Vampire Population Dynamics: Brian Thomas, a PhD candidate in ecology at Stanford University in California, considers Vampire Ecology, population dynamics and models of predator-prey relationships:

We are gathered here today to ponder the ways in which the humans and vampires of Sunnydale interact. Specifically, Betsy asked:

“Ooh, Brian, can you help us work out the vampire carrying capacity of a typical population? I’m assuming a typical vampire accounts for, say, 150-200 humans a year. So how big does a town have to be to support Sunnydale’s apparently limitless supply of vampires? Are there human warrens in the catacombs somewhere, used only for feeding purposes?”

The term “carrying capacity” isn’t often applied to predator population dynamics. Instead, ecologists generally estimate stable predator populations by first coming to grips with the prey’s population dynamics, including its carrying capacity. Actually, in a lot of different cases, the prey’s carrying capacity ultimately determines how well the predator does.

Thanks to Walker for pointing me to this O’Reilly Network article on How to Validate an E-mail Address which contains the following tidbit:

“Yes, e-mail addresses can contain comments. I tested them too – and they work. A comment is (to the best of my knowledge) any text placed in parentheses anywhere in the email address. For example, my e-mail can be:

* kevin@kbedell.com, or

* kev(you da man!)in@kbedell.com, or

* kevin@k(evin)bedell.com

All these work – I tried them.”

Caveat: Don’t assume, however, that the comment is necessarily private, should you have the burning desire to list your boss in your contact list as, e.g., “john(that_fool)@company.com“, or something even less printable in a family medium. Walker cautions that the comment may be appended to the email address when mail is sent. (David, thanks, how did you know I’d be tempted?) Addendum: when I set up “mailto” URLs for the commented email addresses and click on them in my browser, the comment is extracted and prepended to the email address in the “To:” line. For example, “mailto:john(that_fool)@company.com” would become “To: that_fool john@company.com”.

Mineral ‘cells’ may have incubated first life: “Life on Earth may have begun in rocks on the ocean floor. More than 4 billion years ago, tiny cavities in minerals may have served as the first cells, two biologists are proposing1. Other researchers argue that the idea leaves many questions unanswered.” Nature

Kenan Malik’s review essay on The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker and Straw Dogs by John Gray: “The psychologist Geoff Miller has called it a ‘paradigm shift’: the restoration of human nature into discussions of human behaviour, political policy and social organisation. Where once the idea of human nature was treated with suspicion and ridicule, today there is barely a human activity for which someone does not have an evolutionary account.” Also: David Lodge and psychologist Kenan Malik discuss what the novel — and science — have to tell us about human consciousness. BBC [Real Audio]

Chronic Wasting Disease and You Milwaukee Magazine

Thurmond Celebrates Century Mark Washington Post Will veneration for this ‘achievement’ outweigh sobering reflection on his virulence or relief at his enfeeblement?

The New York Times Books Feature — Ted Hughes: ” A retrospective on the career of the late poet laureate of England includes Times reviews and articles and excerpts from Hughes’s poetry.”

The God of new things: ‘Indeed, there was no such thing as ”Hinduism” before the British invented the catch-all category in the early 19th century and made India seem the home of a ”world religion” that was as organized and theologically coherent as Christianity and Islam. The word ”Hindu” itself was first used by the ancient Persians to refer to the people living near the river Indus (”Sindhu” in Sanskrit). It later became a convenient shorthand for those who weren’t Muslims or Christians.’ Boston Globe

Administration seeks repeal of family leave pay.  ”Labor Department officials, citing poor economic conditions, said they are acting to repeal the Birth and Adoption Unemployment Compensation Rule to protect states’ unemployment insurance trust funds for laid-off workers, even though no state has chosen to pay for leave with those funds.” AP via Salon

“Some companies have repeatedly disseminated misleading advertisements for prescription drugs, even after being cited for violations, and millions of people see the deceptive commercials before the government tries to halt them, Congressional investigators said today.” NY Times

Are increased numbers of people seeking psychotherapy responding to recent media characterizations?

”A depiction of anything in popular culture can help make participation in that thing spike,” said Robert Thompson, head of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television. After Fonzie got a library card on ”Happy Days” in the 1970s, Thompson noted, thousands of Americans followed suit.

Psychiatry has been a theme of TV shows from ”Newhart” to ”Frasier,” but seldom has it been so central to a show as on ”The Sopranos.” Major plot twists are reheated in Melfi’s office; mob hits are attributed to Tony’s ”impulse control problem.” In one episode, three characters paid visits to three different therapists. Even Tony’s therapist sees a therapist. Boston Globe [thanks, Spike!]

I wonder if this isn’t putting the cart before the horse. Stonger cultural forces — growing social anomie, the effort to medicalize a growing range of distresses, the increasing suborning of the psychiatric profession by the powerful marketing forces of the pharmaceutical giants — shape our depictions when filtered through the scriptwriters’ (often neurotic?) vision. It’s different than running out to get a library card on whim because you were inspired by a TV character. Finding Tony Soprano’s struggles sympathetic is a far cry from breaking down the considerable barriers to investing the time, money and demanding effort in a mental health consultation. And let’s not think for a moment, despite this columnist’s suggestion, that it is the macho, acting-out, impulse-ridden types who are coming to see therapists un droves. Not to mention that there is, especially in the current Sopranos season, a more complicated depiction of the therapist and the therapy process as flawed and sometimes ludicrous, some would say deeply so, rather than the unconditional positive regard which would demystify and inspire viewers to emulate Tony as suggested. Those who follow The Sopranos will know that in the season’s 11th episode last week he ditched his therapy after four years, perhaps partly because he is sinking to new lows he cannot examine but perhaps as much because Dr. Melfi’s clumsiness has failed him. It is likely, on the other hand, that the relationship with Dr. Melfi will resume. given that the show will return for a fifth season…

In other organized crime news:

Mobster, wife indicted in sperm smuggling

One of five New York mobsters believed to have smuggled their sperm out of a Pennsylvania prison to impregnate their wives has been indicted, along with his wife, on a charge of criminal conspiracy.

Kevin Granato, a convicted hit man for the Colombo crime family, came under suspicion four years ago after he was seen in the visitation room at the Allenwood Federal Prison showing off a toddler he called his child, even though he had been in jail since 1988.

Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Granato, 42, and his wife, Regina Granato, on two counts of criminal conspiracy. Regina Granato, who lives in New York, is also charged with one count of providing a prohibited object — a cryogenic sperm kit — to an inmate. Salon

Mozilla 1.2.1 is out. IMHO, this browser, at least for the Windows platform, so far outweighs M$IE that it hurts. If this is news to you, start by considering the memory-resident stub that makes for instant loading, the skinnability, bulletproof blockade of popup windows, and tabbed browsing interface.

“After just two films, the Harry Potter franchise is in trouble. The third movie will be late, the fourth book is proving unadaptable, the director is burned out and the boy wizard is facing a greater enemy than Voldemort – the march of time.” Get a load of who has been tapped to direct the next one. Telegraph UK

Joe Conason: Will he explain his job for Unocal when the oil giant was cozying up to the Taliban?

‘As a New Yorker who wants a full, fair and unsparing probe of 9/11, I’m not moving on just yet from the absurd appointment of Henry Kissinger to chair the new “independent commission.” Neither is the New York Times editorial board, whose latest salvo described Kissinger’s insouciance about his conflict of interests as “quaint.”

Quaint must be the polite way to say stunningly arrogant. But the wily Kissinger is probably quite right to brush off the halfhearted gnawing of the press corps, whose appetite for scandal has diminished markedly since the advent of the Bush administration. They’re already ignoring information about Kissinger that probably merits further exploration.’ Salon

Village Voice ‘meta-coverage’ calls newly-released film Adaptation ‘the brainiest film of the year’; they devote five articles to it. The trailer for it is the most arresting thing I’ve seen during the coming attractions in a long time. The Heart of the Meta

“I’m a walking cliché,” begins Charlie Kaufman’s breathy voice-over over a blank page in Adaptation, a pop-surrealist manifesto that works at every turn to confound the meaning of these words. Directed by Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich cohort Spike Jonze, Adaptation (in theaters Friday) looks into the horrific abyss experienced by all self-conscious writers who aspire to art—how do I create something original when everything has been done before?—and responds, as many self-conscious writers have, by writing about the process of its own creation: The movie’s neurotic, overweight, balding protagonist shares the name (and, we assume, the nebbish identity) of its Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

Adaptation is ostensibly the story of Kaufman’s own crackup after being hired to turn Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief into a big-budget screenplay. Following many tortured attempts to adapt Orlean’s book, a nonfictional exploration of the passion generated by the testicular flower, Kaufman (in the hefty form of Nicolas Cage) responds with the ultimate challenge to both commercial Hollywood and its novocained cousin, director-centric auteurism: He writes himself into the script. Charlie’s “twin brother” Donald plays the foil to his torment, his natural screenwriting skills blossoming thanks to plot-workshop guru Robert McKee. Village Voice

“A French author who suggests that the Sept. 11 attacks were concocted by a faction of the U.S. military is planning to promote his book on a tour that will begin in New York City.

The English title of Thierry Meyssan’s book is 9-11, The Big Lie, which also suggests that the Pentagon was hit by an American missile, and not American Airlines Flight 77. ” NY Daily News

“A biology professor in northern British Columbia has spotted a clover field crawling with spiders.

Brian Thair of the College of New Caledonia in Prince George said he saw a silky, white web stretching 60 acres across a field.

“When you see horror movies with spider web festooned from this place to that place and so on, it comes nowhere near approaching what occurred in this field,” Thair told CBC Radio’s As It Happens.” CBC News With links to a spider web photo gallery.

“Google is taking snapshots of its users’ minds and aggregating them. Like a flipbook that emerges when successive images are strung together, the logged data tell a story.

So what is the world thinking about? (…) Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the world is spending much of its time thinking about the same things.” New York Times

“Death row inmates in Texas are often assigned incompetent or unqualified state appellate lawyers who do not raise legitimate constitutional arguments and who fail to unearth facts that could prove the innocence of their clients, according to a new study by an advocacy group for capital defendants.” NY Times …But you knew that already.

Controversy over Venice winner: ‘Scottish film director Peter Mullan has defended his film as based on “true events” in the face of strong criticism after winning the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice film festival.

The Magdalene Sisters follows four promiscuous girls who were used as labourers by the Catholic church in Ireland in the 1960s and shows them being abused by nuns in the notorious asylums.’ BBC

“A group of researchers have identified two seismic events that they think provide the first evidence of a previously undetected form of matter passing through the Earth. The so-called strange quark matter is so dense that a piece the size of a human cell would weigh a tonne. The two events under study both took place in 1993.” Even those scientists who are dubious concede they have no alternate explanations for the seismic events. BBC

Christopher Hitchens asks, “Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?” Slate

“The U.S. Army has some imaginative ways to annihilate the Saddams of the future.

As the U.S. Army prepares for war in Iraq (and beyond), it has been moving fast to transform itself from a Cold War relic into a deadly, rapidly deployable force. The last two major U.S. conflicts, Desert Storm and Kosovo, were largely won by the U.S. Air Force before the Army’s lumbering tanks ever got there. The Army used to be a sledgehammer; now it needs to be a cordless drill.” Forbes

White House Decries Ex-Aide’s Criticism

President Bush’s spokesman dismissed as “baseless and groundless” a former aides’ criticism that the White House values politics over domestic policy and has failed to produce the president’s promised “compassionate conservative” agenda.

John J. DiIulio Jr., who quit his White House domestic policy post in August 2001, said in an interview with Esquire magazine: “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: complete lack of a policy apparatus.

“What you’ve got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavelli’s,” he was quoted as saying. Washington Post

“U.S. astronomers are gathering terabytes of data into a worldwide ‘virtual observatory’ that will be accessible to scientists and laymen alike.” Technology Review

A man was arrested in Concord NH for the murder of a California police officer nine days earlier after, bizarrely, making a confession in an online chatroom at the San Francisco Indymedia site. More bizarrely, he reportedly claimed it was a blow against corporate irresponsibility; indeed, he incorporated before doing the deed and therefore says he is not personally responsible for what is just one more corporate crime. Perhaps most bizarrely — while considering the possibility that the suspect is “a tasteless, publicity-seeking prankster who’s trying to use an unsolved murder to promote his cause”, The Register‘s reporter also wonders if the story might be “a psyops operation to discredit the burgeoning anti-globalization movement…”

Teachers’ chatroom death threats: ‘Teachers using an online “virtual staffroom” have been making death threats against the children in their care.

One fantasised about using “a large handgun … to blow the head off of the first pupil who has failed to shut up/do homework/sit properly at their desk/speak politely to me.”

Another wrote of her satisfaction at having “vengefully” reduced a six-year-old child to tears.’ BBC

“Face transplants will be technically possible within six to nine months – now the public must decide whether the procedure is ethically acceptable, says a leading UK plastic surgeon.

The issue will be debated during a meeting of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons starting on Wednesday. Peter Butler of the Royal Free Hospital in London will argue that face transplantation will be the only effective way of treating some severely disfigured patients, such as those who have suffered extensive burns or facial cancer.” New Scientist

…Here’s How to Set It Straight: ‘Many consumers appreciate having computers delve into their hearts and heads. But some say it gives them the willies, because the machines either know them too well or make cocksure assumptions about them that are way off base. That’s why even TiVo lovers are tempted to hoodwink it — a phenomenon that was also spoofed this year on another TV show, HBO’s “The Mind of the Married Man.” ‘ Wall Street Journal

Growing Peace Movement’s Ranks Include Some Unlikely Allies Washington Post

Patch Raises New Hope for Beating Depression

It was the first type of antidepressant, and for many people the monamine oxidase, or MAO, inhibitor remains the best hope for relief from major depression.

The trouble is that the side effects can be so serious that MAO inhibitors are rarely prescribed. When taken with certain foods, for example, they may bring on sudden and severe hypertension.

The problems, however, may soon be resolved.

A study reported in November in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that by administering the MAO inhibitor selegiline in patch form, patients can receive the antidepressant benefits of the drug without the usual side effects. NY Times

Even without the patch formulation, the MAO inhibitors remain a woefully neglected powerful class of antidepressants. Both clinical lore and my own experience suggest they are useful for types of depression (more ingrained or severe; with ‘atypical’ features or comorbid with other conditions) which have not responded to more ‘modern’ (post-Prozac) agents. The risk of hypertensive reaction is highly overrated if the medication is given to patients who are competent to understand and motivated to comply with the dietary restrictions, and these restrictions (the so-called “MAO Inhibitor Diet“) are less draconian than the hysterics usually make them out to be.

True, a medication that involves “active” participation by prescriber and recipient will be inconvenient to some in comparison with the SSRIs (Prozac etc.), which have supplanted all other antidepressants due to the marketing claims that prescribing them requires “no muss, no fuss.” As readers of FmH know (because I hammer this point home whenever I have the opportunity), the well-publicized complications of rampant SSRI use (including successful litigation against the manufacturers for acts of violence, suicidality and discontinuation syndromes about which I’ve written here) result in large measure from the illusion that they are so easy to prescribe that they require no art to manage and thus may be given with less supervision than previous antidepressants, and often by nonpsychiatric prescribers. A further consequence of the ascendency of the SSRI and post-SSRI antidepressants may be an overall decrease in antidepressant effectiveness, both because of the lax supervision of their use; and (as readers of FmH may recall I and other psychiatrists suspect) because they are probably “watered-down” antidepressants which do not attack the ‘core symptoms’ of a depressive disorder but rather make sufferers feel better by controlling ‘downstream’ epiphenomena, symptoms which accompany depression. I don’t mean to be a psychopharmacological Calvinist, but sometimes I wonder if that isn’t precisely why they are so much easier to give. They have fewer side effects than older, more robust antidepressants because there is no free lunch, you get what you pay for.

My viewpoint may be jaundiced because, as a consulting psychopharmacologist and a hospital-based psychiatrist, I see the most truly ill of the depressed patients, the patients in whom I am concerned about the reduced efficacy of the SSRIs, rather than the ‘walking wounded’ who form so much of the modern market for antidepressants for whom an SSRI may be effective enough. (At one extreme, this latter class, of course, blend into those for whom psychopharmacology has famously been called “cosmetic” rather than therapeutic; another consequence of the scourge of the SSRIs.) So, in a number of senses — increased efficacy, mindful prescribing, the participation and responsibility of the recipient, filtering of recipients, etc. — the return of the MAOI is a welcome development, if the patch facilitates it. For technical reasons, however, selegiline, the MAOI about which they are talking here, is not the only one upon which I believe we should focus, however. Other, perhaps better, MAOIs go by the names of tranylcypromine (Parnate), phenelzine (Nardil), and isocarboxazid (Marplan). Selegiline, however, as the newest MAOI, still ‘belongs’ to a pharmaceutical company and generates profits, whereas the other, older agents are in the public domain and nobody’s cash cow. So industry interest in further promoting them is not as likely. Trivia: while this is still an unresolved point, (weak) MAO inhibition may in fact be the mechanism of action for St. John’s Wort‘s putative antidepressant effects.

Al Qaeda claims responsibility for Kenyan attack. “An announcement attributed to al-Qaeda, in which the organization claims responsibility for last week’s terror attacks in Kenya, was released yesterday on the Internet. The announcement is signed in the name of Tanzim Qa’adat al Jihad – the political bureau of Osama bin Laden’s organization.

Experts in analyzing and assessing Internet messages said the announcement includes expressions, nicknames and definitions characteristic of the dialogue that has been conducted in recent months in the name of al-Qaeda.” Ha’aretz Police Close In on Owner of Terrorist Vehicle. “A Kenyan woman owned the Mitsubishi Pajero which was used by suicide bombers in the attack on Mombasa’s Paradise Hotel.

This revelation was made in the wake of intensified investigations that have brought together detectives from the Kenyan police and the military, Israel and the US.” East African Standard, Mombasa ” Kenya Police yesterday denied that there was a dispute between them and Israel detectives investigating the bombing of Mombasa Paradise Hotel.” East African Standard, Mombasa “Kenya’s security agencies were warned four times of an impending bombing a clear eight months before last week’s suicide attack near Mombasa, it can be revealed today.” The Nation, Nairobi Rafael ready to install anti-missile protection on civilian airliners: ‘Following the launching of Strella anti-aircraft missiles at an Arkia airliner taking off from Mombasa, Kenya, on Thursday, Rafael, the Israeli Armament Development Authority, has gone into emergency production of an anti-missile system for civilian aircraft. “We can fit aircraft with this system within months,” company officials said.’ Israel Insider

Ideal for turning into a pamphlet to raise public awareness, as the site suggests. truthout

[via Walker]

“Shift‘s profile of The Smoking Gun mentioned a number of great scoops the guys have put together over the years, but they’re only a taste of what the site has to offer — mere appetizers to fuel your hunger for dishes marinated in eau de political scandal and smothered in creamy, steamy celebrity hypocrisy sauces. So just in case you haven’t been logging on to The Smoking Gun on a near-daily basis like all of us in the Shift office, here’s a collection of the best stories from the past year.” [Be sure to browse through no. 3, the collected concert contract riders and mug shots of the stars.] [thanks, Walker]

“Richard Milhous Nixon set an infamous standard for spying on Americans and abusing the powers of the Presidency. But Nixon wouldn’t have dared dream of the sweeping authority being claimed by George W. Bush.

Now, the Bush administration has on the drawing board at a top Pentagon research agency plans that would open America to an Orwellian future. Bush, who sees those not with him as with the terrorists, will soon have the means, motive and opportunity to make the domestic spying of the Nixon era look quaint.” The Consortium

“Bush administration mulls resuming nuclear testing and developing tactical warheads to deal with threats like Iraq.” Christian Science Monitor

Trapped by the USA

When the United States attacks Iraq, Israel will be the country most immediately placed under direct threat, not the USA. Already, the Israeli minister of security has informed Israeli citizens that, in case of war, “we are expected to be the victims.” Israeli newspapers report plans to evacuate the metropolitan area of Tel Aviv, and to transform parks and stadiums into temporary mass graves.

Yet, Israelis seem unable to express their vital interest against a war with Iraq. Why have Israelis adopted a passive mood of “expected catastrophe”? Why do many Israelis believe that the violent policies the United States is practicing in the Middle East will actually reduce the dangers to Israel in the future, instead of increase them? Tikkun

Marge Piercy:

 Tonight I light the first candle

on the chanukiya by the window

and then a second in the bathtub,

the yahrzeit candle for your death. [more] 

Tikkun

…Happy Chanukah to you and yours.

The art of spinning discs will finally be consigned to BBC history as Radio 1 DJs become “hardware controllers” in a technological revolution.

The tricky business of cueing up “poptastic” sounds while engaging in banter will no longer trouble the station’s presenters as, from next year, all its music will be stored on a digital hard disk.

Does this indicate that British usage reflects a consensus about the distinction between ‘discs’ and ‘disks’ all readers will appreciate? In any case, here comes perhaps the saddest aspect of this change:

But the high-tech revolution will remove once and for all the possibility of a DJ placing a favourite track on continuous repeat or smashing an offensive record on air. Times of London

I wonder whether this would be news at all in the US or if it is a foregone development given the greater penetration of homogenized corporate playlists in US radio.

“Richard Milhous Nixon set an infamous standard for spying on Americans and abusing the powers of the Presidency. But Nixon wouldn’t have dared dream of the sweeping authority being claimed by George W. Bush.

Now, the Bush administration has on the drawing board at a top Pentagon research agency plans that would open America to an Orwellian future. Bush, who sees those not with him as with the terrorists, will soon have the means, motive and opportunity to make the domestic spying of the Nixon era look quaint.” The Consortium