The internet is all abuzz over John Stewart’s sparring with Tucker Carlson as a guest on Friday’s Crossfire. (Washington Post)
Daily Archives: 17 Oct 04
Not Funnies
The New York Times Magazine‘s take on the graphics novel scene.
Glad to be asexual
“In a world where lust can be bought in a pill and skin is the marketing tool du jour, being David Jay cannot be easy. At the age of 22 he has never had sex. He has never experienced sexual attraction towards another person and does not believe it will ever happen.
There are many others who have similar stories to tell. They talk about growing up not being able to understand why everyone else seemed so interested in dating, kissing and touching; in experiencing the ritual of mating.
Until recently these people felt isolated, never suspecting others felt the same. But now, thanks in great part to an online forum founded by Jay, they are finding each other and identifying themselves with a common label. They call themselves asexual, and are coming out to parents and loved ones, declaring their asexuality to be as valid an orientation as being straight or gay.” (New Scientist)
Epilepsy drug may harm fetal development
Don’t take Depakote or other preparations containing sodium valproate if you are pregnant, suggests new research. (New Scientist ) In my own field of psychiatry, this anti-seizure medication has supplanted lithium carbonate as the most-used mood stabilizer for bipolar mood swings and other labile or volatile presentations. Valproate is also linked to obesity and reproductive abnormalities in premenopausal women.
Survival of genetic homosexual traits explained
“Italian geneticists may have explained how genes apparently linked to male homosexuality survive, despite gay men seldom having children. Their findings also undermine the theory of a single “gay gene”.
The researchers discovered that women tend to have more children when they inherit the same – as yet unidentified – genetic factors linked to homosexuality in men. This fertility boost more than compensates for the lack of offspring fathered by gay men, and keeps the “gay” genetic factors in circulation.
The findings represent the best explanation yet for the Darwinian paradox presented by homosexuality: it is a genetic dead-end, yet the trait persists generation after generation. ” (New Scientist)
In "Shark Tale" and Real Seas, Life Is Hard
“In the animated movie Shark Tale, a tiny cleaner fish dreams of climbing the social ladder on a reef terrorised by sharks. The fictional story may be more realistic than viewers realise …” (National Geographic)
The twenty greatest equations of all time
A readers’ poll (PhysicsWeb)
Composer Phil Kline: ‘We’re Not Angry Enough’
“…as passions rose sometimes words failed…” (NewMusicBox)
Administration Love Affair with Detainee Torture
It has amazed and frustrated me that Kerry has not been willing or able to keep outrage about Abu Ghraib in the forefront of his criticism of misadministration policy. Now comes word that, although the issue is too much the political hot potato even for the arrogant Bush administration to spotlight until after November, top administration figures are angling to promote Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who ran the detention facilities in Iraq. (LA Times)
And:
“The Army’s intelligence chief said yesterday that he has “great confidence” in the ability of Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the highest-ranking intelligence officer tied to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, to lead the Army’s intelligence school.
“In my opinion, she’s a great officer and we ought to put her in command,” Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said in a breakfast interview with defense writers. ” (Washington Post)
R.I.P. Bruce Palmer
Odd New York Times obituary appparently finds no one to comment on the gigantic significance of Buffalo Springfield in its lead paragraphs, so quotes the All Music Guide.
Bill Cosby for President?
‘Oops. I Told the Truth.’: “The one thing that has gone totally missing, not only from this election, but from American politics, is national leaders who are actually ready to level with the public and even criticize their own constituencies. The columnist Michael Kinsley once observed that in American politics ‘a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.’ We could use a few really big gaffes right now. Because we have not one, but three baby booms bearing down at us, and without a massive injection of truth-telling they could all explode on the next president’s watch.” — Thomas Friedman (New York Times op-ed)
Importing Less Expensive Drugs Not Seen as Cure for U.S. Woes
“It may make political sense to point to Canada as a solution to high prescription drug prices in the United States. But many economists and health care experts say that importing drugs from countries that control their prices would do little to solve the problem of expensive drugs in the United States, where companies are free to set their own prices. Even the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that allowing Canadian drug imports would have a ‘negligible’ impact on drug spending.” (New York Times)
John Kerry for President
Hitchhiker Returns
A new radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is being aired on BBC Radio-4; you can listen to each episode on the web for a week after its broadcast.
Life Outtacontext: A Neighborly Encounter from the Right
“The caustic nature of this year’s Presidential campaign hit closer to home today.” — Jeff Gates
Related? Some of us may have neanderthal neighbors; but if you have ever been interested in exploring our neanderthal ancestors (more accurately, “cousins”, not our direct forebears), you will find interesting stuff here from PBS’ Nova.
In the Raw
‘Home-Made’ Porn and Reality Genres: “This paper is an exploration of the growing taste for amateur or ‘reality’ pornography, situating it within the larger context of the rise of reality genres more generally. It sees such a preference as one possible response to the onslaught of images of perfection and the cult of the body beautiful, and thus as a mode of resistance to consumer culture. A ‘taste for the ordinary’ must be understood not only as an erotic preference but also as a part of complex shifts in the very idea of ordinariness. This paper draws on interviews with people working in the image industries, including a maker of homemade porn, to explore the paradoxes of this interest in the mundane.” — Ruth Barcan, of the University of Western Sydney, Australia (Journal of Mundane Behavior)
Google’s Desktop Search is valuable, yet creepy
“…hugely valuable, yet occasionally creepy. Desktop Search does three things in particular that could compromise your privacy when someone else uses your computer…” (Yahoo! News)
Paper: Jeb Bush Ignored Felon List Advice
“Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ignored advice to throw out a flawed felon voter list before it went out to county election offices despite warnings from state officials, according to a published report Saturday…
A software program matched data on felons with voter registration rolls to create the list of 48,000 names. Secretary of State Glenda Hood junked the database in July after acknowledging that 2,500 ex-felons on the list had had their voting rights restored.
Most were Democrats, and many were black. Hispanics, who often vote Republican in Florida, were almost entirely absent from the list due to a technical error. ” (Yahoo! News)
Yeah, right, ‘technical error’…
And: Block the Vote: “Vote-tampering is the inevitable result of a Republican Party culture in which dirty tricks that distort the vote are rewarded, not punished.” — Paul Krugman (New York Times op-ed)
Schneier on Security:
Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram is now available as a weblog, continuously updated instead of once monthly.
