive glance from members of the hip-speak elite, the select group that quits a phrase as soon as it lands on prime time. But the reach of ”It’s all good” is hard to deny. For the average American, it’s the goatee of the language game: so all over the place that it’s on the verge of becoming unfashionable.’ Boston Globe

“Disgruntled net veterans are considering a challenge to the power of the internet’s co-ordinating body.

The veterans are thought likely to put in a bid for the contract to run key parts of the net’s addressing system which is due for renewal in 2003.

The potential challenge emerged during the meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) currently being held in Shanghai. [Shanghai?? — FmH]

ICANN is coming under close scrutiny by the US Government and in the past year has faced criticism from some regional net workers for exceeding its powers.” BBC

the electric sheep screen-saver: “This software owes its name to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It realizes the collective dream of sleeping computers from all over the internet. The Interpretation of Dreams contains an artistic, conceptual, and technical explanation. Below are example animations and software to download.

When the screen-saver is activated, the screen goes black and an animated ‘sheep’ appears. Behind the scenes, the screen-saver contacts an internet server and joins the parallel computation of new sheep.

Every fifteen minutes 24/7 a new sheep is produced and distributed to all clients for display. Each sheep is an animated fractal flame. The coordinates are chosen by the server with some simple heuristics.” The screensaver exists for Linux and MacOs X; there is no Windows version.

Cheney delivers new Iraq warning: “US Vice-President Dick Cheney has issued a new warning to Saddam Hussein, insisting that either he will give up his weapons of mass destruction or, as Mr Cheney put it, for the sake of peace, the US will disarm him.” BBC

Killer flu ‘on the way’: “Experts say governments across Europe need to plan for a virulent flu outbreak that could claim hundreds of thousands of lives.

Although the last two winters have brought only mild strains of flu to the UK, the viruses are constantly mutating and scientists say it is only a matter of time before a powerful strain emerges.” BBC

As citizens we demonstrate, write letters, and make known our discontent

and outrage at government policies. As writers we constantly interact

with different audiences in various contexts. We perform, read, teach,

get interviewed, and curate public programs. But as more and more people

are ready to commit acts of civil disobedience, we cannot continue

appearing in public and pretend nothing is happening.

POETRY IS NEWS, a forming coalition of poets, proposes to disrupt

business as usual, at least within the spheres we have some control

over. Some of us have been long active in various forms of political

work, some of us are inexperienced but eager to find ways to make our

voices heard. The mass public word has been corrupted past constructive

use for political change. As word workers, we are calling an initial

public meeting to find ways to exert our influence and expand our roles

in taking back the word and making it part of public change.

Whether we think of our mandate as a poll tax on poets or a bulletin

board for agitation, our public activities as poets must first break

down the boundaries we set for ourselves. Our goal is to create a body,

a presence, and a point of reference that, if not considered when

thinking of poetry, would simply cause embarrassment.

Is this a good idea? Are there concrete proposals that we can begin

implementing quickly, at readings, performances, in classrooms or public

spaces? Can we form working relationships with each other in order to

transmit different types of expertise, in dealing with the media, in

looking for resources, in organizing events? Let us know what you think.

        Ammiel Alcalay               Anne Waldman

        aaka@earthlink.net           a.waldman@mindspring.com

“Despite mounting anecdotal evidence, conventional scientists still

reject the notion that a person can remain conscious after being

clinically deceased. Now a pair of researchers want to prove them

wrong.” Wired

IMHO, it’s abit misleading to talk of this as consciouness after death. Near-death experiences (NDEs) should just force us to rethink when we define someone as dead.

“Respected scientists on both sides of the Atlantic warned yesterday that the US is developing a new generation of weapons that undermine and possibly violate international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.

The scientists, specialists in bio-warfare and chemical weapons, say the Pentagon, with the help of the British military, is also working on “non-lethal” weapons similar to the narcotic gas used by Russian forces to end last week’s siege in Moscow.” Guardian UK

Now that, I trust, you’ve safely survived Hallowe’en ‘tricks’ (and safely survived Hallowe’en ‘treats’ as well?), it is time to content with — no, not Election Day (for you U.S. readers) — November 4th, Mischief Night, as remembered in this BBC piece about autumn festivals in one of those hallowed places of the world, West Yorkshire. [via plep] Shall we observe it as another annual outbreak of holy foolery along with April 1st?

John Carroll: Lies, Damned Lies and Ongoing Dread

IT’S A COMIC opera, in some ways. We are planning to invade Iraq because it might have nukes one day, and North Korea jumps up and down and says, “We have nukes right now, yes oh yes,” and the United States says, “Well, no more oil for you guys. Where were we?”

Australia experiences something that had almost the psychological force that Sept. 11 had for us, the bombing of a nightclub in Kuta Beach (the Fort Lauderdale of Australia, although technically in another nation), and we say, “Terribly sorry, old things, but how about that Saddam fellow?”

Chechen terrorists hold Russians hostage in a Moscow theater, and administration wonks stay up all night trying to figure out a way to blame it on Iraq.

It’s like, hello, the war is over here. Worldwide Islamic fundamentalist uprising. Saddam Hussein: not an Islamic fundamentalist. I really think Dick Cheney needs to learn to use Google. Commondreams [via wood s lot]

Also:

Robert Jensen: Bush’s Leaps of Illogic Don’t Answer People’s Questions About War:

Bush’s argument reduces to this: No one can prove that Saddam Hussein is not planning to attack us. And if he had a nuclear weapon, no one can prove he wouldn’t use it. And if he used it, it is possible he could destroy us. So, to stop this unknown, unproven, unquantifiable, logic-defying “threat gathering against us,” we must go to war or risk seeing a mushroom cloud rise over the United States. CounterPunch

Carol Wolman MD: Diagnosing Dubya:

Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path. As a board-certified psychiatrist, I feel it’s my duty to share my understanding of his psychopathology. He’s a complicated man, under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at large. So the following is offered with humility and questioning, in the form of a differential diagnosis. CounterPunch

And finally, as Rafe Colburn describes:

Slate has an article on Donald Rumsfeld’s private team of intelligence analysts who are trying to come up with evidence that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are somehow linked, mainly because the CIA and DIA have not found evidence of such a connection. It’s obvious that producing a clear link between Saddam and Osama would provide the easiest justification for war that there is, so Rumsfeld and his cronies won’t be satisfied until such a connection is produced. The article takes a historical perspective and shows how Cold War hawks basically took the same approach — twisting the available evidence to produce bogus reports about Soviet capabilities in order to argue against arms control. Ironically, several of the Cold War players who distorted the facts about the Soviets are now on the job making a case for war in Iraq based on fiction. rc3

As Media Whores Online put it, ” An inconsolable Trent Lott shares a somber

moment of grief with President Clinton at

Tuesday’s memorial service for Senator

Paul Wellstone.” [I was only being partially tongue-in-cheek the other day in speculating that the Rabid Right were secretly rejoicing over his death… — FmH]

Peter Straub guest-edits the new issue of literary magazine Conjunctions, full of what he dubs ‘post-genre cult writers’.

The result, New Wave Fabulists ($15), will be published next week. It is a collection of stories and essays by 18 writers who began their careers in a genre but, as Straub says, “drifted away, created their own voices and are completely uncompartmentizable.”

Straub warns readers of Conjunctions, which published writers such as Rick Moody and David Foster Wallace early in their careers, that “should you have a reflexive disdain for anything connected to genre fiction, as you may well may,” this issue “is going to represent, at least initially, something of an unwelcome aberration in the history of an otherwise honorable literary journal.” But he hopes they’ll discover something new. USA Today

Authors collected in the volume include Neil Gaiman, from whose website I learned about it. Good news for fans of Coraline— he divulges that his story, ‘ “October in the Chair”, … was a sort of a test run for some of the themes in The Graveyard Book, the next childrens’ novel.’

There’s more about New Wave Fabulists on the Conjunctions website, including some of the Gahan Wilson artwork.

From Conjunctions:36, Spring 2001, Dark Laughter (“featuring a portfolio of fiction that explores gothic comedy”):

“Promise you’ll use a condom,” my mother whispered in the darkness of her Toyota Camry, the lines of her face lit by the glow of the speed gauge and my boyfriend’s parents’ security lights.

“Ma, we don’t do that stuff,” I whined. She pressed a foil packet into my palm and a sheet of disgust flashed through my midsection.

“Don’t die wondering,” she whispered darkly, driving off, a stripe of red taillights across the back of her beige car.

Which was the same thing Forrest Watson told Jono Shoemaker, trying to convince him to huff Pine-Sol off the dashboard of his car. Jono was still high when he was run over in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven by an unidentified driver in a red Camaro.

Reflecting on the magnitude of last weekend’s outcry, most of the commentators in the mainstream media, including NPR, wonder why “these are nothing like the scale of Vietnam-era protests,” to paraphrase an observation I’ve heard time and again. Uhhh, could it be because in this case people are trying to stop a war before it starts and any Americans start coming home in body bags? Besides, the tacit assumption about the size of the protest movement may not be true. As ‘Tom Tomorrow ‘ notes , “…the prowar types would love to play this down, I’m sure, but this is huge. It took years for the Vietnam era protests to reach this level.” This Modern World

Review of Catherine Crier’s The Case Against Lawyers: Down With Bureaucracy!:

“It was a few years ago, sitting in a barber’s chair, that I came face to face with the niggling over-regulation of American life. When it came time to trim my neck hairs with a straight razor, my barber used his fingers to smear a cold, anemic, trickly, machine-made substance on my skin. What, I asked him, happened to shaving brushes and hot, thick lather? New health-code regulations, he replied. Using a brush and shaving soap in a nice porcelain mug had been decreed illegal.

Catherine Crier in The Case Against Lawyers doesn’t cite that example as she makes her main point: that we the people have ceded power to a corps of lawyers and bureaucrats who are not only smothering us in silly regulations, but are also seizing huge profits for themselves, corrupting the political system and generally undermining freedom and the sense of responsibility. But Ms. Crier, the television newscaster who is currently host of “Catherine Crier Live” on Court TV, doesn’t lack for illustrations. Her book is a kind of lament from within the commonsensical heart of the American spirit.” NY Times

…Say Spirit Plumber: “It was a dark and stormy night — well, it was drizzly anyway — and for the Atlantic Paranormal Society, things were taking a sudden dark turn. The group had come to this harbor town near Boston at the request of a young couple named Jeff and Bekka Caruso, who reported strange goings-on in their small, waterfront house. There had been barking noises, the couple said, and a dresser had inexplicably emptied its contents on Ms. Caruso.” NY Times

U.S. military building database of terror suspects’ fingerprints, faces, voices:

“The United States is compiling digital dossiers of the irises, fingerprints, faces and voices of terrorism suspects and using the information to track their movements and screen foreigners trying to enter the country.

Since January, military and intelligence operatives have collected the identifying data on prisoners in Afghanistan (news – web sites) and at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There are also plans to extend the collection process to Iraq in the event of a U.S. invasion.

With this project, the U.S. government has taken biometrics — the measuring of human features — well beyond its most common use to date: verifying people’s identities before giving them access to computers or secure areas.” Yahoo! News