each of 29 special FX and costume design ‘whiz kids’ to receive £1.75 million. This degree of generosity goes a long way to convince me we really are living in an alternate universe…

If it is hard to believe that conceptions of the Gods are ignored in most recently written histories, it is harder yet to understand why Gods were long ago banished from the social-scientific study of religion. But that is precisely why I have devoted two volumes to demonstrating the crucial role of the Gods in shaping history and civilization, and to resurrecting and reformulating a sociology of Gods.

If asked what the word “religion” means, most religious people will say it’s about God or the Gods. Yet, for a century, most social-scientific studies of religion have examined nearly every aspect of faith except what people believe about Gods. When and why did we get it so wrong? — Rodney Stark, Chronicle of Higher Education

Latest research summarized: “Flawed brain chemistry, brain damage, genetic defects, an unhealthy psychological environment— take them individually or mix them together and you may have the right ingredients for violent behavior, reports a variety of researchers.” EurekAlert! Not very profound — these are, pretty exhaustively, the domains of explanation in behavioral science. I guess what this review article reflects is that behavioral science is beginning to grapple more robustly with the problem.

“A New Zealand handyman is using high tech parts bought over the internet to make a cruise missile in his garage.” Ananova

There’s no place like Iraq for a holiday. Telegraph/UK

‘Swaziland’s absolute monarch has singled out women wearing trousers as the cause of the world’s ills in a state radio sermon that also condemned human rights as an “abomination before God.” … The Times of Swaziland reported that the monarch, who reigns supreme in the landlocked country run by palace appointees and where opposition parties are banned, went on to criticize the human rights movement.’ Yahoo! News

“A Brooklyn metalworking shop with an unlikely name may hold the key to 21st-century shapemaking… Architecture’s future can be seen in a toxic corner of old industrial Brooklyn, where computers help bend metal into unheard-of shapes…” MetropolisMag

From Steve King (Today in Liteature): “On this day in 1964, T. S. Eliot wrote to Groucho Marx to confirm that he was sending a car to pick “you and Mrs. Groucho” up for dinner. Their meeting was after years of correspondence, beginning with an Eliot fan letter expressing admiration for Groucho’s films. While not the alcoholic or literary event foreseen, the occasion became high comedy in Groucho’s hands…

Their much-postponed dinner took place just seven months before Eliot’s death at the age of seventy-six. In a letter to Gummo, Groucho describes finding his “celebrated pen pal” to be “tall, lean and rather stooped over. . . from age, illness, or both,” but “a dear man and a charming host.” Though “a memorable evening,” all did not go as expected:

… At any rate, your correspondent arrived at the Eliots’ fully prepared for a literary evening. During the week I had read “Murder in the Cathedral” twice, “The Waste Land” three times, and just in case of a conversational bottleneck, I brushed up on “King Lear.”

Well, sir, as the cocktails were served, there was a momentary lull — the kind that is more or less inevitable when strangers meet for the first time. So, apropos of practically nothing (and not with a bang but a whimper) I tossed in a quotation from “The Waste Land.” That, I thought, will show him I’ve read a thing or two besides my press notices from Vaudeville.

Eliot smiled faintly — as though to say he was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn’t need me to recite them. So I took a whack at “King Lear”. . . .

That too failed to bowl over the poet. He seemed more interested in discussing “Animal Crackers” and “A Night at the Opera.” He quoted a joke — one of mine — that I had long since forgotten. Now it was my turn to smile faintly. . . .

We didn’t stay late, for we both felt that he wasn’t up to a long evening of conversation — especially mine.

Did I tell you we called him Tom? — possibly because that’s his name. I, of course, asked him to call me Tom too, but only because I loathe the name Julius.

Yours,

Tom Marx
(“Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read…”)

“TiVo Inc., a maker of television-recording devices, Monday unveiled a TV audience measuring system that allows it to report the second-by-second viewing habits of its subscribers to advertisers and network programmers.” MSNBC You didn’t think you were getting all that functionality without a cost, did you? Still, DVRs are such a leap forward that anyone with the slightest interest in watching television is a fool for not taking the leap. Here’s the deal, if you need to be convinced (and most people do, because the devices haven’t really caught on, in one of the most puzzling examples of looking gift horses in the mouths). NY Times

Pardon.

Supporters of Bruce, the foul-mouthed comic convicted of obscenity charges in 1964, have launched a campaign to win him a legal reprieve — 37 years after his tragic death.” Salon

“New observations of exploding stars far deeper in space, astronomers say, have produced strong evidence that the proportions of the mysterious forces dominating the universe have undergone radical change over cosmic history.

The findings, reported here at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which ended Thursday, supported the idea that once the universe was expanding at a decelerating rate but then began accelerating within the last seven billion years, scientists concluded.” NY Times

“Justice Dept. review finds violations of immigrants detained after 9/11.” Washington Post

“In the end, it would appear that (the) real crime (is) to meddle with a set of unspoken cultural taboos in a city that does not take such matters lightly. Death at a historical or emotional remove may provide safe entertainment, but death in actual fact still scares us.” — Eleanor Heartney, author of Post modern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art‘ to be published in February (NY Times)

“We told you so.

We warned the Bush Administration that invading Iraq would destabilize the Middle East and spread radical anti-American Islamism. We told the American people that taking out Saddam Hussein without a viable government to replace him would open a vacuum for anarchy, civil war and a power grab by radical Iranian-backed Shiite clerics. Now the antiwar movement’s doomsday scenarios have been fulfilled so completely that military history scarcely mentions a more thoroughly botched endeavor — and we’ll be living with the fallout for years.

When we argued that Donald Rumsfeld’s low-budget occupation of Iraq would turn out as disastrously as it had in Afghanistan, right-wing Republicans called us stupid and un-American. Now that we’ve been proven correct on every count, is it too much to expect an apology? Maybe so. Given George W. Bush’s performance on the economy and the war on terrorism (where’s Osama? Saddam? the WMDs? the surplus?), betting against him hardly makes one a prophet. And no one is less pleased with the speed and totality of the Iraqi catastrophe than those of us who called it in advance.” — Ted Rall, AlterNet

‘Why Are People Dying?’

Even as Americans viewed the conflict with Iraq as mostly over and the nation’s attention turned elsewhere, the Department of Defense reported the deaths of about 40 service members in the past six weeks. About three-fourths of the deaths came after May 1, the day President Bush formally declared the end of major combat operations. Deaths over the past six weeks were fewer than at the height of the struggle: three times as many Americans were killed in the month after the war began. But for families who had just begun to allow themselves to think their loved ones might be safe, the news was all the more jarring, the numbers impossible to consider. NY Times

“…The order, entered by Judge Diana Lewis of Circuit Court in West Palm Beach, forbids Mr. Max to write about Ms. Johnson. It has alarmed experts in First Amendment law, who say that such orders prohibiting future publication, prior restraints, are essentially unknown in American law. Moreover, they say, claims like Ms. Johnson’s, for invasion of privacy, have almost never been considered enough to justify prior restraints.

Ms. Johnson’s lawsuit also highlights some shifting legal distinctions in the Internet era, between private matters and public ones and between speech and property…” NY Times Here’s a mirror of the essay in question which the judge enjoined the author from posting on his website, courtesy of a reader at Declan McCullagh’s Politech mailing list, who comments:

In order to facilitate further public discussion of this controversy, I have reproduced the disputed essay below. Given the blatant unconstitutionality of the court’s actions, which include forbidding Mr. Max from even linking to Ms. Johnson’s web site, I predict this order will be reversed shortly. Now that Mr. Max has legal representation, the entire case will likely be thrown out in short order, unless Ms. Johnson decides to add a claim of libel… I have no personal knowledge of and make no claims as to the truthfulness of any part of Mr. Max’s essay, but it is my understanding that Ms.Johnson has not thus far sued him for libel, only for invasion of privacy. Ms. Johnson is indisputably a public figure who holds herself out as a moral example, so the requirements for proving either libel or invasion of privacy would be quite high.

Caveat: there’s nothing of any merit in the essay beyond the First Amendment issues the case raises. It is not any more a flattering picture of Mr. Max than it is of Ms. Johnson. If you can bear not to, don’t bother reading it, or at least keep an emesis basin nearby. I am glad, however, that the essay was mirrored. Weighing the civil liberties issues is more challenging but more compelling when the self-expression is so utterly without merit.