“What really goes on in the back rooms of car dealerships across America?

What does the car salesman do when he leaves you sitting in a sales office and goes to talk with his boss?

What are the tricks salespeople use to increase their profit and how can consumers protect themselves from overpaying? ” —Edmunds

“The bestseller at the center of a national debate on America’s security, ‘Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror,’ may soon be hitting the silver screen.

Sony Pictures has optioned the film rights to former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke’s book, which questions the country’s readiness to address potential terrorist threats before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the Hollywood Reporter.” —Yahoo! News

Air Marshal Leaves Gun in Airport Restroom: “A federal air marshal accidentally left her gun in a restroom beyond the security checkpoints at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, officials say.

The weapon was discovered by a passenger who alerted an airline employee.” —Yahoo! News

Jesus As You Like Him: “When Mel Gibson responded to critics of his blockbuster The Passion of the Christ by saying they had a ‘problem with the four Gospels,’ not with his film, he was staking a claim to authenticity: My Jesus is the real one, not yours.

But it’s not just Mel. Everyone claims their Jesus is the ‘real’ one, the only authentic Christ unperverted by secular society or religious institutions. The best-selling fiction book The Da Vinci Code, which posits among other things that Jesus fathered a child by Mary Magdalene, styles itself as a fact-based account of the ‘real’ Jesus, who has been covered up by a Vatican conspiracy. Academics who seek evidence for the Jesus of history attempt to peel away layers of the Gospel narratives until the genuine Jewish prophet is revealed. Nowadays, even nonbelievers assert a superior understanding of who the actual Jesus really was and what he stood for.

Why can everyone from atheists to Zoroastrians lay claim to knowledge of the real Jesus? Because there are so many of him. The New Testament itself presents multiple Jesuses, not just among the four competing Gospel accounts but within each Gospel as well: Baby Jesus, Teacher Jesus, Miracle Worker Jesus, to name only three.” —Chris Suellentrop, Slate

Anti-Semitism at Easter linked to conflicting biblical messages about violence: ‘Drawing on modern psychological concepts like post-traumatic stress disorder, a Queen’s University researcher concludes that today’s religious strife may have a direct link to the violence of the Easter story and the crucifixion.

The traditional Christian interpretation of the violent death of Jesus on the cross contains an unresolved conflict that has inflamed anti-Semitism in the past, and may be contributing to religious hostility today, says Queen’s Religious Studies Professor William Morrow, a specialist in biblical literature with research interests in violence and religion.

Dr. Morrow analyzes ancient biblical texts in light of contemporary concepts about the effects of violence, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and vicarious trauma.

“There are distinct risks when the violence of the Easter story is emphasized, as it is in Mel Gibson’s new film, The Passion of the Christ,” says Dr. Morrow. “It is naïve to think that a focus on the brutality of the crucifixion will have no negative effects on a culture that is still basically shaped by the Christian myth.” In fact, some recent expressions of anti-Semitism in North America can be associated with Gibson’s film, he notes.’

In past seasons, I enjoyed the group of psychoanalysts who commented on each week’s episode. Now it’s “Mob Experts on The Sopranos“, a group of crime reporters. On the latest episode:

“Can The Sopranos get any darker without turning the lights out completely? This Peter Bogdanovich-directed episode was as unremittingly depressing as anything on television (and mainstream film, for that matter). Six Feet Under seems like Three’s Company by comparison. David Chase is giving us nothing to grab hold of: For some reason, I found Carmela’s father’s silence in the face of his daughter’s despair to be one of the bleakest moments of all.” —Slate

Is anybody watching this? What do you think?

“Using your cellphone’s camera to snap the nearest building allows remote servers to determine your precise position”. —New Scientist

More on the debate over Lauren Slater’s veracity and literary ethics, about which I have previously written. —New York Times

Theodore Dalrymple: “Anyone who lives in a city like mine and interests himself in the fate of the world cannot help wondering whether, deeper than this immediate cultural desperation, there is anything intrinsic to Islam — beyond the devout Muslim’s instinctive understanding that secularization, once it starts, is like an unstoppable chain reaction — that renders it unable to adapt itself comfortably to the modern world. Is there an essential element that condemns the Dar al-Islam to permanent backwardness with regard to the Dar al-Harb, a backwardness that is felt as a deep humiliation, and is exemplified, though not proved, by the fact that the whole of the Arab world, minus its oil, matters less to the rest of the world economically than the Nokia telephone company of Finland?” —City Journal

“The press had lots of fun with the recent robot debacle in the Mojave Desert. Competing for $1 million in prize money, 15 vehicles headed off on a 142-mile course through some of the most forbidding terrain in the country. None managed to navigate even eight miles. The robots hit fences, caught fire, rolled over, or sat and did nothing.

However, the purpose of the event was not NASCAR for nerds, but a coldly calculated plan to construct a generation of killer machines.

Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Mar. 13 “race” was part of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) plan to make one third of the military’s combat vehicles driverless by 2015. The push to replace soldiers with machines is impelled by an over-extended military searching for ways to limit U.S. casualties, a powerful circle of arms manufactures, and an empire-minded group of politicians addicted to campaign contributions by defense corporations.

This “rise of the machines” is at the heart of the Bush administration’s recent military budget. Sandwiched into outlays for aircraft, artillery, and conventional weapons, are monies for unmanned combat aircraft, robot tanks, submarines, and a supersonic bomber capable of delivering six tons of bombs and missiles to anyplace on the globe in two hours.” —Foreign Policy in Focus

Over 600 Dead, 1,000 Injured, 60,000 Refugees: “The U.S. siege of Fallujah continues and reports are emerging of a massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. troops. We go to Iraq to get a report from Free Speech Radio News’ Aaron Glantz who interviews Iraqis fleeing Fallujah as well as a producer with Al-Jazeera television who says he and fellow journalists were targeted by U.S. snipers in the town.” —Democracy Now!

“It’s that time of year again, when the eyes of the world will focus on Boston — on the sweat, the tears, the glory. The Marathon. But there is one aspect of the race that officials don’t want the world to see this year: the unpleasant practice of runners relieving themselves on front lawns, backyards, garages, and trees along the route.” —Boston Globe

“To some people, near-death experiences reported by millions of Americans in recent years, are windows to a world beyond. To others, they are simply comforting delusions.

Scientists have tended to fall into the latter group. But in several small studies, researchers are finding that the elaborate accounts of mysterious tunnels, flooded with bright golden light, may be a healthy coping mechanism that protects against traumatic stress.

People who have such experiences, one study shows, are far better at handling stress than researchers had expected. And scientists have uncovered neurological and biological differences that may lie at the core of the coping mechanisms.” —New York Times

“Alzheimer’s disease can seem unrelentingly grim. There is no cure, no known way to prevent the illness, and the benefits of current treatments are modest at best.

But in laboratories around the country, scientists are uncovering clues that may eventually ?4 perhaps even in the next two decades ?4 allow them to prevent, slow or even reverse the ruthless progression of the illness.

‘Things are more hopeful than perhaps people think,’ Dr. Karen Duff of the Nathan Kline Institute of New York University said. ‘We are on the cusp of having something really useful.’

That hope comes on the heels of disappointment. Aricept and other drugs to slow the disease’s progress have not lived up to the public’s high expectations.” —New York Times

“Operation Resolute Sword. That’s what the U.S. military in Iraq is calling its effort to crush rebellious Shi’ite forces. Osama bin Laden could not have chosen a more inflammatory name.

Who comes up with these things? Why not just stage a photo-op with President Bush in Richard the Lionheart regalia?

One would have thought – or at least hoped – the Pentagon would have learned its lesson after Muslims objected to Washington’s original name for the war on terror, Operation Infinite Justice, on the grounds that only God has the power to mete that out.

Or that the outrage over the president’s off-the-cuff reference to a “Crusade against terror” in the days after 9/11 would have made the administration hyper-sensitive.

But now some military scribe has coined a name right out of the Crusades – which, after all, is precisely what opponents claim the U.S. is waging in the Middle East. The invasion of the Christian armies to “liberate” the Holy Lands may have taken place a millennium ago, but it continues to live in the psyche of many Arabs.

“Wonderful sights were to be seen,” wrote Crusader Raymund of Aguiles, describing the slaughter of 40,000 Muslims as the Soldiers of Christ breached the walls of Jerusalem in 1099. “Some of our men cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city.”

If you doubt the continuing impact of that event, just note al-Qaeda’s official name: The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders.

The Pentagon is steadfast in its claim that it continues to win the military battle in Iraq. While that may be debatable, there is no doubt it is losing the PR war – in Iraq and across the Muslim world.” —Guerrilla News Network

Also: When puppets pull the strings: “Ahmed Chalabi, the neocons’ choice to run Iraq, appears to have been responsible for the disastrous decision to move against Muqtada al-Sadr.” —Salon

“Our galaxy is speeding through space toward a cosmic showdown. Join us on an exploration of one of nature’s most powerful and devastating phenomena — galaxy collision. Watch this detailed documentary for the full story.” —The Hubble Site