“Challenged by terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare in Iraq, the Pentagon recently held a screening of The Battle of Algiers, the film that in the late 1960’s was required viewing and something of a teaching tool for radicalized Americans and revolutionary wannabes opposing the Vietnam War.

Back in those days the young audiences that often sat through several showings of Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 re-enactment of the urban struggle between French troops and Algerian nationalists, shared the director’s sympathies for the guerrillas of the F.L.N., Algeria’s National Liberation Front. Those viewers identified with and even cheered for Ali La Pointe, the streetwise operator who drew on his underworld connections to organize a network of terrorist cells and entrenched it within the Casbah, the city’s old Muslim section. In the same way they would hiss Colonel Mathieu, the character based on Jacques Massu, the actual commander of the French forces.” NY Times

“The Atkins diet has triumphed, the French diet guru Michel Montignac is in resurgence and ”low carbs” has become the mantra (or is it war cry?) of the fit and fabulous. So in a clever bit of adaptation, bread, once the benign starter to every restaurant meal, has migrated to the other, more sinful side of the menu. It has become dessert.” An ode to (and recipe for) the grilled chocolate sandwich. NY Times

Seth Borenstein: Bush Administration Fulfills Wish List for Corporate America: “The Bush administration eased a series of important environmental regulations in a quiet flurry of late-summer activity, delivering almost every rule change on corporate America’s wish list.” CommonDreams

Jonathan Schell: The matter is not in our hands. It never was. “These plans to mass-produce democracies and transform the mentalities of whole peoples have the look of desperate attempts– as grandiose as they are unhinged from reality – to overlook the obvious: First, that people, not excluding Iraqis, do not like to be conquered and occupied by foreign powers and are ready and able to resist; second, that disarmament, which is indeed an essential goal for the new century, can only, except in the rarest of circumstances, be achieved not through war but through the common voluntary will of nations. It is not the character of the occupation, it is occupation itself that the Iraqis are, in a multitude of ways, rejecting.” AlterNet

“The father of a… soldier killed in an ambush in Iraq that former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch survived said that Lynch’s million-dollar book deal will taint the memory of the soldiers killed in the ambush.

‘Pretty severe, isn’t it?’ Randy Kiehl, the father of Army Spc. James Kiehl, said in an exclusive interview with KSAT 12 News Wednesday from his home in Comfort. ‘That she makes money off the death of my son and off the deaths of so many others.'” KSAT 12 News

“Who, we have to wonder, was the idiot who approved use of the Mall in Washington for a three-and-a-half hour commercial for the National Football League?”

Britney Spears appeared and the crowd, such as it was, cheered when she stripped down to a band-aid sized pair of shorts and a halter-top and strutted around the stage in what, we suppose, was supposed to be something that someone actually attempted to choreograph.

Stephen Tyler and Aerosmith proved that aging rockers don’t go away, they just get more shriveled and shrill. Tyler may have had a voice once but who can tell now. He just shouts. Capitol Hill Blue

“Can’t seem to remember to rinse out your coffee mug? You’ll appreciate this.

Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry is looking for the most spectacular–or, depending on how you view such things, disgusting–growth of mold to be found in an unwashed coffee mug.

The prize? An evening of, ah, culture.

The contest is meant to mark the British discovery of penicillin 75 years ago. Photos only are being accepted, not actual mugs.

Sorry, but the contest is limited to Britain.” Chicago Sun-Times

“The Supreme Court in Lawrence did far more than strike down an extreme and discriminatory Texas law that forbade sodomy by homosexuals but not heterosexuals. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion for the court also overruled Bowers v. Hardwick, a 1986 opinion holding that moral disapproval was a legitimate reason for states to regulate intimate behavior. By ruling out moral disapproval as a permissible basis for legislation, Kennedy, in the eyes of liberal activists and social conservatives alike, made it more likely that lower courts will come to recognize a constitutional right to gay marriage. If this happens — the Massachusetts Supreme Court may have already ruled on the question of gay marriage by the time this article appears — conservative activists hope and expect that many Americans will finally be roused to take political action.” New York Times Magazine Now there’s a war I’d love to see ignited…

“An ancient icon depicting Christ has been removed from display at the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg after claims that its ‘energy field’ is killing staff.

The icon has led to the deaths of several supervisors, an official at Russia’s foremost art museum, on the banks of the River Neva, said Wednesday.” Chicago Sun-Times

It wasn’t really Ecstasy that caused the brain damage attributed to it:

“Scientists at Johns Hopkins University reported in September 2002 that key neurons in the brains of squirrel monkeys and baboons were damaged when the animals were given doses of Ecstasy that mimicked those often taken by users of the drug during ‘all-night dance parties.’

They said the study raised questions about whether Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, might hasten the onset of Parkinson’s disease, a disorder triggered by the permanent loss of dopamine-producing nerve cells. It was those nerve cells that were reported to have been damaged by Ecstasy in the Johns Hopkins research.

In retracting the story, the journal Science said Friday that the researchers had discovered that labels on drugs supplied to them by an outside company were incorrect, and the animals had actually been given a different drug, methamphetamine.” Salon

The research on MDMA’s side effects continues to be inconclusive and mixed; this retractions does not necessarily mean that heavy users should be reassured. In particular, the drug’s connection with the rave scene means it is often taken in combination with other substances and under circumstances that pose cardiovascular risks.

“If Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong. That is to say, if Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong to believe that a new car will make you as happy as you imagine. You are wrong to believe that a new kitchen will make you happy for as long as you imagine. You are wrong to think that you will be more unhappy with a big single setback (a broken wrist, a broken heart) than with a lesser chronic one (a trick knee, a tense marriage). You are wrong to assume that job failure will be crushing. You are wrong to expect that a death in the family will leave you bereft for year upon year, forever and ever. You are even wrong to reckon that a cheeseburger you order in a restaurant — this week, next week, a year from now, it doesn’t really matter when — will definitely hit the spot. That’s because when it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong.

A professor in Harvard’s department of psychology, Gilbert likes to tell people that he studies happiness. But it would be more precise to say that Gilbert — along with the psychologist Tim Wilson of the University of Virginia, the economist George Loewenstein of Carnegie-Mellon and the psychologist (and Nobel laureate in economics) Daniel Kahneman of Princeton — has taken the lead in studying a specific type of emotional and behavioral prediction. In the past few years, these four men have begun to question the decision-making process that shapes our sense of well-being: how do we predict what will make us happy or unhappy — and then how do we feel after the actual experience? For example, how do we suppose we’ll feel if our favorite college football team wins or loses, and then how do we really feel a few days after the game? How do we predict we’ll feel about purchasing jewelry, having children, buying a big house or being rich? And then how do we regard the outcomes? According to this small corps of academics, almost all actions — the decision to buy jewelry, have kids, buy the big house or work exhaustively for a fatter paycheck — are based on our predictions of the emotional consequences of these events.” NY Times Magazine

Is this, essentially, an academic verification of the Buddhist truth of impermanence and the source of unhappiness in attachment (cravings)? To question that we understand what we want and are adept at improving our happiness seems to go profoundly to the heart of things. “On average, bad events proved less intense and more transient than test participants predicted. Good events proved less intense and briefer as well.” [It also might prove the old adage, ‘Be careful what you wish for; you might get it’…] There might be some relationship between the findings and the fact that Gilbert, who has been praised within academic psychology as one of the most gifted social psychologists of the era, was a high school dropout who “caught the tail end of the hippie movement”, a vagabond and, among other occupations, a (seemingly mediocre) science fiction writer.

One of the interesting discoveries Gilbert has made — people’s estimation that bigger, often solitary bad events dwarf more long-lived but minor annoyances as a contributor to unhappiness should be questioned. He measures this within his ‘psychoeconomic’ viewpoint, but it resonates with the thinking of many classical psychodynamic psychologists about the sequelae of trauma, about which I have written here before. Part of the reaction to traumas is a psychological maneuver of self-blame even over events over which we were helpless, which serves to reassure against feeling out of control of the outcome of our life. Even though we did not succeed in warding off the trauma, it is as if we are saying, we could have, and we will the next time. In contrast, the more petty contributions to unhappiness, the chronic dissatisfactions, come to seem so much a part of the fabric of our lives that we do not see ourselves as having potential control over them when we might, in fact, be able to change them. There’s a sort of figure-ground problem here. In psychotherapy about life dissatisfaction, this ‘learned helplessness’ becomes an important issue to grapple with; very often, you find yur patient is focusing on changing the wrong things.

Gilbert and his associates describe a similar phenomenon on the positive side:

”We don’t realize how quickly we will adapt to a pleasurable event and make it the backdrop of our lives. When any event occurs to us, we make it ordinary. And through becoming ordinary, we lose our pleasure.”

And we are unable to accurately predict that we will ‘adapt to happiness’ in this way. As the pleasure diminishes, he says, we go on in quest of the next thing, making the same error over and over again. The Buddhist doctrine of impermanence and the futility of attachment says the same thing.

If it is true that we consistently make costly forecasting errors, what impact could this work have in correcting our aspirations? It is to that interesting question that the article turns at the end, and to the further question of whether institutional or individual judgments would and should be influenced more. For one thing, the influence of this work leans toward liberal thinking that there is little overall benefit to boosting the standard of living of anyone already in middle class comfort. In other words, the misery of the poor is incommensurately more valid than the misery of the well-off unfulfilled by the way they spend their excess resources.

Addendum: It may not be an accident that I noticed the Buddhist significance of Gilbert’s work. Here’s what a Google search on “Daniel Gilbert and Buddhist|Buddhism” reveals. For instance, he is a participant in a monumental impending conference featuring an interchange between the Dalai Lama and western academic researchers in a variety of fields.

“From airport terminals decorated like Starbucks to the popularity of hair dye among teenage boys, one thing is clear: we have entered the Age of Aesthetics. Sensory appeals are everywhere, and they are intensifying, radically changing how Americans live and work.

We expect every strip mall and city block to offer designer coffee, a copy shop with do-it-yourself graphics workstations, and a nail salon for manicures on demand. Every startup, product, or public space calls for an aesthetic touch, which gives us more choices, and more responsibility. By now, we all rely on style to express identity. And aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes.

In this penetrating, keenly observed book, Virginia Postrel shows that the “look and feel” of people, places, and things are more important than we think. Aesthetic pleasure taps deep human instincts and is essential for creativity and growth. Drawing from fields as diverse as fashion, real estate, politics, design, and economics, Postrel deftly chronicles our culture’s aesthetic imperative and argues persuasively that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society.”

I haven’t read the book, but it sounds from the blurb as if Postrel is going to have to wrestle with whether an aesthetic imperative can be satisfied by superficiality, and whether the identities conveyed by such stylin’ have any substance..

“Forget performance related pay and flexi-time, new research by Martin Corbett from Warwick Business School reveals large corporations increasingly use hip pop music to develop loyal, hard-working employees, and encourage workers, literally, to sing from the same hymn sheet. However, despite encouragement, not all employees dance to the same tune.” EurekAlert!

“Scientists and perfumers are searching for the chemical scent that drives humans wild… ‘Warning: Contains pheromones. (Wear if you dare!) May excite wild physical attraction.’ Thus beckons a suggestively shaped vial of ‘Chemical: Attraction’ in the CVS display. Vogue International offers this fragrance for men and women for just $14.99. Who could resist the temptation to conduct a field test?” Boston Globe

“Is Sesame Street really brought to you by the letters U, S and A?

The US Army – which partly sponsors the show’s makers, the New York-based Children’s Television Workshop – certainly loves Sesame Street. Especially its saccharine theme music about everything being ‘A-OK’.

Iraqi prisoners were treated to repeated playings of the ditty at ear-splitting volume by US psychological operations officers intent on encouraging their captives to submit to questioning.

This revelation seems to run contrary to everything the TV show for pre-school children has stood for since its first broadcast in 1969. Also, by bringing Big Bird, Elmo and Mr Snuffleupagus into such disrepute, the US soldiers may have tarnished a more subtle plan hatched by their masters back in Washington.” According to the article, elements in the Bush administration think Sesame Street is the ideal vehicle to export American values and teach the third world not to hate us. The Children’s Television Workshop objects to the characterization of its flagship show.

“The work of a shy and reclusive Bulgarian-born writer may seem like a strange source of inspiration for a computer game.

But the writings of Elias Canetti about the nature of power are behind a complex and ambitious game called Republic: The Revolution, which has just gone on sale in the UK.

Republic is a strategy simulation game that puts you in the role of a budding revolutionary, out to overthrow a despotic and corrupt regime.

Much of the artificial intelligence in the game is based on the book, Crowds and Power, by the 1981 Nobel Laureate in Literature.” BBC News

Calls for Papers:

“…Have individuals’ feelings of hope and

possibility been diminished by the ‘triumph’ of capitalism, economic

downturns (no longer referred to as ‘depressions’), corporate and

political scandals, the rise of the security state and increasing

threats to civil liberties, the apparent inevitability of certain

social problems, the limited successes (failures?) of the Left and

progressives? How might focusing on depression help us to understand

phenomena like political nonparticipation, the rise of

fundamentalisms, growing consumerism, and the retreat to the private

sphere? More hopefully, we wonder: might depression have a future in

politics?

Ultimately, the conference will work to dispel the notion that

disempowerment is the only prognosis for the depressed or that the

goal ought to lie in ‘getting happy.’ Instead, we will ask how

depression might be used politically. In particular, a guiding

question will concern the historical specificity of our own moment:

in a time when certain narratives no longer inspire optimism and when

a culture-wide sense of a totalizing despair has started to seem

natural, how might we see the political horizon opening up in new

ways? “

“There is much dismay and even despair over the slow pace at which broadband is advancing in the United States. This slow pace is often claimed to be fatally retarding the recovery of the entire IT industry. As a result there are increasing calls for government action, through regulation or even through outright subsidies.

A careful examination shows that broadband is full of puzzles and paradoxes, which suggests caution before taking any drastic action. As one simple example, the basic meaning of broadband is almost universally misunderstood, since by the official definition, we all have broadband courtesy of the postal system. Also, broadband penetration, while generally regarded as disappointingly slow, is actually extremely fast by most standards, faster than cell phone diffusion at a comparable stage. Furthermore, many of the policies proposed for advancing broadband are likely to have perverse effects. There are many opportunities for narrowband services that are not being exploited, some of which might speed up broadband adoption.” — Andrew Odlyzko, First Monday

Robert Scheer: “How distressing that it turns out to be Bush, leader of the world’s greatest democracy, who is the true master of denial and deception, rather than Hussein, who proved to be a paper tiger. Bush is such a master at deceiving the American public that even now he is not threatened with the prospect of impeachment or any serious congressional investigation into the possibility that he led this nation into war with lies.

But lie he did, at the very least in the crucial matter of pushing secret evidence that even a president of his limited experience had to know was so flimsy as to not be evidence at all. U.S. intelligence officials now say the administration was lied to by Iraqi émigrés.

That excuse for the U.S. intelligence failure in Iraq would be laughable were the circumstances not so appalling. It means Bush ignored all the cautions of career diplomats and intelligence experts in every branch of the U.S. government over the unsubstantiated word of Iraqi renegades. ” LA Times

. Okay, I promise to stop with the pat “Bush lied” posts soon, unless something too juicy to ignore comes along. It is not as if I have to influence the leanings of my readers int he next election, after all…

“Are you a neoconservative? Take this quiz to find out.” Christian Science Monitor Part of a CSM special report, Empire Builders: Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power.

“From airport terminals decorated like Starbucks to the popularity of hair dye among teenage boys, one thing is clear: we have entered the Age of Aesthetics. Sensory appeals are everywhere, and they are intensifying, radically changing how Americans live and work.

We expect every strip mall and city block to offer designer coffee, a copy shop with do-it-yourself graphics workstations, and a nail salon for manicures on demand. Every startup, product, or public space calls for an aesthetic touch, which gives us more choices, and more responsibility. By now, we all rely on style to express identity. And aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes.

In this penetrating, keenly observed book, Virginia Postrel shows that the “look and feel” of people, places, and things are more important than we think. Aesthetic pleasure taps deep human instincts and is essential for creativity and growth. Drawing from fields as diverse as fashion, real estate, politics, design, and economics, Postrel deftly chronicles our culture’s aesthetic imperative and argues persuasively that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society.”

I haven’t read the book, but it sounds from the blurb as if Postrel is going to have to wrestle with whether an aesthetic imperative can be satisfied by superficiality, and whether the identities conveyed by such stylin’ have any substance..