“A top State Department expert on North Korea who advocated a policy of incentives as well as penalties to persuade the nation to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons has resigned, officials said today.” Wouldn’t you know it, the resignation points to a division within the US dysadministration over what approach to take to North Korea, and the conciliatory are being beaten back by the confrontational. The FmH reader who pointed me to the article commented, ‘Joe McCarthy cried “Who lost China?”, and successfully purged the government of anyone who knew anything about China; thus vastly increasing the chance of a nuclear confrontation. History now repeats itself in North Korea…’ NY Times [thanks,Adam]

WhereWare: “Lock on to location-based computing, the hottest thing in wireless, which offers new services to customers and new revenue streams to carriers, and could save lives in the process. The idea is to make cell phones, personal digital assistants, and even fashion accessories capable of tracking their owners’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. ” ’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. MIT Technology Review [via IP mailing list]

Troops get death and pay cuts; Bush gobbles barbecue and rakes in contributions: “Not since the days of Marie Antoinette, or at least Nancy Reagan, has there been such a disconnect between the ruling elite and what Marie and Nancy might call the unwashed masses. A potent symbol of this cynical detachment is provided by George W. Bush’s month-long vacation, during which his only forays among the unwashed masses have been to whack his little white balls around a golf course — and to host a ‘down-home’ barbecue to shake down rich donors for another run at the White House. The cover charge for barbecue with the Bushes? Each of the 350 ‘very special guests’ paid $50,000 to nibble on those Republican pig and cow carcasses.” Hartford Advocate

WhereWare: “Lock on to location-based computing, the hottest thing in wireless, which offers new services to customers and new revenue streams to carriers, and could save lives in the process. The idea is to make cell phones, personal digital assistants, and even fashion accessories capable of tracking their owners’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. ” ’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. MIT Technology Review [via IP mailing list]

I’ll be away from keyboard and Internet until Labor Day (Sept. 1 for you non-U.S. readers) weekend as my family and I head for the North Woods. Enjoy the remaining days of your summer, and please do come back in September. I will.

[Sun Aug 31: The above message was supposed to have been posted last Saturday with the aid of Blogger’s postdating feature. Because I was already away at that time, it never happened, because it turns out that postdated items do not get published until the next manual publish occurs, of which there were none until I noticed the problem today. Thank you to those concerned readers who, seeing no posts since the 22nd and no explanation, wrote to ask if everything was all right with me. It was, emphatically! — FmH]

“A senior US government official has laid out detailed plans for the timing and form of US government issued biometric passports.

Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary for Passport Services, presented his organisation’s plans to evolve to a new, more secure ‘intelligent document’ from today’s paper-based passports at the Smart Card Alliance’s Government Conference and Expo conference last week.

‘Our goal is to begin production by October 26, 2004,’ Moss announced.” The Register

This, from Cory Doctorow, sounds interesting and important enough to repost in its entirety. First, the part about his terrific-sounding experience at the retreat, which I envy and hope will result in some wonderful new ‘product’ from him; next, the plug for Schneier’s book, especially as Ashcroft debuts his dog-and-pony show defending the USA Patriot Act (to which, following the lead of some of its critics, I will stop referring in that offensive way and just call by its acronym UPA from now on) in truly Orwellian overtones:

“I’ve spent the past week at a writers’ retreat in an undisclosed location (I’m still here!). It’s been insanely productive. I’ve written a 21,000-word novella, rewritten two partial novels, worked on my latest collaboration with Charlie Stross, critiqued about 20 stories, read a friend’s book and critiqued it, and caught up on some reading (and I’ve still got three days left, and still to come: nonfiction book proposal, rewrite the new novella, and catch up on other projects and projectlets).

One of the books I’m delighted to have had the chance to read here is Bruce Schneier’s latest, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. I reviewed three or four drafts of this while Bruce was working on it, and I am completely delighted with how it turned out.

In Beyond Fear, Schneier has utterly demystified the idea of security with a text aimed squarely at nontechnical individuals. He takes his legendary skill at applying common sense and lucidity to information-security problems and applies it to all the bogeymen of the post-9/11 world, and asks the vital question: What are we getting in exchange for the liberties that the Ashcroftian authorities have taken away from us in the name of security?

This is possibly the most important question of this decade, and that makes Schenier’s book one of the most important texts of the decade. This should be required reading for every American, and the world would be a better place if anyone venturing an opinion on electronic voting, airline security, roving wiretaps, or any other modern horror absorbed this book’s lessons first.”

The Gender Genie: “Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more about the algorithm at nature.com.”

I pasted some FmH passages of significant length into the algorithm; sometimes it gets my gender right but at times it tells me I “write like a girl.” The algorithm’s authors say it ought to be able to predict the gender of the author of a passage 80% of the time but Genie is candid enough to tell us that her cumulative accuracy is only 50.77% as of when I write this. [I don’t have to tell you that’s about as close to random as you can come in the real world…]

The algorithm depends on the difference between so-called ‘informational’ (categorizing) and ‘involved’ (personalizing) modes, essentially, which are thought of as quintessentially male and female, respectively (they are also thought of as quintessentially ‘nonfictional’ and ‘fictional’, which makes sense). It does a weighted count of what it considers “male keywords” (articles, “some”, numbers, and “it”) vs. “female keywords” (possessive pronouns and ” ‘s”, “for”, and “not” and “n’t”) and gives the passage a “male” or “female” score. Why would the online Gender Genie have break-even success when the original scientific paper gives the algorithm on which it is based an 80% success rate (when tried on over 500 English-language texts in a variety of genres)? Perhaps someone is messing with Genie’s mind (giving incorrect feedback) and/or the passages submitted so far are highly atypical. If it is being fed with largely web-based writing rather than text imported from meatspace, the material is probably overwhelmngly nonfiction or ‘informational’. Moreover perhaps even female writers on the web, being in general more technically and technologically adept, are more ‘informational’ than the norm. Having read more about the algorithm, I can now spot passages in my own writing it is more likely to think ‘girlish’. Try it out yourself.

“This makes Sobig.F the fastest growing virus ever, surpassing the infamous LoveBug, Klez and Kournikova viruses. All initial copies originated from the United States, where the virus is currently most prevalent. As Sobig.F continues its rapid spread today businesses are also advised to be on high-level alert. Sobig.F, first detected on 18th August, is the sixth variant issued in the Sobig virus series and appears to be the most sophisticated to date. Since the first Sobig virus was issued on January 9th 2003, MessageLabs has intercepted almost three million copies of Sobig variants.

‘Yesterday marked an unprecedented new level in virus propagation and demonstrated the growing ability of virus writers to disrupt business around the globe,’ said Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs. ‘The Sobig virus writer’s use of an inbuilt expiry date indicates that he is committed to inventing new and improved versions. Each variant released so far has exceeded the previous one in growth and impact during the critical initial window of vulnerability.”

Sobig is a mass-emailing virus that can spoof the sender’s address, fooling the user into believing the email is from a legitimate source and then opening the email. The email often contains the following header: “Subject: Re:details” and the text “Please see the attached file for details”. The attachment names may include: your_document.pif, details.pif, your_details.pif, thank_you.pif, movie0045.pifm, document_Fall.pif, application.pif, docment_9446.pif.

Once the virus has infected your machine it attempts to connect to a website to download a backdoor Trojan, leaving your computer vulnerable to security breaches by hackers or other viruses. The current Sobig virus to email ratio is approximately 1 in 17 and the virus is spreading at such a rate it is expected to continue to stay at high-level status for the next few weeks. However, like past Sobig viruses, the Sobig.F virus has an expiry date and is set to deactivate on September 10th, which will effectively stop this variant from spreading further after that date. ” MessageLabs

I was aware of the news that the virus had an inborn expiration date and wondered about the significance of that. Now I know it has ominous implications. By now, I’m sure you have received emails with the virus. Symantec has a downloadable removal tool which scans your hard drive for traces of Sobig.F and expunges them.

She who must be obeyed: “the words are enough to send a shiver down the spine of many a married man.

Now museum curators have discovered that it was a Scots adventurer’s awe-struck account of a powerful American Indian ‘chieftainess’ that gave birth to the iconic image of a domineering woman.

Hardened 19th-century explorer Robert Campbell – the first westerner to explore the vast wilderness of Canada’s Yukon Territory – told how he owed his life to the woman when she furiously confronted members of her tribe as they prepared to shoot him and his companion, a man called McLeod.

Campbell’s friend, the writer Rider Haggard, was so impressed by the story he wrote the book She, which was made into a 1965 film starring Ursula Andress. Haggard’s description of his African queen as ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ became a byword for the wives of under-the-thumb husbands.

But Campbell was nothing but grateful after his encounter with the Tahltan Indian woman, whose name is not known, on the shores of Dease Lake in northern British Columbia while on a fur trading mission in the 1880s. ” Scotland on Sunday

Jessica Stern: “Yesterday’s bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was the latest evidence that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.

Of course, we should be glad that the Iraq war was swifter than even its proponents had expected, and that a vicious tyrant was removed from power. But the aftermath has been another story. America has created — not through malevolence but through negligence — precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens’ rudimentary needs.” NY Times op-ed

Try Better Bait. I’ve been working my way through Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools, by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest, and finding it very worthwhile. This article is in a way a précis of its more relevant strategies for improving your searches. NY Times [thanks to Richard Homonoff]

We ignored world opinion calling for a UN mandate for our invasion of Iraq. Now that we are bogged down and it is conspicuously clear how much it would cost (in lives and dollars) to ‘nation-build’, we are talking out of the other side of our mouths NY Times and trying to bulldoze UN members into joining the effort they have previously opposed. It is not getting much of a reception, especially because it is clear we are crassly capitalizing on the anguish and frustration over the bombing of the UN’s Baghdad compound to rally the troops, and, furthermore, we are of course insisting that the efforts remain under ‘coalition’ command.

“A mandate which will force local agencies that receive federal funds to register and track homeless people has been called too invasive by privacy and community activists.

In an attempt to grasp the scope of the United States’ homeless problem, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is requiring local government and nonprofit organizations receiving grants for homeless programs to keep detailed files on their clientele. Data to be tracked ranges from Social Security numbers to HIV statuses to mental health histories.” Wired News

“As part of the What The World Thinks of America programme, 11,000 people in the UK, France, Russia, Indonesia, South Korea, Jordan, Australia, Canada, Israel, Brazil and the US responded to a poll asking their views and opinions on America.

The respondents were asked about their general attitudes towards America and US President George Bush.

The poll also posed a range of other questions on America’s foreign policy, military power, cultural influences and economic might.

Click on the links to view a comprehensive series of graphs illustrating the findings of the poll.” BBC News Drill down through the graphs and indulge yourself. Readers here probably won’t find many surprises. The respondents in the US have an overblown sense of our value and desirability to the rest of the world. Disaffection with the US in the political, military, economic and cultural spheres cuts across the world, including Eurocentric, Muslim and non-Muslim developing countries. The depth of the world’s contempt for George Bush and concern over the destabilizing, dangerous influence of American military might are dramatic.

Christopher Robin and the Milnes: “On this day in 1920 Christopher Robin Milne was born, an only child to A. A. Milne. Christopher also wrote, his first two books, Enchanted Places and The Path Through the Trees, being memoirs of his growing up and out from under the shadow of the fictional Christopher Robin. The first of these, written after both parents had died, has partly the tone of setting-the-record-straight, partly that of settling-the-score. Each day of writing, Milne said, was ‘like a session on the analyst’s couch’ in an effort to look both his father and Christopher Robin in the eye.” Today in Literature

“A new study published in the August 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine demonstrates a possible link between unexplained chronic fatigue and sinusitis, two conditions previously not associated with each other. Also newly noted was a relationship between sinusitis and unexplained body pain. These findings offer new hope to patients lacking a diagnosis and treatment for fatigue and pain.” ScienceDaily.

This brings to mind the saga of perhaps the most famous act of malpractice in medical history, that of Freud’s young German physician friend, Wilhelm Fleiss, who had a theory linking nasal pathology and psychopathology a century ago. Fleiss almost killed a young patient named Emma Eckstein whom Freud had referred to him to attempt to treat her excessive masturbation through nasal surgery; he overlooked the removal of a meter of gauze packing from her nasal passages after the procedure, leading to suppuration and mysterious, massive, ongoing hemorrhage. Eckstein’s plight, it transpired, became a formative influence on the origins of psychoanalytic theory.

As Jeffrey Masson describes it in his blistering 1984 exposé The Assault on Truth, Freud blamed Eckstein rather than his friend Fleiss’ dereliction, attributing her continuing bleeding to a wish for attention and affection. Freud’s need to deny that Eckstein’s brush with death had a real cause, Masson and others argue, was a pivotal moment in his renunciation of the sexual seduction theory of his patients’ distress and the inception of the idea that their ‘memories’ of incest were ‘hysterical’ fantasies rather than credible reflections of real events.

And, finally, here is yet another loose association between the nose and the sexual organs, at least figuratively. Guardian-Observer/UK

Beethoven blast too much for homeless: “Stoke-on-Trent City Council in the English Midlands said that four days of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor had driven the car park’s six inhabitants from their ‘home’ but had prompted protests that it was being unsympathetic to their plight.” Sydney Morning Herald. But fans of ‘music therapy’, never fear: SA right-wingers ‘tortured by rap’: “A group of alleged white extremists facing treason charges in South Africa has complained about being forced to listen to “black” music while on remand in prison.” BBC News

How to Tell Friend from Faux space.com

“The dietary supplement creatine – known to improve athletic performance – can also boost memory and intelligence, researchers claim.

The supplement is favoured by some athletes

Creatine is a natural compound found in muscle tissue, and has been popular with athletes looking for ways to increase fitness.

However, experts say that it has a role in maintaining energy levels to the brain, and have the theory that taking more creatine might actually improve mental performance.” BBC

And: Not only intelligence pills but ‘intelligent pills’ The Age

“An ‘epidemic of Alzheimer’s’ over the next few decades could be far worse than previously thought, experts suggest… Their study, based on US Census data, suggested that by the middle of the 21st century, up to 16 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s.” BBC News

A man who killed his brother’s fiancée in a psychotic rage just hours after being released from an overnight stay at a psychiatric hospital for bizarre behavior successfully sued the hospital and the doctor who treated him there for not holding him involuntarily as the law permitted. He had successfully used the insanity defense to gain an acquittal at his murder trial; the judge ruled that the hospital and the doctor’s negligence had substantially contributed to the victim’s death. The man claimed damages because of how horrible the experience of being remanded to jail after his apprehension on the murder charge was. The Australian

Not knowing the details of the case, I don’t know how to assess the finding that the treaters were negligent in not reasonably forseeing or preventing the possibility of harm. But there should be no general principle inferred from this case that treaters are responsible for the harm committed by the psychiatric patients under there care. Negligence is a relatively narrowly defined circumstance the burden of proof for which is on the plaintiff rather than just assumed whenever a harm occurs. Psychiatric violence is usually not forseeable in the short run even if you know (as was probably not the case in this instance, because the article implies that the patient apparently was suffering from a transient acute psychotic episode rather than an exacerbation of a chronic condition) that the patient has a history of or a potential for violence in the abstract… unless you go in for preventive detention (although I realize some would argue that that is exactly what involuntary psychiatric hospitalization is…). I hope this case will not perpetuate the stereotype of the dangerous psychotic patient which is an important contributor to the villification and stigmatization of the psychiatrically ill in our society. Violence among psychiatrically ill individuals is much mreo foten of a more prosaic variety, arising from substance abuse or antisocial traits. The ostracism and scrutiny of the mentally ill as a whole destabilize them further and are an important source of their suffering.

Related? Here’s a disturbing story about the lengths to which the forced drug treatment of psychiatric patients can be taken, predicated on the fact that

China has 70 million bachelors unable to find wives. Men outnumber women as a result of a one-child policy which led to many fetuses of girls, traditionally discriminated against, being aborted. Yahoo!

Why Minds and Technologies Are Made to Merge by Andy Clark (book review) Metapsychology

“At a time when religious and conservative right-wing groups are attempting to dismiss homosexuality as ‘unnatural,’ a leading zoologist has said gay people could be seen as the ‘pinnacle of evolution.’

Speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Clive Bromhall said that humankind’s evolution has resulted in our present state of ‘infantilism,’ in which we break the primate mold by being playful, creative and childlike right into adulthood.”

(…)

“Homosexuals excel as artists, thespians and other playful, mimetic professions. Being playful is at the heart of being human. It’s something that should be celebrated. You could say that homosexuals are at the pinnacle of human evolution.” gay.com news

“The twentieth century produced a bounty of academic racists who openly declared the biological inferiority of black people. Many of them were generously funded by Wickliffe Draper’s Pioneer Fund.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Herrnstein and Jensen’s genetically-based IQ arguments, about which I wrote last week, are mentioned here, although they are by no means the winners.

Bill Maher: “Now that MTV has made pimping a cool lifestyle, is it surprising that suburban teenagers are turning tricks for mall cash?” Salon

“Grief among Western officials here was intense today and unease widespread. The suicide bombing at the United Nations headquarters… resonated far beyond the palm-lined Baghdad highway where it sits.

For Iraqis, it suggested that their country might already be trapped in a cycle of bloodshed more widespread and cruel than they thought possible after the American invasion.

Many feel helpless. They are not sure whom to blame, pointing the finger alternately at Islamic militant groups and Iraq’s own neighbors, all of whom they believe might have an interest in wrecking efforts to rebuild the country under American guidance.

But they also condemned the Americans, seeing the attack as another sign of the poor job the occupation forces are doing providing security in a country they now nominally control.” NY Times

Diplomat ‘Will Be Acutely Missed’, Says UN’s Annan; he has been considered a possible successor to Annan as Secretary General.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, the senior U.N. diplomat who was killed in today’s truck bombing in Baghdad, was one of the world’s most experienced nation-builders, a major star at the United Nations who ran Kosovo after U.S. air power drove Serbs from the ethnic Albanian enclave in 1999, and delivered East Timor to independence last year.

The Brazilian diplomat, 55, who began his U.N. career as an obscure refugee official, was tapped by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in late May to help Iraq’s transition to self rule. He was due to step down Aug. 27 and return to his regular job in Geneva as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Washington Post

But, with all due respect for his stature, let us remember that he was only one of twenty UN relief workers to die in this tragedy, for which the Bush junta’s arrogance and ineptitude should be held responsible. And that is not to suggest that these deaths are more meaningful than the countless Iraqi civilian casualties of the US invasion, whose numbers US authorities have not even found it important to tally.

News analysis —Chaos as an Anti-American Strategy:

The bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad today provided grisly evidence of a new strategy by anti-American forces to depict the United States as unable to guarantee public order, as well as to frighten away relief organizations rebuilding Iraq.

Military officers and experts on terrorism said the bombing fit a pattern of recent strikes on water and oil pipelines and the Jordanian Embassy, although they emphasized that it was too early to uncover any connections among the attacks.

In recent weeks terrorists have conducted almost daily attacks on the American military. But after the bombing today there is a growing belief that anti-American fighters, whatever their origin and inspiration, have adopted a coherent strategy not only to kill members of allied forces when possible, but also to spread fear by destroying public offices and utilities.

President Bush was defiant today. He said: “Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam’s brutal regime. The civilized world will not be intimidated, and these killers will not determine the future of Iraq.” NY Times

There is no such thing as creating the impression of spreading chaos. The 800-lb. gorilla in the room is that the US cannot guarantee public order and is precipitating actual chaos, of course. But the finger will be pointed everywhere but at our own execrable actions.

“It’s brown-black, sticky, comes in a small jar and smells rancid to the untrained nose. More than the royal family (other countries have them), or tea (there are other cultures based around that), Marmite is the quintessential British thing.” Flak Magazine

“The Fox News Network is suing Al Franken, the political satirist, for using the phrase ‘fair and balanced’ in the title of his new book. In claiming trademark violation, Fox sets a noble example for standing firm against whatever.

Unreliable sources report that the Fox suit has inspired Paul Newman, the actor, to file a similar suit in federal court against the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commonly called HUD. Mr. Newman claims piracy of personality and copycat infringement.

In the 1963 film ‘HUD,’ for which Mr. Newman was nominated for an Academy Award, the ad campaign was based on the slogan, ‘Paul Newman is HUD.’ Mr. Newman claims that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, called HUD, is a fair and balanced institution and that some of its decency and respectability has unfairly rubbed off on his movie character, diluting the rotten, self-important, free-trade, corrupt conservative image that Mr. Newman worked so hard to project in the film. His suit claims that this ‘innocence by association’ has hurt his feelings plus residuals.

A coalition of the willing — i.e., the Bratwurst Asphalt Company and the Ypsilanti Hot Dog and Bean Shop — has been pushed forward and is prepared to label its products “fair and balanced,” knowing that Fox News will sue and that its newscasters will be so tied up with subpoenas they will only be able to broadcast from the courtroom, where they will be seen tearing their hair and whining, looking anything but fair and balanced, which would certainly be jolly good sport all around.” NY Times op-ed [via everyone in the world who is linking to this]

Eternal damnation for those you choose.

“Giving subsidies to farmers was a brilliant idea that transformed the food shortages after the second world war into a surplus. But it has grown into an institutionalised nightmare preventing developing countries from fulfilling their potential in one of the few areas where they enjoy a natural advantage – agriculture. Europe and the US are the main culprits. It is economic and social madness for Europe to be growing, for instance, subsidised sugar beet when its average cost of production is more than double that of efficient exporters such as Brazil and Zambia. It is only possible thanks to ludicrous subsidies, including protective tariffs of up to 140%…

There is only one way to deal with this. Make it simple and effective. Abolish all agricultural subsidies so that every proposed reform doesn’t generate new escape routes that negate its primary purpose. To this end, the Guardian is starting a new website today, aimed at kicking into oblivion all agricultural subsidies (http://kickaas.typepad.com). This is one of those rare topics that unites right and left. It is also one of the few remaining free lunches in economics from which practically everyone gains. It would galvanise developing countries’ agriculture while freeing more than $300bn currently being spent by governments – over $200 per capita – every year on subsidies for other purposes. There will inevitably be transitional problems for some western farmers but nothing like the structural change other industries have experienced. And in the long run it will be of benefit to them, too. They will be able to grow crops they are good at rather than those attracting subsidies. All that the developing countries are seeking is a level playing field on which to compete. Is that too much to ask?” Guardian/UK

For his Ph.D. thesis project on weblog writing style, Scott Nowson, a PhD student in Informatics at The University of Edinburgh, is soliciting a month’s worth of blog entries from native-English speaking authors of personal blogs. He has a page on studying blogs and maintains a weblog himself detailing the progress of the project.

[Monday through Friday, Salon will excerpt Joe Conason’s new book, ‘Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth,’ to be published this week by Thomas Dunne Books.] “In the introduction to his new book, Joe Conason explains how the right-wing propaganda machine demonizes liberals and distorts the common-sense politics of America.” Salon

John McWhorter: “Violence, misogyny and lawlessness are nothing to sing about.” City Journal Not a very deep article, and not a very new message even from an African American intellectual (an old-fashioned one who continues to refer to his subjects as “black”). Who is going to read this message? Probably not the artists themselves; more likely only academic apologists for hip hop:

Anyone who sees such behavior as a path to a better future—anyone, like Professor Dyson, who insists that hip-hop is an urgent “critique of a society that produces the need for the thug persona”—should step back and ask himself just where, exactly, the civil rights–era blacks might have gone wrong in lacking a hip-hop revolution. They created the world of equality, striving, and success I live and thrive in.

“Festive and frightening: In history, nocturnal urban darkness was the norm.” National Post

“You no longer have to work out to eat like a professional athlete. That’s the message from the growing number of energy bars and fitness drinks filling supermarket shelves. As the fitness food market has grown, companies that once targeted athletes are trying to attract the average consumer, claiming to offer conveniently packaged nutrition perfect for a busy lifestyle. But nutrition experts warn that products designed for the needs of athletes may backfire when used by the rest of us.” Boston Globe

Ridiculous trend which shows how much at the mercy of clever marketing the ill-informed credulous consumer is.

“New evidence for a link between a virus and human breast cancer has been revealed in a series of studies by Australian researchers. The virus, dubbed HHMMTV, is very similar to a version known to trigger mammary cancer in mice.

The researchers stress that they have not proven that the human form causes cancer in people – but if it does, its raises the possibility of developing a vaccine against the deadly disease.” New Scientist

Reporters: U.S. Troops Negligent: “Fellow journalists accused U.S. troops of negligence in the shooting death of a Reuters cameraman, saying it was clear the victim was a newsman when soldiers on two tanks opened fire. Press advocacy groups called for an investigation.

Mazen Dana, 43, was shot and killed by U.S. soldiers Sunday while videotaping near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad. The U.S. Army said its soldiers mistook his camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. ” CBS News

” ‘I got the Dean message at an e-mail address that I have not used in several years, and I did not sign up with Dean for anything. I was very surprised to see Dean sending spam. I can’t imagine him being so tech savvy if he is resorting to that.’ ” Wired News

“The inventive language created by doctors the world over to insult their patients – or each other – is in danger of becoming extinct.

The increasing rate of litigation means that there is a far higher chance that doctors will be asked in court to explain the exact meaning of NFN (Normal for Norfolk), FLK (Funny looking kid) or GROLIES (Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt).

Dr Fox recounts the tale of one doctor who had scribbled TTFO – an expletive expression roughly translated as ‘Told To Go Away’ – on a patient’s notes.

He told BBC News Online: ‘This guy was asked by the judge what the acronym meant, and luckily for him he had the presence of mind to say: ‘To take fluids orally’…’

Top Medical Acronyms (in UK):

• CTD – Circling the Drain (A patient expected to die soon)
  
• GLM – Good looking Mum
  
• GPO – Good for Parts Only
  
• TEETH – Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy
  
• UBI – Unexplained Beer Injury” BBC

The author of the study hasten to add that he does not advocate the use of any of these acronyms or the numerous other examples of obloquy you’ll find in the article. He said: “I do think that doctors are genuinely more respectful of their patients these days.”

You have to vote if you want Bush out in ’04. Please click on this link to send an email to any friends who share your values who may need to register to vote or are in a position to encourage other like-minded people to register to vote. Spread the word. WorkingForChange

“(The central claim of astrology) – that our human characteristics are moulded by the influence of the Sun, Moon and planets at the time of our birth – appears to have been debunked once and for all and beyond doubt by the most thorough scientific study ever made into it.

For several decades, researchers tracked more than 2,000 people – most of them born within minutes of each other. According to astrology, the subject should have had very similar traits.

The babies were originally recruited as part of a medical study begun in London in 1958 into how the circumstances of birth can affect future health. More than 2,000 babies born in early March that year were registered and their development monitored at regular intervals.” Telegraph/UK

What’s the lack of blackout-induced crime tell us about America? Reason

Phil Ringnalda pointed to this “unique Internet webcast, originating from a 12 x 12 cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska. We play music by independent artists, and we broadcast 24 hours/day, 365 days/year. Unlike most other webcasts, Whole Wheat Radio is interactive.

This site is designed for both listeners and independent recording artists who would like to get some additional exposure. Feel free to explore the links on the left, and you’ll find out more than you really want to know about Whole Wheat Radio.”

“Today, Google introduced a new advanced search feature that enables users to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. This is accomplished by placing a ~ character directly in front of the keyword in the search box.

For example, to search for browser help as well as browser guides and tutorials users can search for browser ~help. The ~ character was chosen because it’s shorthand for approximate and a good way for users to express their wish to expand searches to include synonyms. ” Google Weblog I haven’t played with this yet, but I think it is going to turn out to be very useful. I very often have to construct searches with the or operator ‘|’ to handle synonyms.

Wired had this piece just before 8-14-03. Imagine what would have happened if the whole world had been on one grid already.

Declan McCullagh: An interview with Sherman Austin:

“Sherman Austin is looking forward to a year in federal

prison with the kind of equanimity that most people reserve for a trip

to the doctor’s office.

The 20-year-old anarchist was charged with distributing information

about Molotov cocktails and “Drano bombs” on his Web site,

Raisethefist.com. Under a 1997 federal law championed by Sen. Dianne

Feinstein, D-Calif., it is illegal to publish such instructions with

the intent that readers commit “a federal crime of violence.

…Austin appears to be the first person so far convicted under the controversial law, which some First Amendment scholars say may violate the right to freedom of expression. Earlier this year, Austin pleaded guilty, and last week a federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced him to one year in prison.” CNET

“Programmes aiming to change young offenders and those that support victims need to be re-thought because they are often the same people, according to new research sponsored by the Economic & Social Research Council. This latest in a series of reports tracking 4,300 young people who started secondary school in Edinburgh in August 1998, shows that victimisation and offending are closely linked.” EurekAlert!

and how to find them on the web: “Did you know? The Web has an abundance of freely available consciousness articles. Scientific articles on anaesthesia, visual attention, and blindsight, just to mention a few. All this is available through many different websites and services. Some websites offer documents uploaded by the authors themselves, other sites are regular science journals that offer free articles older than 1-2 years. Here is a brief tour guide through some of the best places.” Science and Cnosciousness Review

“Common sense tells us that we become unconscious the moment we fall asleep at night, and come back to full consciousness again in the morning. That idea was challenged when REM sleep was discovered some 5 decades ago. The EEG traces that signal waking consciousness are fast, irregular and low in voltage. Brain activity in REM sleep looks exactly like that…

People waking from the least conscious state (Slow-Wave Sleep) still report experiences of “mentation” — fragments of verbal thoughts. The most radical interpretation is that we are never fully unconscious, even when in deep sleep without dreams. This seems totally against common sense…

During the most unconscious state of sleep, the brain may be like a great city at night. Most of it may look dark, but there could be local spots of meaningful activity going on even then…” Science And Consciousness Review

“A recent study of dream patterns in the duck-billed platypus, the odd-looking Australian marsupial, reveals an interesting surprise… Platypus may be bringing a message from the earliest years of mammalian evolution.” Science And Consciousness Review

The unique intersection between mind, matter, science and mysticism

Research on the brain actions of psychedelic drugs has potential implications for theories of consciousness and the brain correlates of mystical experiences. People who claim to have had a mystical experience under the influence of a psychedelic give reports that are often similar to the accounts of non-drug using religious mystics from the major religious traditions (Pahnke & Richards, 1966). Themes such as the unity of all sentient beings, oneness with God and the universe, and the illusory nature of human existence have been reported by figures as diverse as Buddha, the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, and psychologist turned sixties LSD guru Timothy Leary. The psychedelic experience thus represents a unique intersection between mind, matter, science and mysticism that still defies explanation. — Michael Lyvers, Bond University (Australia), Science And Consciousness Review

“What is the relationship between brain activity and transcendental experiences?”

Frontal coherence, power and CNV patterns may objectively characterize cortical transformations underlying the progressive integration of transcendent experiences with daily activity. As science earlier quantified the physiological markers of waking, sleeping, and dreaming, so now research has begun to quantify the experience of states beyond ordinary waking. — Fred Travis, Maharishi University of Management

Science And Consciousness Review

…and its consequences: “Can it be the case that Descartes, totally alone in Germany in November of 1619, had a panic attack that we are still recovering from?” — Sean O’Nuallain, Science And Consciousness Review

“‘Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information’ (Steidl and PaceMcGill Gallery, 2003) is a boxed set containing a 96-page book and a DVD featuring 20 minutes of animation. In both mediums, Mr. Byrne, who is best known as a musician but who was trained as an artist, subjects PowerPoint’s characterless graphic templates to a radical metamorphosis.” NY Times

How Much Is Too Much?: “Having already given one kidney to a total stranger, Zell Kravinsky was sipping an orange-mango Snapple and, unprompted, making a case for giving away his other one.

‘What if someone needed it who could produce more good than me?'” NY Times

“The federal Medicare program is expected to decide this week whether to pay for an aggressive and expensive lung operation that could offer a lifeline to tens of thousands of elderly patients.

But health economists and medical experts say the treatment, however alluring, is part of an unsettling trend: new and ever pricier treatments for common medical conditions that are part and parcel of aging.” NY Times

“Despite early assurances from the Bush administration, new studies are finding alarming health problems and risks related to the cloud of debris that enveloped lower Manhattan.” Salon. And following is another Salon piece about a different kind of toxic fallout enveloping the nation’s airwaves.

Sidney Blumenthal: “Sure, Michael Savage lost his MSNBC show for going too far, but Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Coulter show bullying and humiliation are still a big business.” Salon An extraordinary observation of Blumenthal’s is this:

The rhetoric of abuse is not a sudden outburst, but has been well-designed for years. Republicans use these words and pursue these strategies consciously. In 1990, then Republican House Whip Newt Gingrich (later Speaker of the House) hired a pollster to devise a lexicon of demonization. In a memo that Gingrich circulated, “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,” Republicans were instructed that “words and phrases are powerful” and that the list that had been test-marketed should be “memorized.”

They were urged to apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party:

“decay … failure (fail) … collapse(ing) … deeper … crisis … urgent(cy) … destructive … destroy … sick … pathetic … lie … liberal … they/them … unionized bureaucracy … “compassion” is not enough … betray … consequences … limit(s) … shallow … traitors … sensationalists …

“endanger … coercion … hypocrisy … radical … threaten … devour … waste … corruption … incompetent … permissive attitudes … destructive … impose … self- serving … greed … ideological … insecure … anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs … pessimistic … excuses … intolerant …

“stagnation … welfare … corrupt … selfish … insensitive … status quo … mandate(s) … taxes … spend(ing) … shame … disgrace … punish (poor … ) … bizarre … cynicism … cheat … steal … abuse of power … machine … bosses … obsolete … criminal rights … red tape … patronage.”

The Gingrich memo is online here.

Declan McCullagh: An interview with Sherman Austin:

“Sherman Austin is looking forward to a year in federal

prison with the kind of equanimity that most people reserve for a trip

to the doctor’s office.

The 20-year-old anarchist was charged with distributing information

about Molotov cocktails and “Drano bombs” on his Web site,

Raisethefist.com. Under a 1997 federal law championed by Sen. Dianne

Feinstein, D-Calif., it is illegal to publish such instructions with

the intent that readers commit “a federal crime of violence.

…Austin appears to be the first person so far convicted under the controversial law, which some First Amendment scholars say may violate the right to freedom of expression. Earlier this year, Austin pleaded guilty, and last week a federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced him to one year in prison.” CNET

Mysterious virus sweeps B.C. care facility: The virus is similar enough to SARS that it registereed positive on the antibody tests for the latter, yet it caused symptoms no worse than the common cold. 143 at a residential care facility were affected, and there was no excess mortality from the virus. Although they won’t know until it can be cultured and its genome sequenced and compared to SARS, the speculation is that it is a mutant SARS virus without the virulence. Makes sense that it would cause cold-like symptoms, as the cold virus is relatively closely related to the SARS agent. The Globe and Mail

What is a Lost Word? “There are rare words, and there are rarer words, but only a very special word qualifies as a bona fide lost word. Of course, no word in the Compendium can be completely lost, or I could never have found it. To as great an extent as possible, I have tried to use a set of criteria by which truly rare but real English words can be classified as lost words.” [via MetaFilter]

A 24-year-old repeatedly arrested for offenses connected with the manufacture of methamphetamine makes history as he is charged under laws prohibiting the production of weapons of mass destruction in North Carolina. Mountain Times

Rebecca Blood points to this report of a new study suggesting that humiliation is more important than pure loss in promoting depression. The writer, Ellen Barry, gets one at least one thing badly wrong in her article. She says that the study “calls into question assumptions about depression that date to Sigmund Freud”, implying that Freud founded his theory of depression on loss. But his seminal 1917 essay on the subject, Mourning and Melancholia, thinks along much more sophisticated lines asking what the difference between an uncomplicated loss that leads to resolvable grief and one that leads to an involutional depression might be. Althoguh this is an oversimplification, Freud said that if the person’s attachment to the lost object was ambivalent, e.g. tinged with anger, the anger will be turned inward and mourning gives way to melancholia.

Now we have the Kendler study, making a big deal of the fact that it is humiliating losses, rather than just any ol’ losses, that predispose to depression. There’s a problem with this however. Does Kendler distinguish certain losses which are intrinsically humiliating in social status terms from those where it is the sufferer’s low self-esteem and vulnerability to depression which predispose to feeling humiliated? In other words, does being humiliated cause depression or does depression cause one to feel humiliated? Although Kendler tries to isolate the environmental from the constitutional factors by comparing identical twins with disparate experiences of depression, he may not have explained much.

One of the reasons the report interested Rebecca is Kendler’s nod to the evolutionary significance of depression. “How on earth does a tendency for acute and chronic hopelessness in any way benefit human survival?” she has long wondered. Evolutionary psychopathology is one of the intellectually stimulating venues in psychiatry today, one of the fun places to be, since it involves so much pure speculation. It has the thrill of controversy around it because it is firmly predicated on the materialist proposition, with which some are not very comfortable and about which I write about quite abit here, that complex behavioral patterns are brain-based and have biological and genetic roots. Evolutionary psychology has had to overcome the intellectual distaste that was aroused throughout academia several decades ago by the arguments of Richard Herrnstein and Arthur Jensen (among others) about the genetic roots of IQ, which were seen as being used to further a racist agenda. Perhaps because genetic studies are more sophisticated nowadays and proponents are more careful about which complex intellectual or behavioral traits they claim have genetic bases, evolutionary psychology is enjoying a resurgence. Even a socially progressive mental health professional leery of the insidious uses to which such thinking can be put can be intrigued and captivated by some of its speculations and implications.

That being said, one of the most appealing evolutionary theories of depression — only one among several — is the one consistent with Kendler’s findings and described in the article, that depression evolved in the proto-human pack economy as a way to reduce resource utilization and ambitions by one with lower social status, as one might have after a humiliating loss.

By the way, Rebecca, for a maladaptive trait to survive evolutionarily, it does not necessarily have to be beneficial to human survival, as your question suggests. Although this theory of depression does suggest that it is beneficial, all that is necessary for a trait to survive is that it not have an adverse effect on reproductive fitness. For example, a trait that expresses itself after the reproductive years will be neutral with regard to survival and not selected against. Or, a partial expression of the trait may confer an advantage, while those unlucky enough to get the full genetic load may suffer — too much of a good thing, if you will. This is discussed, for example, with respect to psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia or manic depressive (bipolar) illness. Could, for example, lesser expression of the relevant genes inspire quirky visionary originality of thought and creative energy, while the full flowering of the tendencies spins one out of control? (In modern society, it is certainly true that psychotic disorders, which have their most common onset in young adulthood, confer a reproductive disadvantage, but are artists or visionaries advantaged? There was a study I wrote abut here several weeks ago which peripherally bears on that, suggesting that marriage is the kiss of death to creative output…) Think, for example, of the difference between James Joyce’s fractured language and the fractured thought of his schizophrenic daughter Lucia (a patient of Jung’s), which one commentator likened to the difference betwen swimming in the river and drowning in it. A more prosaic example, although not from psychiatry, is sickle cell anemia. While having a double dose of the gene gives you the devastating syndrome, a single ‘hit’ (which gives you “sickle trait”) apparently confers some resistance to malaria, which is endemic in the regions where the sickle cell mutation arose.

The Top Ten Theories About What Caused the East Coast Power Blackout:

10. Governor Gray Davis wanted to show that California’s mess wasn’t really his fault: see, there were blackouts on the East Coast too!

9. Overstressed computers in West Coast attempting to tabulate all the candidates for California Governor.

8. Osama bin Laden and his compatriots check into a motel in New Jersey and turn up the air conditioning *really* high.

7. All innocent persons on death row in Texas prison system electrocuted at once.

6. Justice Antonin Scalia seeks return to original conditions when Constitution was written.

5. Department of Homeland Security seeks to confuse terrorists by hiding location of New York City.

4. Liberal paranoia comes true as country is returned to Dark Ages.

3. Latest new excuse by Bill Clinton to explain to Hillary why he can’t make it home for dinner.

2. President Bush attempts to divert electricity from middle class to the wealthiest 1 percent.

1. Fox News sues Con Edison for trademark infringement for using the word ‘con.'”

Prettier now, made over with Moveable Type, and it also seems Garret is starting to comment more than just blinking.

Greg Palast: The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights

Machines accurately infer user intent, remember experiences and allow users to call upon simulated experts

“The massive power failure that struck the Northeast and parts of the Midwest this week also delivered a jolt to Congress, where energy legislation has been stalled amid deep regional differences over how best to upgrade the nation’s aging electric power transmission system.” Washington Post

Competing bills differ on support for a plan that would put electricity transmission under the control of several regional authorities, a step toward a national transmission system opposed by regions like the South and the Northwest which enjoy cheaper power. Bush, as usual, voiced his usual authoritative but empty platitudes about an “antiquated transmission system” and how we’ve got to “figure out what went wrong.” Of course, his energy scheme focuses more on federal handouts to his friends on the supply side — tax incentives for oil and gas drilling (especially in wilderness areas) and nuclear power support. Although analysis of the power failure, whose precise cause remains unknown, does not suggest it was set off simply by a short-term overload in peak demand, almost no one in the national debate pays much attention to the potential value of conservation in reducing demand for power and consequent stress on the transmission system. And participants in the debate draw diametrically opposite lessons about whether it calls for centralization of control over the power grid or enhancing regional autonomy. Along with centralization, of course, comes automated control of transmission traffic, automatically reconfiguring connections across the grid to respond instantaneously to surges in demand somewhere in the system. It strikes me that this is precisely what analysts say caused the cascading series of failures on Thursday, whereas in areas that were spared it was because local power engineers flipped a switch to isolate their localities from the larger process.

While the debate should probably not be shaped by these dramatic failures which so far have happened only three times during my lifetime (1965, 1979 and now), they are probably only the tip of the iceberg in alerting us to potential unintended consequences of automation of electricity flow. The megalomaniacs (literally) who favor centralization, giveaways to the energy industry, and unquestioning responsiveness to the unchecked growth in demand are those who will control the public debate with emotional evocations of the spectre of chaos, anarchy and social breakdown with increasingly frequent massive blackouts if we do not do their bidding.

“The greatest brute an African mother ever brought to life” (according to Milton Obote, whom Amin overthrew but who returned to power in Uganda later to rule with equivalent inhumanity and repression) is dead at 80 in Saudi Arabian exile. The current Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, through a spokesman, said “Good.” Washington Post

“Iraqis who have suffered for months with little electricity gloated Friday over a blackout in the northeastern United States and southern Canada and offered some tips to help Americans beat the heat.

From frequent showers to rooftop slumber parties, Iraqis have developed advanced techniques to adapt to life without electricity.” CNN. How insensitive of them…to include Canada in their gloating.

[Here is a slightly edited version of an (as yet unpublished) letter I wrote to the editor of the New York Times, for your edification.]

To the editor:

I read with interest the article (“How One Hospital Benefited on Questionable Operations“, August 12) on the enormous fine Tenet Healthcare has just agreed to pay to the government to resolve accusations that doctors at one of its hospitals conducted unnecessary heart procedures and operations on hundreds of healthy patients.

You note that this is the largest penalty ever paid for accusations that a healthcare company billed federal health programs for unnecessary care. Criminal investigations of the doctors involved, although not the hospital or Tenet Healthcare, are underway.

Yet, such egregious cases are the tip of the iceberg of the abuses for-profit healthcare corporations commit in the name of patient care at the expense of those patients and the taxpayers, and they are by no means restricted to the notorious Tenet. ‘Benefiting from questionable practices’ is the name of the game in for-profit healthcare! In an era when community-based hospitals with an investment in quality care for members of their community struggle to remain afloat, the massive healthcare holding companies enjoy respectable growth and continuing returns on their shareholders’ investments. One would be hard-pressed to explain this distinction without suspecting questionable practices.

Mental health services, where the question of whether a patient requires care is more a subjective value judgment unsupported by laboratory or examination data, provide perhaps the greatest opportunity for a hospital’s owners to maximize Medicare reimbursement, and operating behavioral health facilities is the most fiscally healthy facet of for-profit corporate healthcare. As Medicare is the payor for our elderly patients as well as younger patients permanently disabled by major psychiatric illnesses, this results in exploitation of some of the most vulnerable in our population.

As until recently the medical director of a psychiatric hospital owned by a large healthcare corporation, I had a firsthand opportunity to see aspects of how this agenda is translated into operating policy. One example — it became clear to me that a concerted management policy functions to exclude clinical input from the loop when deciding which patients are to be accepted for admission. My name was routinely listed as the “accepting doctor” for cases I had never reviewed and would not have found suitable for inpatient admission (i.e., could the care they require be provided in a less expensive community setting? Could they be expected to benefit from the services of a hospital?).

Despite the perennial complaints of physicians and nurses at their facilities, the admissions offices of hospitals in this chain are staffed, as a matter of policy, with personnel who are not healthcare professionals and have no clinical expertise. Admissions policy amounts to, literally, nothing beyond filling vacant beds with paying patients as rapidly as possible. A similar climate shapes care after admission. Again, because justifying continuing need for inpatient stay is largely subjective in mental health care, utilization review functions to argue with payors for continued stay for as long as possible regardless of the clinical merits. Administrative consideration of the appropriateness of an admission does not occur until a patient’s benefits are exhausted and the hospital is no longer being reimbursed for continued treatment. Because Medicare is not “managed” and there is no prior approval or outside review of the appropriateness of hospital level of care, there is never any pressure for discharge of Medicare patients.

I was faulted for attempting to divert geriatric admissions to specialized geropsychiatry units or to psychiatry units in general hospitals where, as contrasted with a freestanding psychiatric facility, they receive more comprehensive and safer care for the medical and mental health problems which are often intermingled in a behavioral decompensation. A further reason for attempting to divert geriatric admissions from my hospital and other hospitals in its chain is that its corporate owners have a misguided risk management policy of not honoring patients’ advanced directives. Often, a patient and her family are not informed until after admission that the patient’s “Do Not Resuscitate” wishes will not be honored, i.e. that aggressive resuscitation measures will be initiated on all patients who have a cardio-respiratory arrest at that facility regardless of their wishes. But attempting to implement a policy of quality control assuring that the admissions department alerts potential admissions and their families to this policy results in lost admissions opportunities and empty beds.

Concerned about these practices after the corporate takeover of the hospital, the state regulatory agency responsible for its license and oversight placed the hospital under renewed scrutiny for these and other practices. As a result, the hospital was ordered more than a year ago to enhance the role of clinical leadership in making sure that all admissions were clinically appropriate rather than just a matter of managerial convenience. Instead of implementing the required changes, clinical management was replaced with more pliable personnel whose oversight has been pro forma.

This is a process I have seen repeated, with little variation, at a number of behavioral healthcare facilities in the for-profit sector. Those concerned with healthcare costs and any vestiges of ethical responsibility that healthcare providers have for their patients in our increasingly corporate-controlled healthcare industry would do well to look at the mental health sector and the “grey area” of practices which exploit Medicare reimbursement without on the surface of things being overtly fraudulent. Over recent decades, I shared most physicians’ concerns about the increasing intrusiveness of managed care scrutiny over their practices. My recent experiences have persuaded me, to the contrary, that such scrutiny may be the only hedge against the rapacious practices of the for-profit healthcare corporations. Those interested in cost containment would do well to advocate for a managed-care system for Medicare, the nation’s single largest underwriter of healthcare costs, similar to that which has made other insurers less exploitable by healthcare-for-profit. This would be a far more rational measure than focusing solely on fraud prevention and prosecution after the fact.

Sincerely,

Eliot Gelwan MD

Brookline, MA

Nicholas Kristof: “…this day is an opportunity to look at perhaps the most fundamental divide between America and the rest of the industrialized world: faith. Religion remains central to American life, and is getting more so, in a way that is true of no other industrialized country, with the possible exception of South Korea.

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary…” NY Times op-ed

Pentagon says tough duty bonuses are budget-buster: “The Pentagon wants to cut the pay of its 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, who are already contending with guerrilla-style attacks, homesickness and 120- degree-plus heat.

Unless Congress and President Bush take quick action when Congress returns after Labor Day, the uniformed Americans in Iraq and the 9,000 in Afghanistan will lose a pay increase approved last April of $75 a month in ‘imminent danger pay’ and $150 a month in ‘family separation allowances.'” SF Chronicle

Derrick Z. Jackson: The Cold War Queen: “The only nuclear event going on concerning Iraq is a meltdown of the Bush administration.” Boston Globe/CommonDreams

Jonathan Schell: “Events have suddenly and unexpectedly handed the Democratic Party an opportunity to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. His main justifications for his war in Iraq (existence of weapons of mass destruction, connections with Al Qaeda) have collapsed, while the war itself intensifies. At home, his tax cuts have sent deficits out of control and jobs are disappearing at a gallop. Each of these conditions seems likely to be either chronic or permanent: The prospect of finding actual weapons of mass destruction, though conceivable, has dimmed to the vanishing point; the cost in blood and treasure of the occupation seems likely to increase; the deficit is likely to remain high or get higher. On other issues-healthcare, the environment, education-the public trusts Democrats more than it does the President. His poll numbers have fallen, from the high sixties and mid-seventies a month or two ago to the mid-fifties today.

But it’s one thing for Bush to fail, another for the Democrats to succeed.” The Nation/CommonDreams

Haroon Siddiqui: “Americans don’t quite know what they are talking about when it comes to where the reistance is coming from.” Toronto Star/CommonDreams

Tom Turnipseed: “The desperation of the U.S. military plight in Iraq was very clear when General Ricardo Sanchez, the U.S. commander in Iraq, commented on the daily casualties of U.S. soldiers in the guerrilla war. General Sanchez said, ‘Every American needs to believe this: that if we fail here in this environment, the next battlefield will be the streets of America.’

Fighting in ‘the streets of America ‘ is typical Bush/Cheney fear-mongering hyperbole. It echoes the top down use of the fear factor by the Bushies. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq recently said, ‘I would rather be fighting them here than fighting them in New York’. Such scare tactics are reminiscent of Bush’s false admonitions of Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and his justification of attacking Iraq to ‘prevent another 9/11’. Ironically, although no ‘ties to Al Qaeda’ have ever been proven regarding Saddam Hussein’s regime as alleged by the Bush/Cheney regime, the bumbling U.S. war machine has managed to unite the opposite extremes of Islam against the U.S. in Iraq.” CommonDreams

“Low-level activity reduces risk by 43%” National Post

Killing an 11-year-old boy to restore democracy. Boston Globe

“New findings from a Queen’s behavioural expert in eye/hand movement provide the first direct evidence that our brain patterns are similar whether we are actually doing something or simply watching someone else do it.

It’s an insight that could have significant implications for the assessment of people with various movement disorders such as some stroke victims, says Dr. Randy Flanagan, who conducted the study with Dr. Roland Johansson of Umea University in Sweden. The methods employed in the study could be used to determine whether people with impaired movement control also have problems understanding and perceiving the actions of others. The answer to this question will have implications for both diagnosis and assessment.

‘This helps to explain how we understand the movements of others,’ Dr. Flanagan says. ‘We perceive an action by running it at some covert level in our own system. An example would be when sports fans watch football on TV and move in anticipation of action on the screen.’ Although this theory is supported by previous neuro-physiological and brain imaging studies, until now there has been little direct, behavioural evidence.” EurekAlert!

There has been excitement in the neuroscience field for several years over the implication of the discovery of so-called mirror neurons in primates, about which I have posted before and which react when one is watching behaviors of others as other neurons do when the individual is performing an action. As a potential physiological basis for empathy if they operate in humans as they do in other primates, their development may have been important to making us human. The current study seems to offer parallels and may be empirical evidence that the mirroring circuitry exists in humans.

Dervala daydreams about Elvis.

I’m so glad I subscribe to the WSJ OpinionJournal if only because James Taranto is so much fun to laugh at. In today’s column, he is suspicious of reports that the French heat wave has killed 3,000 because he does not know what to make of the Health Ministry statement that this figure includes deaths “linked directly or indirectly” to the heat. It would seem to me someone who does not understand epidemiological methods is not qualified to comment on an epidemiological finding, but he takes exception to this information:

In a statement, the ministry said its estimate was partly drawn from studying deaths in 23 Paris regional hospitals from July 25-Aug. 12 and from information provided by General Funeral Services.

According to 2002 figures, the Paris regional hospitals that were surveyed could have expected some 39 deaths a day, the ministry said. But Tuesday, they recorded nearly 180, it said.

“We note a clear increase in cases beginning Aug. 7-8, which we can regard as the start of the epidemic of deaths linked to the heat,” the statement said.

Morgues and funeral directors have reported skyrocketing demand for their services since the heat wave took hold. General Funeral Services, France’s largest undertaker, said it handled some 3,230 deaths from Aug. 6-12, compared to 2,300 on an average week in the year–a 37 percent jump.

He says it does not establish a causal link between the heat and the deaths. Uhhh, calculating the “excess mortality” compared to some reference period when, you reason, the factor in question is the sole variable is the closest you can come to causality in epidemiology, and is a well-accepted technique for assessing the impact of a heatwave.

But his contorted reasoning thrusts his foot even deeper into his mouth with his next statement. He thinks the 3,000 figure was chosen to compete with the number of U.S. deaths on Sept. 11th, 2001. “A popular lunatic conspiracy theory on the “European street” has it that George W. Bush is to blame every time the weather is bad.” Oh, and the French Ministry of Health is a prime proponent of this lunatic theory? Sorry, James, there’s only one lunatic in this story, and he’s not in Paris.

By the way, in another story further down the page, Taranto derides Sen. John Kerry for being not only “haughty” but “French-looking.” Yes, that’s what he wrote.

“The specter of the Iran-Contra affair is haunting Washington. Some of the people and countries are the same, and so are the methods – particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy.

Boiled down to its essentials, the Iran-Contra affair was about a small group of officials based in the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that ran an “off-the-books” operation to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages. The picture being painted by various insider sources in the media suggests a similar but far more ambitious scheme at work.

Taken collectively, what these officials describe and what is already on the public record suggests the existence of a disciplined network of zealous, like-minded individuals. Centered in Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith’s office and around Richard Perle in the Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon, this exclusive group of officials operates under the aegis of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.” AlterNet

Poindexter quits Pentagon research post AP/Salon

“Few orchestras play the works of contemporary classical composers, and almost no one buys their albums. Is their music uninspired—or do we simply not get it?

…in the world of music, contemporary classical composers inhabit a dissonant ghetto all their own. Few people listen to them, few critics review them and few people understand them. Western classical music as a whole makes up only 3.5 percent of the world’s total music market (contemporary works aren’t broken out separately). In 2002, classical-album sales were down 17 percent. Orchestras rarely feature contemporary works. “If you go to a museum or dance company, the balance between old and new is completely different,” says Nicholas Kenyon, the BBC’s controller of the Proms, live events and television classical music. But is that because new music is uninspired, or just not as familiar to us as Mozart? Are the composers to blame—or are we?” MSNBC

Addendum: As Abby points out in the attached comment, if you are interested in ‘new music’, do not skip the excellent NPR American Mavericks series, to which I have previously blinked. You can listen to a streaming version of the programs over your net connection.

David Brooks: “Maybe it’s time to admit the obvious. We don’t really care about diversity all that much in America, even though we talk about it a great deal. Maybe somewhere in this country there is a truly diverse neighborhood in which a black Pentecostal minister lives next to a white anti-globalization activist, who lives next to an Asian short-order cook, who lives next to a professional golfer, who lives next to a postmodern-literature professor and a cardiovascular surgeon. But I have never been to or heard of that neighborhood. Instead, what I have seen all around the country is people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves.

…

Look around at your daily life. Are you really in touch with the broad diversity of American life? Do you care? ” The Atlantic

“…researchers believe as many as 17 mysteriously dead whales are floating over a 125-mile stretch of ocean in Canada and the United States. In addition, three other dead whales have been spotted much closer to the New England coast, and scientists are attempting to test them for possible connections to what has become the largest mass death in this region involving large whales since 1987.” Boston Globe

Bizarre gruesome postscript on the controversial plan to cryogenically preserve the all-star’s remains. Read it before you go with Alcor Life Extension! “The silver can containing Williams’ head resembles a lobster pot and is marked in black with Williams’ patient I.D. number, A-1949, according to the SI story. Williams’ head has been shaved and drilled with holes. Verducci also reports that, before the head was placed in its present location, it was accidentally cracked as many as 10 times due to fluctuating storage temperatures…Two dime-size holes were drilled into the head to observe the brain condition and, more important, to insert sensors that could detect cracks during the freezing process. But after “a huge crack” occurred in the head in April and nine more cracks were reported in July, Williams’ head was removed from its original container and eventually placed in its current “neuro-can.”” Sports Illustrated [via Daily Rotten]

US Forces Say Believe Saddam Near Tikrit: “A senior U.S. commander said on Thursday he had good reason to believe Saddam Hussein was around his hometown of Tikrit and would be caught ‘sooner rather than later.'” Reuters

When did we start treating children like children? “A good deal of our intellectual life in the past half century has been ruled by the following pattern: First, a French person, with great brilliance and little regard for standards of evidence, promulgates a theory overturning dearly held beliefs. Second, many academics, especially the young, seize on the theory and run with it, in the process loading it with far more emotional and political freight than the French thinkerr—who, after all, was just “doing theory”—had in mind. Meanwhile, other scholars indignantly reaffirm the pre-revisionist view, and everyone calls for more research, to decide the question. In the third stage, the research is produced, and it confuses everybody, because it is too particular, too respectful of variation and complexity, to support either the nice old theory or the naughty new one.

Recent histories of the family have followed this itinerary.” The New Yorker

Jerome Groopman: Can Hypochondria Be Cured?:

“Studies show that at least a quarter of all patients report symptoms that appear to have no physical basis, and that one in ten continues to believe that he has a terminal disease even after the doctor has found him to be healthy. Experts say that between three and six per cent of patients seen by primary-care physicians suffer from hypochondria, the irrational fear of illness. The number is likely growing, thanks to increased medical reporting in the media, which devotes particular attention to scary new diseases like sars, and to the Internet, which provides a wealth of clinical information (and misinformation) that can help turn a concerned patient into a neurotic one. Nevertheless, hypochondria is rarely discussed in the doctor’s office. The ‘‘worried well,’’ as sufferers are sometimes called, typically feel insulted by any suggestion that their symptoms have a psychological basis. Most patients are given a formal diagnosis of hypochondria only after ten or so years of seeing physicians, if they get such a diagnosis at all.” The New Yorker

Groopman writes this wonderful series for the magazine in which he considers area of medical controversy with compassion and insight. I was particularly interested in his take on this topic on the border of psychiatry and ‘real’ medicine. In hypochondriasis, patients are essentially exploiting the phsician’s fallibility and wish to be reassuring for unconscious reasons; a non-psychiatrist grappling comfortably with the problem would have to be penetrating about the limitations of the doctor’s art as well as intuitive about unconscious process — no mean feat. Groopman profiles a primary care physician who is, and then turns to a depiction of the work of neuropsychiatrist Brian Fallon (whom I knew way back when before either of us went to medical school). Because it is anathema to suggest to a hypochondriacal patient that it is psychological at root, this quintessentially psychiatric problem is rarely treated by psychiatrists. Fallon has an interesting take on it, having struggled to get referrals of patients considered hypochondriacal by his non-psychiatric colleagues to study.

Fallon has reconceived hypochondria as a heterogeneous disorder: some sufferers are indeed obsessive-compulsives, whereas others are experiencing a prolonged reaction to a traumatic event, like the death of a loved one. He also believes that people who are labelled hypochondriacs can behave in diametrically opposite ways in terms of seeking medical care. For some, the fear of illness is so great that they avoid all doctors. These patients indulge in the fantasy that if a doctor doesn’t examine them, then the illness won’t appear. Another group needs to see doctors constantly, even when these visits cause more anxiety or humiliation.

What this heterogeneity hints at is that the hypochondriacal ‘label’ may have something, or as much, or more, to do with the distasteful reaction her physicians have to such a patient as it does to the underlying process in the patient herself. (This is a familiar problem in psychiatry as well, which I refer to as ‘diagnosis by countertransference’, usuallly seen when a disagreeable or difficult patient is labelled with borderline personality disorder. In my teaching and supervision with regard to both hypochondriasis/somatization and borderline personality dynamics, it is one of the most difficult issues for trainees to dea with.) Groopman’s article ends with a patient’s summation of perhaps the best approach to treating such difficult cases:

‘‘Hypochondria is not at all funny, like people think,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s not a ‘Seinfeld’ episode. It’s a horrible, horrible way to live.”

“Concerns over transatlantic relations, American attitudes toward the United Nations Security Council, and the future of multilateralism stem from a single, overarching issue of the post–Cold War era: the issue of international legitimacy. When the United States wields its power, especially its military power, will world opinion and, more importantly its fellow liberal democracies, especially in Europe, regard its actions as broadly legitimate? Or will the United States appear, as it did to many during the crisis in Iraq, as a kind of rogue superpower?” — Robert Kagan, The Carnegie Endowment, Foreign Policy Ultimately a wimpy article, the main point is that the ‘legitimacy’ of our foreign policy will be judged by (drumroll) how things turn out on the ground (stability, democracy) in Iraq and the region. In the broadest terms, if the US is not invested in ‘legitimacy’, the points are moot. [Raise your hand if you think BushCo care about the stability and democracy of Iraq. I thought so.] There is no discussion of the consequences of pursuing rogue foreign policy in the modern world or how to enforce international accountability on a state like the US acting in illegitimate ways.

Maureen Dowd: “Is the internet over? …The most telling sign that the Internet is no longer the cool American frontier? Blogs, which sprang up to sass the establishment, have been overrun by the establishment.” NY Times op-ed

“With a publicly available search engine, a few well-chosen e-mail addresses, and off-the-shelf viral code, anyone can commit an act of cyberterrorism–or so says Roelof Temmingh, technical director of SensePost, a South African computer security company.

Speaking at the recent Black Hat Briefings and Defcon 11 conferences, Temmingh explained that the current methods of assailing computer networks–denial-of-service attacks (DoS) or remote break-ins–inconvenience too few people to really impact a nation’s information infrastructure. The sort of exploit that could really hurt a country, Temmingh suggests, would more likely be based on e-mail viruses, a concept he outlined in a recent paper.” ZDNet

Answer: not really:

“Bjorn3D has put together an article that answers the age old question: Will customizing your Windows PC slow down your computer?

To find out, he loaded up Object Desktop components such as WindowBlinds, ObjectBar, IconPackager, and WinStyles and then put on CursorXP to top it off.

He then ran it thorugha host of benchmarks comparing it to his clean setup. Benchmarks included 3DMark, PCMark, UT2K3, and others.

The result? No discernable performance hit.” WinCustomize

Gamma-ray weapons could trigger next arms race: “An exotic explosive that blurs the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons could shift the global balance of power.” New Scientist