and the triumph of youth culture: “Life in that different day was felt to observe the human equivalent of the Aristotelian unities: to have, like a good drama, a beginning, middle, and end. Each part, it was understood, had its own advantages and detractions, but the middle–adulthood–was the lengthiest and most earnest part, where everything serious happened and much was at stake. To violate the boundaries of any of the three divisions of life was to go against what was natural and thereby to appear unseemly, to put one’s world somehow out of joint, to be, let us face it, a touch, and perhaps more than a touch, grotesque.

Today, of course, all this has been shattered. The ideal almost everywhere is to seem young for as long as possible. The health clubs and endemic workout clothes, the enormous increase in cosmetic surgery (for women and men), the special youth-oriented television programming and moviemaking, all these are merely the more obvious signs of the triumph of youth culture. When I say youth culture, I do not mean merely that the young today are transcendent, the group most admired among the various age groups in American society, but that youth is no longer viewed as a transitory state, through which one passes on the way from childhood to adulthood, but an aspiration, a vaunted condition in which, if one can only arrange it, to settle in perpetuity.” —Joseph Epstein, Weekly Standard

American Troops are Killing and Abusing Afghans, Rights Body Says: “US troops in Afghanistan are operating outside the rule of law, using excessive force to make arrests, mistreating detainees and holding them indefinitely in a ‘legal black hole’ without any legal safeguards, a report published today says.

Having gone to war to combat terrorism and remove the oppressive Taliban regime, the United States is now undermining efforts to restore the rule of law and endangering the lives of civilians, Human Rights Watch says.” —CommonDreams

Arianna Huffington:

• “You may share JFK’s initials, but you need to campaign with RFK’s passion.
• Don’t pick a VP by looking at the map.
• Don’t fall back on the tried-and-untrue swing voter strategy that has led to the prolonged identity crisis of the Democratic Party.
• Don’t run away from your voting record.
• Remember: He who controls the language defines the political debate. Bush Republicans’ control of certain magical words, starting with “responsibility,” has been a key to their success. You need to take back “responsibility” from the grossly irresponsible GOP.
• Strike a new bargain with the American people. Tell them, ‘Let’s put an end to the tyranny of low expectations. You can expect a lot more of me, and I will ask a lot more of you.'” —AlterNet

“The 2004 presidential race could turn on the Sunshine State, just as it did in 2000. And the early evidence suggests Bush is in big trouble.” —Salon

“MoveOn is now over two million people strong in the United States. This number is unprecedented in the history of hands-on activist organizations with the freedom to operate in political campaigns. As MoveOn itself points out: ‘We’re bigger than the Christian Coalition at its peak. To put it another way, one in every 146 Americans is now a MoveOn member. And we’re still growing fast.'” —Don Hazen and Tai Moses, AlterNet

“I’ve met foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, ‘You’ve got to win this, you’ve got to beat this guy, we need a new policy.’ Things like that.” —Guardian.UK

Yes, the Bush campaign welcomes masochists with open arms. —New York Times

“Lowering cholesterol far beyond the levels recommended by most doctors can substantially reduce heart patients’ risk of suffering or dying of a heart attack, a study has found.” —New York Times

Defying Psychiatric Wisdom, These Skeptics Say ‘Prove It’: “They have been called assassins and parasites. They receive hate mail from the proponents of a variety of popular psychotherapies. The president-elect of the American Psychological Association has accused them of being overly devoted to the scientific method.

But the ire of their colleagues has not prevented a small, loosely organized band of academic psychologists from rooting out and publicly debunking mental health practices that they view as faddish, unproved or in some cases potentially harmful.

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In journal articles and public presentations, the psychologists, from Emory, Harvard, the University of Texas and other institutions, have challenged the validity of widely used diagnostic tools like the Rorschach inkblot test. They have questioned the existence of repressed memories of child sexual abuse and of multiple personality disorder. They have attacked the wide use of labels like codependency and sexual addiction.

The challengers have also criticized a number of fashionable therapies, including ‘critical incident’ psychological debriefing for trauma victims, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, or E.M.D.R., and other techniques.” —New York Times

Astronomy Picture of the Day: “The above picture will be replaced later today (between 9 and 10 am EST) by the newly released Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). The HUDF is expected to be the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light. It is expected to show a sampling of the oldest galaxies ever seen, galaxies that formed just after the dark ages, when the universe was only 5 percent of its present age. The Hubble Space Telescope’s NICMOS and new ACS cameras took the image. Staring nearly 3 months at the same spot, the HUDF is reported to be four times more sensitive, in some colors, than the original Hubble Deep Field (HDF), currently pictured above.” [thanks, abby]

Spend like there’s no tomorrow…

“Actor-writer Spalding Gray, who laid bare his life in a series of acclaimed monologues like ‘Swimming to Cambodia’ while scoring big-screen success in ‘Kate and Leopold’ and ‘The Paper,’ was confirmed dead on Monday. The body of Gray, 62, was pulled out of the East River off Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Sunday, two months after he walked out of his Manhattan apartment and disappeared.

The city medical examiner confirmed through dental records and X-rays on Monday that it was Gray’s body. The cause of his death was still under investigation, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner. Throughout his disappearance, his wife, Kathleen Russo, had held out scant hope that he might still be alive.” —NBC News

Shortly after leaving home that January evening, Gray called his son Theo to tell him that he loved him. Several witnesses confirmed seeing him on the Staten Island Ferry the night of his disappearance. The overwhelming likelihood is that Gray drowned himself, although the medical examiner’s office is being diplomatic in resisting leaping to conclusions. He had been depressed and made at least one previous attempt to take his life; his mother had killed herself. I wrote about his presumed suicide at the time of his disappearance, speculating that his suicidality might bear some relationship to his recent devastating motor vehicle accident not only via demoralization but the organic effects of his head injury. A friend and I were talking just the other day about the fact that the bodies of those who drowned during the winter months are often discovered as the waters start to warm at the end of the winter.

My thoughts are with his family and the many friends who loved him, and all who will be diminished by the passing of his trenchant observation and wry wit… [thanks, walker and abby]

His friend John Perry Barlow, who as of this writing has not yet commented on the confirmation of Gray’s passing, contemplated the possibility poignantly in January. He said at that time:

I fear that his children, and in particular his marvelous young sons, Forrest and Theo, will remember little of who he really was and what he really did. Worse, I suspect that much of what will remain as the memory of their father will be shadowed by who he became after depression closed its ghostly fist around his light. To the goal that we might re-remember him for them through our tales, I want to make a little book of your comments following the last three posts and give it to them. If any of you object to being included, and I hope none of you will, please let me know. They are better than the flowers one might send otherwise.

I don’t know, but it might not be too late to add your remembrances to Barlow’s memento mori.