An AIDS activist contemplates the heyday of agitprop iconism and laments the lack of urgency in the movement’s recent history. —New York Times Magazine

Selling Directly to the Mind:

“You see a sweater for sale and think, ‘I have to have that!’ Clint Kilts wants to know why.

Kilts, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, is investigating the underlying neural organization that governs personal preferences and the decision-making process. Regarding a product, there’s not a lot of conscious deliberation, he says. People decide quickly whether they like something.” —The Scientist

Brain Area Identified That Weighs Rewards:

By studying how monkeys choose to look at lighted targets for juice rewards, neurobiologists have identified a still-mysterious region of the cerebral cortex as an area that judges the value of rewards, and adjusts that value as circumstances change.

The finding adds a significant piece to the puzzle of how the brain is wired to make judgments, perhaps even moral judgments, about the outside world, said the researchers. The findings may also have implications for understanding a number of neurological disorders, said the scientists. Damage to the area the researchers studied — called the posterior cingulate cortex — has been linked to cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as pathologies of stroke, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and spatial disorientation. —Duke Med News

“The year in which IQ is tested can make the difference between life and death for a death row inmate. It also can determine the eligibility of children for special services, adults’ Social Security benefits and recruits’ suitability for certain military careers, according to a new study by Cornell University researchers.

That’s because IQ scores tend to rise 5 to 25 points in a single generation. This so-called ‘Flynn effect’ is corrected by toughening up the test every 15 to 20 years to reset the mean score to 100. A score from a test taken at the end of one cycle can vary widely from a score derived from a test taken at the beginning of the next cycle, when the test is more difficult, says Stephen J. Ceci, professor of human development at Cornell.” A .pdf of Kanaya, Scullin and Ceci’s paper

is here.

Reagan image: new deal for the dime? “Some Republican members of Congress want to get Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt off the dime, literally.

They have provoked a partisan battle by proposing to flip the left-facing image on America’s dime — getting rid of the face of FDR and replacing it with a man they hold in the same lofty regard: former Republican President Ronald Reagan.” —SF Chronicle

Nancy Reagan has weighed in on the side of maintaining the Roosevelt homage on the dime. (Perhaps she is shooting for a larger denomination?) —New Zealand Herald

“As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire.

In selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in… The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied territories.

So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to American soldiers. But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over.” —New York Times

…And, in the long run, it will have the same success the Israeli tactics have had.

“A seventh-grade social studies teacher in Presque Isle who said he was barred from teaching about non-Christian civilizations has sued his school district, claiming it violated his First Amendment right of free expression.

Gary Cole of Washburn, a teacher at Skyway Middle School, sued School Administrative District 1 in U.S. District Court in Bangor.

Cole alleged that complaints by ‘a small group of fundamentalist Christian individuals’ led to the creation of a curriculum ‘which never mentions religions other than Christianity and never teaches the history of civilizations other than Christian civilizations.’

‘He can’t even teach the history of anti-Semitism (or the) history of ancient Greece,’ said Cole’s lawyer, A.J. Greif of Bangor.” —Portland (ME) Press Herald This was the news item about which Rafe Coburn said, “The Taliban aren’t nearly as alien as most people would like to believe.”

“Struggling 2004 Democratic wannabe John Kerry fires an X-rated attack at President Bush over Iraq and uses the f-word – highly unusual language for a presidential contender – in a stunning new interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Sen. Kerry (Mass.) used the undeleted expletive to express his frustration and anger over how the Iraq issue has hurt him because he voted for the war resolution while Democratic front-runner Howard Dean has soared by opposing it.

‘I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, ‘I’m against everything’? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did,’ Kerry told the youth-oriented magazine.” —New York Post

His unexpurgated anger, however, seems less directed against Bush and Iraq than it does his own freefalling chances to win the Presidency.

“An ex-congressman who had sex with a subordinate won clemency from a president who had sex with a subordinate, then was hired by a clergyman who had sex with a subordinate.” —Snopes

“Imagine a discussion about the cultural divide between the United States and Europe and not a word about Michael Jackson, 50 Cent, Tom Cruise or Paris Hilton.

Instead, prominent European and American writers mocked the Bush administration, lamented the rise of religious fundamentalism in the United States and squabbled about Israel at a forum Thursday night sponsored by PEN American Center and the Institute for the Humanities at New York University.

They also discussed more writerly concerns: why more translations of foreign-language books are not published in the United States, for instance, and why Americans do not seem to take their writers as seriously as the Europeans do theirs.” —New York Times

Which Dictionary is Best?

“I restricted my testing to seven of the relatively affordable and frequently updated college dictionaries (the type of dictionary used not only in the most dormitory rooms but in the most homes and offices as well). To determine my rankings, I looked up seven times over words that I knew but wanted to understand better (like regret, jealous, and overdetermined); words with disputed usages (including aggravate, disinterested, fortuitous); words with potentially interesting etymologies (e.g., chauvinism, juggernaut, lagniappe); neologisms and slang (e.g., blogger, booty, yay); anything friends had looked up recently (e.g., Panglossian, condominium, alembic); as well as the words I didn’t know in the last book I read, J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello.” —Slate

How drug firms ‘hoodwink’ medical journals:

“Hundreds of articles in medical journals claiming to be written by academics or doctors have been penned by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies, an Observer inquiry reveals.

The journals, bibles of the profession, have huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe and the treatment hospitals provide. But The Observer has uncovered evidence that many articles written by so-called independent academics may have been penned by writers working for agencies which receive huge sums from drug companies to plug their products.” —Observer.UK

I have previously written about this particular bit of medical whoring, but here it comes again.

New Bill Bars Extra Insurance for Drugs:

“Millions of Medicare beneficiaries have bought private insurance to fill gaps in Medicare. But a little-noticed provision of the legislation prohibits the sale of any Medigap policy that would help pay drug costs after Jan. 1, 2006, when the new Medicare drug benefit becomes available.

This is one of many surprises awaiting beneficiaries, who will find big gaps in the drug benefit and might want private insurance to plug the holes — just as they buy insurance to supplement Medicare coverage of doctors’ services and hospital care.” —New York Times

Congress’ supposed rationale is a curious one: “Health economists have long asserted that when beneficiaries are insulated from the costs, they tend to overuse medical services.” But, unless I have missed something in the practice of medicine, while sharing some of the cost of medical care may control overutilization, sharing the cost of prescription drugs will not help control overprescribing, since it is not the benificiary but the benificiary’s physician who decides what medications are necessary.

Popular Surgery Raises Concern:

“With vanity always in fashion and shoes reaching iconic cultural status, women are having parts of their toes lopped off to fit into the latest Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos. Cheerful how-to stories about these operations have appeared in women’s magazines and major newspapers and on television news programs.

But the stories rarely note the perils of the procedures. For the sake of better “toe cleavage,” as it is known to the fashion-conscious, women are risking permanent disability, according to many orthopedists and podiatrists.” —New York Times

Ground Zero’s Only Hope: Elitism

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: now that everyone agrees that the ground zero memorial finalists are a disappointment, there’s only one thing to do.

Throw them all out.

You have the power to do so. Use it. This is in part a memorial to extreme bravery in the face of overwhelming force. Here’s a chance to be brave.” —New York Times

Chocolate Enters the Tasting Room

‘ “Chocolate is the next coffee,” confided one importer.

“Chocolate is the new olive oil,” said a chocolatier.

“Chocolate now is where cheese was 10 years ago,” a pastry chef asserted.

In the beginning, there was wine. And there were wine tastings and wine snobs and wine-of-the-month clubs. Then olive oil, vinegar, cheese, coffee and butter followed into the American culinary consciousness. Now the appreciation of fine chocolate seems poised to become the next gastronomic parlor game.’ —New York Times

Kebabing Along

“When I went to Afghanistan in August, I was prepared — sort of — for the acres of crashed airplane carcasses that greeted us upon arrival at the Kabul International Airport; I was prepared for the heat and the dust and the fact that much of the place is essentially a pile of rubble. I was even prepared for the traffic (just before I left, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that there were almost 200,000 registered vehicles in the city — and no traffic rules to speak of). What I was not prepared for was the food. It is delicious.” —New York Times Magazine

Bush’s Buildup Begins with Little Debate in Congress: “Congress, with only a limited debate, has given the Bush administration a green light for the biggest revitalization of the country’s nuclear weapons program since the end of the Cold War, leaving many Democrats and even some hawkish Republicans seething.”

—CommonDreams

Just in case you thought I was blowing hard in my post last week about The Day After and nuclear numbing.

Angry scientists attack Nobel loser:

“Scientists launched a scathing attack yesterday on a leading US academic for spending thousands of pounds on advertisements to denounce the Nobel Prize committee for ignoring his work.” —Guardian.UK

“Local villagers in Afghanistan have contradicted US reports that the target of an air strike that killed nine children also died in the raid.

The attack was carried out on Saturday in the village of Hutala, in a remote area of southern Ghazni province.

US officials said they were acting on extensive intelligence and had killed a former Taleban militant, Mullah Wazir.

But local Afghans told the BBC’s Crispin Thorold the intended target had left the village 10 days earlier.” —BBC

“A hair stylist was pumping gas into her car when her hair burst into flames.

‘That scared me to death,’ said stylist Traci Marshall.

The fire was probably caused by static electricity from Marshall’s hair rubbing against her clothes, said her husband, Camilla firefighter Lt. Bill Marshall.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

I have recently noticed the proliferation of warning signs about static electricity precautions at the pumps — turn off your cell phone, ground yourself on some bare metal away from the pump, etc. — and classed them as among the absurd profusion of needless cautions with we are afflicted so that corporate lawyers can create the impression that they have earned their keep by advising their clients’ due caution around all manner of conceivable liability issues both realistic and outlandish. Now, maybe I will reassess at least this particular risk, although I don’t have a beehive hairdo…

“Two ex-managers for a clothing chain accused of discrimination say corporate representatives of the chain, Abercrombie & Fitch, routinely had them reduce the hours of less attractive salespeople.

The two former managers – who say they were hired for their good looks – appear in a Morley Safer report on the trendy retail chain on 60 Minutes…” —CBS

Abercrombie and Fitch is at it again;

Clothing chain yanks its racy, sex-stuffed catalog:

“The national clothing chain Abercrombie and Fitch has pulled its Christmas catalog, which featured page after page of naked young models and extolled the virtues of group sex, after several groups launched consumer boycotts of the company.

The firm denied that its decision at the height of the holiday shopping season to stop selling the racy catalog — which advocated orgies and group masturbation — had anything to do with the protests. Instead, Abercrombie and Fitch said it needed to free precious shelf space for a new perfume and promised to return with a spring catalog offering more “butts” and other nudity.

Abercrombie & Fitch Seeing Consequences of Sleazy Marketing; Clothier’s Stock, Holiday Sales Plummeting in Wake of Boycott:

“…(A) story in today’s Wall Street Journal …noted A&F’s in-store sales had dropped 13 percent in November — and its stock has lost over 16 percent of its value since Focus on the Family and other pro-family groups urged Americans not to buy the retailer’s clothes. In addition, recent trading volume is more than twice normal.” —US NewsWire

An AIDS activist contemplates the heyday of agitprop iconism and laments the lack of urgency in the movement’s recent history. —New York Times Magazine