I am trying a slightly trimmed template eliminating alot of the sidebar content that readers seem to find extraneous. Does the page load significantly faster for you? Look more appealing? More taste? Less filling? Should I trim down to less than seven days’ worth of content on the main page? Would that make much of a difference in the load time?
Author Archives: FmH
Get Back
Craig’s BookNotes has a new address. He writes here about losing much of his audience recently when automatic forwarding from the old URL stopped. Please correct the addresses you have for BookNotes in your blogrolls and bookmarks.
Just Between Strangers
A new weblog from Philadelphia editor and familiar FmH reader ACM; if you have been a fan of ACM’s thoughtful comments on FmH, you will welcome his her own postings.
Woman Who Claimed Alien Abduction Dies
Close on the heels of the death of alien abduction maven psychiatrist John Mack, which I noted here (anyone for a conspiracy?), comes word that one of the arguable originators of the abduction meme, Betty Hill, has died. After reportedly noticing a two-hour gap in their recollection during a drive through the White Mts. of New Hampshire in 1961, the former social worker and her late husband Barney Hill ‘recovered memories’ under hypnosis of having been abducted and examined by aliens, whom they were the first to describe in terms which have become the template for alien abduction phenomenology — the “grays”, with small gray bodies, large heads and large saucer-shaped eyes.
I remember excitedly reading John G. Fuller’s Interrupted Journey, the 1966 account of their story, upon its release. The Hills went on to create a career of lectures and media events based on their story. Interestingly, Hill was apparently appalled at what crass American pop culture has made of the alien abduction trend she and her husband had a major role in creating:
“Hill retired from UFO lecturing in her 70s and complained that the quest for knowledge about extraterrestrials had become tainted with commercialism. Too many people with ‘flaky ideas, fantasies and imaginations’ were making UFO and abduction reports, she told The Associated Press in a 1991 interview.‘If you were to believe the numbers of people who are claiming this, it would figure out to 3,000 to 5,000 abductions in the United States alone every night,’ she said. ‘There wouldn’t be room for planes to fly.’
She also said media had fueled UFO fiction.”
Debunkers have considered the Hills’ story to be a confabulation under stress, which has been attributed to their being an interracial couple in ’60’s American society. Betty Hill said that they were a happily married upwardly-mobile professional couple and experienced no discrimination. It has also been noted that, after their supposed incident but just prior to their hypnotic regression, TV series The Outer Limits broadcast an episode with a story suggestively similar to their account.
Related: The Zeta Reticuli Incident: Did Betty Hill’s recollection of a star map she reportedly saw while in the alien craft point to the home star system of the ‘grays’?
“A faint pair of stars, 220 trillion miles away, has been tentatively identified as the “home base” of intelligent extraterrestrials who allegedly visited Earth in 1961. This hypothesis is based on a strange, almost bizarre series of events mixing astronomical research with hypnosis, amnesia, and alien humanoid creatures. The two stars are known as Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, or together as simply Zeta Reticuli. They are each fifth magnitude stars – barely visible to the unaided eye – located in the obscure souther constellation Reticulum. This southerly sky location makes Zeta Reticuli invisible to observers north of Mexico City’s latitude. The weird circumstances that we have dubbed “The Zeta Reticuli Incident” sound like they come straight from the UFO pages in one of those tabloids sold in every supermarket. But this is much more than a retelling of a famous UFO incident; it’s an astronomical detective story that at times hovers on that hazy line that separates science from fiction.” (Astronomy, 1974)
Without a Doubt
If you still need convincing, or you know someone who does, you could do far worse than to read Ron Suskind’s New York Times Magazine piece on Bush’s faith-based cognitive limitations. Often, discussion of the limitations of the president’s intelligence remain at the level of his ‘Bushisms’, which establish little more than his inarticuateness and the likelihood that he is dyslexic. Some of my best friends, however, are dyslexic; there are other kinds of intelligence besides the booklearning that everyone knows Bush lacks (and which, I am convinced, many of his supporters have welcomed). Suskind’s reporting here gives testimony to a far more scary kind of presidential stupidity. However, I fear that Bush’s ability to appeal to American anti-intellectualism will remain undiminished. I’ve heard of candidates not wishing to insult the voters’ intelligence, but Bush’s persona is built upon not wanting to insult his voters’ lack of intelligence.
“The nation’s founders, smarting still from the punitive pieties of Europe’s state religions, were adamant about erecting a wall between organized religion and political authority. But suddenly, that seems like a long time ago. George W. Bush — both captive and creator of this moment — has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself. He has created the faith-based presidency.
The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. The dome of silence cracked a bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also, in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul O’Neill. When I quoted O’Neill saying that Bush was like ”a blind man in a room full of deaf people,” this did not endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin to ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar impressions and anecdotes about Bush’s faith and certainty. These are among the sources I relied upon for this article. Few were willing to talk on the record. Some were willing to talk because they said they thought George W. Bush might lose; others, out of fear of what might transpire if he wins. In either case, there seems to be a growing silence fatigue — public servants, some with vast experience, who feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era children, seen but not heard, and are tired of it. But silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White House. After many requests, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said in a letter that the president and those around him would not be cooperating with this article in any way.”
The most dramatic implication of Bush’s faith-based rigidity, as Suskind frames it, may be the schism it may provoke in the Republican party between the fundamentalists and the old guard Republicans increasingly appalled by Bush’s inability to inhabit a fact-based reality. The disgruntlement of the ‘Reagan Republicans’ with Bush is not a new topic, most recently emerging around Reagan’s death and Bush’s appropriation of his legacy. More’s the pity such profound concerns were not allowed to emerge sooner.
Goes Around, Comes Around
A doctor who was on call at my hospital the other night left me a voicemail the next morning as he was going off duty to tell me about the book he had been reading overnight. He had found my name and address on the inside front cover and some notes I had written on the blank pages in the back. It turns out it was one of the books I had given to a used book store in New York in 1970 to thin my collection before moving to Boston.
Glad I don’t live in Toronto
‘Frankenfish’ rears its ugly head in Lake Michigan
’10 Things I Hate in a Web Site’
“I wonder if some people create and publish Web sites for the sole purpose of tormenting their visitors.” — Jason OConnor, Oak Web Works (marketingprofs.com) Although this marketing professional is really talking about commercial sites and the liabilities their faults create in self-promotion, perhaps these sins are no less deadly for a site such as mine. I have committed, I think, two of the mortal sins discussed here — excessive scrolling (which is really difficult to avoid in a weblog which adds a significant amount of content before it falls off the scroll at the bottom) and, more egregious, slow load time. Adding jimcrackery in the sidebar and importing external content are my major vices in slowing down the load time. There’s a dialectic tension for me in maintaining this site between fancying it up and simplifying it down; I’ll keep at it. At least, the larger, blog content column loads first, so you can read the important stuff while the pageload keeps on going. Last time I asked, the opinion here was in favor, for example, of keeping the little box telling people what is playing in iTunes; it’ll still be there after you read the day’s posts…
Greens For Impact
“…an organization of principled, pragmatic Green Party members and progressive populists dedicated to the goal of defeating George W. Bush in his bid for a second term as president, while simultaneously furthering the growth of the Green Party as an independent alternative to the corporate-dominated parties.
While we do not represent or work with any of the presidential candidates, we believe that this agenda is most-readily forwarded by a strategy designed to maximize the Green Party’s impact. Greens for Impact works to:
- Encourage voters to register Green
- Encourage voters in safe states — those that are so overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic that we can be confident today of who will win there in November — to vote for David Cobb in the General Election
- Encourage voters in swing states to vote for John Kerry in the general election, and
- Actively and forcefully push for the use of instant runoff voting (IRV) wherever suitable, alongside ballot access reform and full public financing of campaigns.”
I was pointed to this site by David Segal, minority leader of the City Council of Providence, RI, and chair of Greens for Impact. Note that one of their particular foci is to dissuade potential Nader, as well as Cobb, supporters in swing states from taking their votes away from Kerry. Segal asks that like-minded people try to steer traffic to their site as we head into the homestretch.
Left Hooks and Right Jabs:
The internet is all abuzz over John Stewart’s sparring with Tucker Carlson as a guest on Friday’s Crossfire. (Washington Post)
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.
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![//graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/10/15/national/15gulf.1841.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/10/15/national/15gulf.1841.jpg "Chemical-exposure garbed GI's during '91 Gulf War")
“A federal panel of medical experts studying illnesses among veterans of the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf has broken with several earlier studies and concluded that many suffer from neurological damage caused by exposure to toxic chemicals, rejecting past findings that the ailments resulted mostly from wartime stress.
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