“Retired nurse Frances Polack has taken an extraordinary measure to ensure doctors do not try to prolong her life against her wishes.” BBC [thanks, Pam!] I work for a hospital whose corporate owners are so risk-averse that, in order never to be exposed to any liability for failing to resuscitate someone who might have been revived, they have made it a matter of policy that their staffs not honor any DNR wishes of patients they admit. The problem is that I work for a hospital whose corporate owners are so intent on filling their beds that their admissions offices do not remember to review that policy with potential patients and families before accepting them for admission. File this away for future reference: never send your loved one to a Universal Health Services, Inc. hospital, at least if they do not wish to be resuscitated…

Larry King asks about oil and gets a George Bush geography lesson Royal Canadian Air Farce [Real Video high-bandwidth; other options here]

The brain is constantly compromising as it pieces together information, often ignoring or downplaying small visual changes in the world that do not fit with its expectations. This process – far from being flawed – shows that the brain functions optimally, say University of Toronto researchers. EurekAlert! Think you see things as they are? Get over it. You’re making it up, essentially, although there’s a germ of truth there…

Psychology professor maps choice-making in the brain

The next time you are frustrated by someone who says, “I’m of two minds about this,” at least you will know why. The latest research conducted by Kip Smith, an assistant professor of psychology at Kansas State University, may be able to explain why people often can’t make up their minds. Smith’s current study focuses on which parts of the brain are used in the decision-making process.

“We’re of at least two minds,” Smith said. “This research shows the brain is not a single entity. There is not a single executive decision-making mechanism there.” EurekAlert!

Origins of Psychopathology — Review: The Phylogenetic and Cultural Basis of Mental Illness by Horacio Fábrega, Jr.:

The common conception of mental illness or psychopathology is that it’s a breakdown or malfunction of the human mind; a very personal problem that some individual must struggle to overcome. While Horacio Fábrega admits this is true on one level, he argues that on another level psychopathology can be seen as a product of evolutionary changes both within the human organism and within the human environment. More surprising to me than this is his claim that psychopathology is not only an end product of the evolutionary process but that psychopathology has actually had (and is still having) an effect on the course of human evolution. Metapsychology Online Book Reviews

Despite its mixed reputation, anger can play a constructive role at home, at work and in the national consciousness, psychologists are finding. APA Monitor

It often gets a bad rap because of its association with violence, but the two are often dissociated. Not only is there anger without violence [I might be considered a prime example; a very angry person, in my own estimation and that of those around me; but nonviolent. — FmH], but much violence occurs without appreciable anger. The values of constructive anger range from facilitating political change to the physiological benefits of diffusing pent-up frustrations in, for example, cardiac patients; suggesting that not being angry enough could be more of a problem.

Anger also plays a powerful and arguably positive role in the workplace and in politics, finds Larissa Tiedens, PhD, of Stanford University. These are arenas, she notes, where anger is often used for status, power, control and strategic purposes rather than for emotional expression.

In these, settings, individuals primed for anger may make more optimistic appraisals and feel an enhanced sense of control. Does this suggest that anger is merely the opiate of the disempowered masses, in a way, and that the sense of control is illusory? Both in a psycholigical and a sociopolitical sense, anger is often posited as the inverse of depression, ‘depression turned outward’. (Depression is also referred to as ‘anger turned inward’.) There is also considerable evidence, especially from the evolutionary psychology sphere, some of which I’ve discussed here in the past, that depression may be, in a sense, a more realistic viewpoint in some situations; that it has been evolutionarily preserved because it is adaptive. One of the leading contender theories suggests that, in making us less less confident and less energetic, it prevents futile actions. So, am I being more than a little bit scurrilous when I suggest that, perhaps, the best position of all is to be angry but passive?

…(S)uch studies have implications for the current “war on terrorism.” They suggest that President Bush’s angry, tough-guy stance may affect public reaction by reducing uncertainty and increasing a sense of control…

However, if the enemy continues to prove elusive, the tactic may prove maladaptive… “At the same time anger effectively provides a sense of certainty and prepares people for action, …it also simplifies their judgment processes and leaves them prone to bias.”

[A .PDF]:

Contemporary suicide terrorists from the Middle East are publicly deemed crazed

cowards bent on senseless destruction who thrive in poverty and ignorance.

Recent research indicates they have no appreciable psychopathology and are as

educated and economically well-off as surrounding populations. A first line of

defense is to get the communities from which suicide attackers stem to stop the

attacks by learning how to minimize the receptivity of mostly ordinary people

to recruiting organizations. — Scott Atran, Science Mar 7 2003: 1534-1539

Interrogating our obsession with risk:

“Why are we so obsessed with risk? From global warming to mobile phones, from crime to child safety, from the business world to the military, precaution and pre-emption have become the buzzwords of our time. We sometimes seem to be organising society around the grandmotherly maxim of ‘better safe than sorry’. What are the consequences of this overbearing concern with risks?

On Friday 9 May 2003, a London conference entitled ‘Panic Attack:

Interrogating Our Obsession with Risk’, produced by the online publication

spiked (www.spiked-online.com) in association with the online publication

Techcentralstation Europe and the Royal Institution of Great Britain, will

bring together an international audience to assess the spread of risk

aversion into ever-more spheres of life. With discussions on everything from children and obesity to the risks of war to business after Enron, the conference will interrogate our obsession with risk – and put the case for a more rational approach to scientific and political issues, and matters of everyday life.”

On the fundamentalism of fatalism and the myth of moderate Islam: Many pundits, both inside and outside the community of immigrant American Islam, have rested their hopes upon us muted ones. They expect us to free global Islam from the Tazirs and Bin Ladens of the religion. Somehow we cows, chewing on the cud of our paranoia-stricken life, have been labeled ‘moderate’ as if we offer a counterweight to the extremists. We don’t. Killing the Buddha [via walker]

Crude arguments: “The ‘war for oil’ line is a simpleton’s theory of international relations.” — Brendan O’Neill, sp!ked

And:

War by the back door: “There is an ‘undeclared war’ in Iraq — between Western elites vying for influence.” — Brendan O’Neill, sp!ked

It explains why we’re going to war, and why we’ll keep going to war: Since the end of the cold war, the United States has been trying to come up with an operating theory of the world—and a military strategy to accompany it. Now there’s a leading contender. It involves identifying the problem parts of the world and aggressively shrinking them. Since September 11, 2001, [Thomas P. M. Barnett, U.S. Naval War College], a professor of warfare analysis, has been advising the Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving this briefing continually at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Now he gives it to you.

Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder. These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core. But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists. These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.

Globalization’s “ozone hole” may have been out of sight and out of mind prior to September 11, 2001, but it has been hard to miss ever since. And measuring the reach of globalization is not an academic exercise to an eighteen-year-old marine sinking tent poles on its far side. So where do we schedule the U.S. military’s next round of away games? The pattern that has emerged since the end of the cold war suggests a simple answer: in the Gap.Esquire [via walker]

Internet search giant Google confirmed this week that it closed several security holes that could have allowed hackers to substitute their own musings for any of the over one-million electronic diaries maintained through the popular “Blogger” online publishing tool. The Register Pity; what the hackers had to say might’ve been more interesting than many of the million. Including at FmH?

Via the poised urgency of Jeff Gates’ Life Outtacontext:

Kevin Sites, a CNN reporter in Kuwait, has been sharing personal reflections on the soon-to-be war front with readers of bOingbOing via email. Here’s an excerpt from his latest (read his entire post here):

For most of the journalists here in Kuwait, this is the fear and this is the joke; that for all our technology—our videophones and portable dishes, our Thurayas, and Iridiums and Neras, our digital cameras and laptop editing systems—-we could end up covering this war with wind up film cameras.

It’s on the grapevine that the U.S. Air Force has developed an electro magnetic pulse weapon at Kirtland Air Force that could be used in war against Iraq. The concept is devastating simple; flying over the target area, the military emits a microwave swath, which basically fries the electronics of any appliance or device in its path.

Like a giant switch, when the EMP weapon is flicked on, the lights go out. People, however, are supposedly spared—unless they happened to be wearing a pacemaker or are hooked up to other life sustaining machinery. The EMP weapon does not apparently differentiate between cell phones and hospital respirators.

Be sure to scroll down below this item at Gates’ site for something that has struck me too — the devolution of media depictions of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

“Following a recent FCC decision that could limit competition among broadband providers, publicly owned high-speed access networks may prove a more popular alternative to private ISPs.” Wired News

A Religious Initiative: “Tell President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that Saddam Hussein can be disarmed without war. Speak out now!” Sojourners

by Janna Malamud Smith: a review of a book by a colleague of mine: Sharing the Burdens of Motherhood:

“Children’s security — and women’s equality — will be assured, (Janna Smith argues), only when mothers dare demand that nurturing labors be more fairly supported by society as a whole. What has long held mothers back, Smith worries, is all the protective worry. It will never go away, she says again and again, and no one should hope — or fear — that it will. But for that very reason, it should not be exploited the way it has been. Smith’s mission is to show how that ”visceral, powerful” sense of alarm has been ”continually manipulated, overtly and subtly,” wittingly and unwittingly, by ”experts and authorities of many timbres” — all in the name of helping mothers stay calm. The effect has been to keep them hovering (”metaphorically and often literally”) by the cradle, shouldering more than their share of accountability for children’s fates, when what parents and kids alike really need are more family-friendly policies and public attitudes. By exposing the uses and abuses of maternal anxiety, Smith hopes to help inspire a social movement to rock the boat.” NY Times

Gaspar Noé’s cinematic rape: “The 12 scenes of Irreversible — each shot in a single, semi-improvised take — constitute something of a tour de force. But so would being dragged through the streets by a wire noose. There is something to be said for violence that isn’t stylized and made to seem “fun” — that actually makes you feel like Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971) with your eyes pried open and no cathartic release. It could be argued that this is the only moral way to present violence, so that it hurts.

But there is nothing moral about Irreversible — only sneeringly superior and nihilistic, like Johnny Rotten at his most fatuous. [more] — David Edelstein, Slate

Can we sleep less? “Every year, we need the same amount of sleep, and every year we get less. Since the invention of artificial illumination, sleep has been a bear market.” — David Plotz, Slate