Finally, some specific proposals beyond the facile mea culpas.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden tells us how to deal with habaneros. (Making Light)

Proclamations on spiritual teachers who abuse their power

“The Rick A. Ross Institute has assembled one of the largest databases of information about controversial groups, some called ‘cults,’ and related information on the Internet. The database contains thousands of press articles, court documents, and essays.”

Is physician self-disclosure a boundary violation or a clinical tool? (Bioethics Discussion Blog)

Expending effort to keep your emotion in check during an upsetting event can interfere with your recall for the event. (New Scientist) [Not a problem for me…]

Depictions of their distress by sufferers of mental illness, submitted for an exhibiton at the National Eisteddfod of Wales this summer.

Video:

Bill O’Reilly: “The truth of the matter is our correspondents at Fox News can’t go out for a cup of coffee in Baghdad.”

Condoleezza Rice: “Bill, that’s tough. It’s tough. But what — would they have wanted to have gone out for a cup of coffee when Saddam Hussein was in power?”

Ed Fitzgerald continues to do a great job thinking about the aftermath of Katrina. I particularly appreciated his pulling together some links and thoughts about whether New Orleans will, and should, be rebuilt. I am not sure I agree with his emphasis on it being largely a function of how much the residents want to return, however, both because of the environmental factors and the fiscal. While the pronouncements on the toxicity of the stew in which the city has been bathed and the residue that will remain on everything are so far more fraught with emotion and political agenda than scientific appraisal, I think it remains an open question whether we have the capability to make New Orleans safe to live in again. On the other hand, given the demographics of the displaced people, who will be the advocates for protecting those who wish to return from the environmental risks? And, of course, economic interests — both insurance industry and government budgetary concerns — mitigate against recreating the same diverse lively city. Despite Dubya’s glorious and empty vision of reconstruction, the people bringing you this project are the same people who tried to do the Iraq war on the cheap, with too few troops and too little armor to do the job (although giving plenty of funding to their cronies at Halliburton), and they still defend it in the face of the results coming home in the body bags every week. My guess is that this represents an unprecedented opportunity for the neocons to do a social experiment with wiping a city clean of an underclass that is in their minds a burden rather than a contribution; a shadow economy largely disconnected from their notions of the economic life of the city. In terms of the psychogeographical argument that New Orleans has a unique and irreplaceable place in the American psyche we cannot afford to lose, look for the rebuilt New Orleans to be a theme park caricature of itself. What else do you expect when the reconstruction effort is shaped by people who live a caricature of leadership?

Fitzgerald also published the text of Al Gore’s compelling Sept. 9th remarks to the Sierra Club on the moral choices facing us in the wake of the Gulf Coast disaster.

Reuters picture editor says don’t blame the photographer, denies malicious intent, and defends Photoshop-enhancement of the photo.

New Scientist reports that the first clinical trials of a low-dose H5N1 bird flu vaccine are already under way.