George Monbiot writes in The Guardian: “Walt Disney’s characters are sinister because they encourage us, like those marchers, to promote the hegemony of the corporations even when we have no intention of doing so. He captured a deep stream of human consciousness, branded it and, when we were too young to understand the implications, sold it back to us. Comcast’s hostile takeover bid suggests that the power of his company to seize our imaginations is declining. A giant media corporation may be about to become even bigger, but if the attack means that Disney is losing its ability to shape the minds of the world’s children, this is something we should celebrate.”

As a parent, I largely agree with Monbiot about Disney iconography’s insidious grip. American children and, increasingly, those of the rest of the world, are supposed to march in lockstep to the beat of the latest Disney formulaic blockbuster, devotion to whose characters is then cemented by the latest premiums with MacDonald’s Happy Meals, clothing and action figure product lines and, most beguiling to my way of thinking, insipid books that fill the children’s sections of the bookstores and choke out legitimate children’s picture books. (If you don’t have children and don’t believe me, take a stroll through the children’s section the next time you visit your local bookstore. You do remember bookstores, don’t you? They are still a large part of my village’s life…) I have been nauseated by the stultifying influence of this Disnifornication on the interior landscapes of the children I see, and attempt to steer my children to less mental chainstore junkfood in their entertainment choices. Just today a thoughtful co-worker asked me if our family had “done Disney” yet and had a difficult time with my indications that this was, to say the least, not a priority for us anytime in this life…

I am dubious about Monbiot’s anticipation of a loosening of the grip, however, over and above the fact that the Comcast bid appears to have failed for now. The Pixar features Disney distributed were the only creative stimulating breaths of fresh air in their panoply. Now that Pixar has dropped Disney, look for more stultification.

New Scientist: “Exposure to lead while in the womb may double a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later in life, new research suggests.

While larger studies are needed to confirm the link, the researchers say this is the first time an environmental toxin has been linked to the disorder.” —New Scientist The study analyzed frozen blood specimens fortuitously left by a cohort of pregnant mothers during the period before gasoline was unleaded. A robust correlation was found between lead levels and a schizophrenic outcome of the pregnancy. Many many studies establish some correlation between risk of schizophrenia and some perinatal insult. It is not that any of these specific noxious influences are the “cause” of schizophrenia; the effect is nonspecific. Some schizophrenia involves disturbed neuronal architecture in certain anatomical regions of the brain, notably the hippocampal formation. Any crucial ‘hit’ during essential developmental periods might disrupt cell migration and the development of normal connections. But schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disease (I should rather say, “the schizophrenias”) and, in some affected patients, what lies at the core is disruption of the neurochemical communication between these neurons rather than their physical connectivity. This too may result from an environmental insult, I suppose, but probably more often involves a genetically transmitted gene lesion or lesions affecting neurotransmitter or neuroreceptor function.

“Half of all human languages will have disappeared by the end of the century, as smaller societies are assimilated into national and global cultures, scientists have warned.

Losing this linguistic diversity will be a blow not only for cultural studies but also for cognitive science, they say.” —New Scientist

I have long suspected that the human prion disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) and the varieties found in at least some other mammals are related. It is strongly suspected that so-called variant CJD (vCJD) is what happens to a human who contracts the agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease). Now, “two cows have been discovered with a form of BSE that looks very different from the usual kind, Italian scientists have reported.

It resembles one form of the human prion disease, sporadic CJD, raising the possibility that this human disease is acquired from cattle.” —New Scientist

“To satisfy the hallowed journalistic tradition that there must be two sources for almost anything, I offer you Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Candy Crowley of CNN. They both are on record as having George Bush say that he doesn’t do nuance. ‘Joe, I don’t do nuance,’ the president supposedly told the senator. As for Crowley, she heard it this way: ‘In Texas, we don’t do nuance.’ If these two sources don’t suffice, I offer you the 7,932 words that make up the text of the president’s interview with Tim Russert. There ain’t a nuance anywhere in the whole mess.” —Washington Post

Laura Flanders: “Some of John Kerry’s foreign policy advisers should give pause to progressives”. —tompaine.com

“The application for the $250 award requires an essay on ‘why you are proud of your white heritage‘ and a recent picture to ‘confirm whiteness.'” The ostensible purpose of the scholarship at Rhode Island’s Roger Williams College is to protest against affirmative action. —CNN

CBS apologizes for OutKast performance: “CBS television issued a new round of apologies, this time for any offense taken at the American Indian-motif Grammy Awards performance by the hip-hop group OutKast that some Native Americans have condemned as racist.

The San Francisco-based Native American Cultural Center posted a notice on its Web site last week calling for a boycott of CBS, OutKast’s label Arista Records, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammys.” —CNN

This list of approved and disapproved TV shows for US Dept. of Education closed captioning support is being broadly discussed, particularly the criterion that excludes shows with any reference to witchcraft, such as Scooby Doo and Bewitched. While this example is pretty egregious, it strikes me that the ruling is not so much simply frivolous or ignorantly bigoted as it is an insidious attempt to legislate cultural tastes and interests to a segment of the population within the unfortunate grasp of dependency on federal funding. Children’s shows are the real victims of Administration judgmentalism, it appears. At least they haven’t taken their battle for decency out on NPR by denying support for closed captioning of public television news and public affairs programming.

“The government is considering a plan to break up the BBC and remove its independent status in the wake of a bitter row with the state-funded broadcaster over the Iraq war, a report said.

Government papers detailing possible changes to the BBC’s structure proposed breaking it into separate regional entities for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, The Sunday Times said.” —Yahoo! News

A former military officer, now a journalist covering military affairs, writes on why Bush’s military record matters (pdf) —Chicago Tribune op-ed

And Jimmy Breslin writes in Newsday, Bush Goal Was Dodging War: “What matters to all our senses is that he is a president who struts around as a war hero, who dodged Vietnam and most of the National Guard drills and who with less shame than anybody we have had maybe ever, sends your kids to a war that he ducked as if he was allowed to do it by birth.

The picture of him playing soldier suit on an aircraft carrier, the helmet under his arm like he just got back from a run over Baghdad, marks him as exceedingly dangerous. He believes he is a warrior president. He is not. He is a war dodger. Therefore, it is preposterous for George Bush to be a commander of anything. He doesn’t have the right to send people to war and yet he orders them off, and almost cheerfully. “

Dan Gillmor comments on the Cingular acquisition of AT&T Wireless and tells us the consolidation might be good for consumers because of the marginal service both companies have provided to date. It is not clear to me why two companies that don’t know how to do good wireless will combine into one that does. Gillmor also argues that consolidation won’t go too far because “there’s only room for a couple of mergers before the market gets too cozy for real competition. While expecting serious antitrust scrutiny from the Bush administration is probably futile, there’s probably enough angst in Congress to keep consolidation from being rampant.” The other obvious reason consolidation won’t go too far is that there are only several companies that use each of the several incompatible cellular protocols. Wouldn’t it be a daunting proposition, for example, for one of the GSM carriers left (T-Mobile and Cingular) to acquire CDMA-based Verizon, if they meant to consolidate their systems and user base?

…and people who fight back: A 59-year old Nevada rancher is taking his fight against having to produce identification on demand to the US Supreme Court.