“The Saddest Thing I Own invites people everywhere to share the saddest thing they own. What are these sad things? What makes things sad? Do things start off sad? Do some sad things begin as happy things that then become sad? Are some things only sad because for some sad reason we kept them? Are some things just plain sad no matter what? This is what we want to know.” [via boing boing]

Theresa has been keeping this running list; proof that many write with no ‘malice of forethought’. (Making Light)

“The Vatican stepped up its offensive against The Da Vinci Code on Friday when a top official close to Pope Benedict blasted the book as full of anti-Christian lies and urged Catholics to boycott the film.” (Yahoo News) Okay, I’ll admit it now, I’ve finally read the book, and am looking forward to the film. From the trailers I have seen, it looks to be a pretty literal adaptation. My work as an anthropological researcher with the modern-day Maya of southern Mexico when I was a college undergrad showed me firsthand how grafting Christianity on top of indigenous spiritual beliefs as a way of getting its soul-saving foot in the door inherently co-opted those beliefs. So the broad thrust of Brown’s thesis about the Christian Church’s relationship with the ‘pagan’ beliefs it supplanted makes sense to me, as does the Church’s investment in maintaining the paradigm in the face of the current challenge. Should be fun to watch all the hubhub, as it was with the Last Temptation film some years ago.

And:

The Priory of Sion

“Ed Bradley decided to find out for himself whether or not the Priory of Sion, which is central to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was a real organization or not.” (CBS 60 Minutes thanks to walker)

The New York Times uses Google Maps for a visual display of homicide locations in New York City over the past three years. Figure out the safest places to live in the City. Wow, nothing within a large radius of the block on which I grew up in Queens. Nothing within a mile radius or so of my best friend’s home on the Upper West Side. And nothing within a several-block radius of my brother and his wife’s home in the West Village (although he was attacked twice on his street in the last five years…)

A related article describes other findings of the Times’ analysis of the murder details.

“Over the last several decades, a small group of researchers has tried to understand how a minority of maltreated children exceed expectations.” (New York Times Magazine) A good overview of a neglected topic championed by a few. “Mental health’ research is far better at looking at the pathology, but common sense says you can’t explain why someone falls victim to suffering until you compare them with those who escape that outcome.

The study was co-funded by the NIMH and Eli Lily, the manufacturer of the antipsychotic drug used in the study. This study seems to support the notion that early detection and treatment halts disease progression. However, the low completion rate among recruited subjects prompts the obvious question — is there some correlation between the potential for early stabilization and the wherewithal to hang in there with the study. Are the counterexamples simply washing out?

A new study demonstrates the first sucessful vaccine treatment of the deadly hemorrhagic Marburg disease in monkeys. Marburg is a close relative of the gruesome and untreatable Ebola virus. (New Scientist) It should not be surprising that the research was conducted at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. Will we one day in a battlefield situation see the Pentagon immunize our own fighting forces against hemorrhagic fever and somehow arrange for their opponents to be infected?

Namedropper that I am, I need to mention that the lead researcher, Charles Czeisler, was a friend of mine in college whose career of preeminence in the biology of sleep regulation and circadian rhythms I have followed with interest. The value of melatonin as a sleep aid has long been equivocal, which I think has two explanations. First, since it is sold as a dietary supplement rather than a medication, there is no quality control about the dosage or bioavailability of the active ingredient in the melatonin you buy.

Secondly, the way it works essentially involves resetting your internal clock, telling your body it is time to go to sleep. Quite simply, melatonin will not be of much use helping a person whose sleep difficulty does not relate to a circadian rhythm problem. The current study, in which thirty-six healthy participants spent three weeks living in soundproof rooms with no time clues and were put on a 20-hour sleep-wake cycle in place of the usual 24-hour cycle, showed melatonin’s efficacy in re-entraining the body’s sleep schedule. This has most relevance to shift-workers who sleep during the daylight hours and to jetlagged travellers out of synch with their new timezones, situations in which I have recommended melatonin in the past.