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“I am the world crier, & this is my dangerous career… I am the one to call your bluff, & this is my climate.” —Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)

About FmH

70-something psychiatrist, counterculturalist, autodidact, and unrepentent contrarian.

A Lesson on Iraq From a Classicist

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

“If you want a preview of what might occur if the United States were to invade Iraq, Elaine Fantham suggests looking at what happened in 53 B.C. when the Romans marched into the territory that is now Iraq. Ms. Fantham, 69, is National Public Radio’s mischievous, fruity-voiced classics commentator on ‘Weekend Edition,’ and her specialty is drawing parallels between the ancient world and us.” NY Times

Agency Warns Blood Centers to Inspect Bags for Odd Clumps

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

The mysterious white clumps have been reported in over a hundred units of blood so far, most but not all in transfusion bags from a particular manufacturer. One desperately ill patient has died while receiving a transfusion of the adulterated blood (although officials hasten to say the patient was so ill that the association of the death with the transfusion may have been only coincidental) and there have been six other adverse reactions. NY Times Filters remove the clumps during transfusions, but what is causing them?

World watches first CD recorded completely online:

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

“Reality takes a new bite at Atlanta area recording studio, The Guest House Live. TGHL, the first on-line recording studio and jam space, is in the midst of recording the first album ever to be completely seen and heard on-line. Anyone can watch and listen to Sonic Whisper, a new pop/rock band, honing their first album just as it happens.” biz ink

Decline and Fall (cont’d.):

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

Nuke Plants Aging Disgracefully: “Cracks, corrosion and other signs of age at U.S. nuclear power plants have been the root of a growing list of near-miss accidents that experts and environmental activists fear could lead to true disaster.” Wired News

R.I.P. Lou Harrison

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

Composer, 85, Dies, eulogized by John Rockwell in the New York Times: “Lou Harrison, a distinguished composer in all genres of classical music, founder of the American gamelan movement and a leading exemplar of the marriage of Asian and Western music, died on Sunday evening at a Denny’s restaurant in Lafayette, Ind. He was 85 and lived in Aptos, Calif.”

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

Human Behavior Designed to Avoid Thoughts of Death:
“Like all good social psychologists, Jamie Arndt has more than a few ideas about ways people think and behave. Specifically, he and some of his colleagues in the department of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri-Columbia seek to understand why people work so hard to feel good about themselves. The answer, they believe, can be found in an overriding fear of death.

“Only humans have the fine-tuned cognitive ability to fully realize the inevitability of their own mortality,” Arndt said.

This ability to ponder the inevitability of death, however, doesn’t necessarily translate into thoughtful consideration and acceptance of it. Instead, as Arndt and his colleagues argue, people develop sophisticated behavioral systems that are designed to help them avoid thinking about dying. A subtle reminder of the inevitability of death, even for people who are otherwise psychologically healthy, can create the potential for extreme anxiety, even terror. People struggle to manage the onset or possibility of this terror.” Newswise. Wasn’t this the point Ernest Becker made in the 1974 Pulitzer Prize winning Denial of Death?

Song of Themselves?

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Leonard Garment, at one time Nixon White House counsel and now developing the Jazz Museum in Harlem, is incensed at the ‘bad behavior’ of some poets in mixing art and politics which resulted in the cancellation of the Feb. 12th White House poetry symposium (partly because the symposium, he was hoping, would have advanced his current cause):

Such relationships will thrive only if politicians and artists display mutual restraint. Each party must refrain from gratuitously poking a finger in the eye of the other, a principle that the protesting poets flouted. They sought to use for political ends the platform that the White House provided to them for their artistry. They showed no concern for the effect of this on other artists and enterprises. Of course, they were exercising their constitutional rights. But they should not be surprised that Mrs. Bush, exercising her own rights, declined to offer them tea and cake. Let’s call it poetic justice and move on.

He cites numerous examples of such uppity artistic agitation interfering with Federal patronage of the arts throughout the years, including the Maplethorpe and Serrano flaps (although conceding that the current antiwar poets have better manners). Let us hope poets do not heed his plea that ‘poetic justice’ remain ever civil and impotent.

Here’s some ‘bad behavior’: Circulars: poets, artists and critics respond to u.s. global policy.

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

A Dream Deferred — Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

(for George and Laura Bush – and, today, Leonard Garment —

as one in a continuing series honoring ‘banned’ poets of Feb. 12th)

Who Dies for Bush Lies?

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

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Act: Feb. 15th in NYC.

Posted on 8 Feb 03 by FmH

Legends of the fall — //www.salon.com/ent/feature/2003/02/08/spector/story.jpg' cannot be displayed] Wondering just how legendary you really are? Find out, instantly, just like Phil Spector!

“…With such a muddled mess of opinions floating around, it’s easy to forget that this is only the beginning of the media dog-pile. Once new evidence arises, or, if Spector is found guilty, an even darker picture should emerge. Celebrities like Robert Blake and O.J. Simpson have demonstrated that, once that verdict comes in (or even beforehand), friends will start to recall a darker, uglier you than ever before.

But, paradoxically, if you’re actually convicted, things should start looking up: You’ll have the benefit of looking all sallow and depressed in your prison garb. When people think you’re accustomed to savoring fine foods and sleeping on Egyptian cotton sheets, they seem to have a tough time seeing you suffer through poly blends and mystery meat stroganoff. Thousands of hearts will cry out to you, and worry about how you’re sleeping at night and whether you’ll have to trade your cup of tapioca for the right to remain unmolested by T-Bone, your cellmate. Those thousands of hearts have watched “Oz” — they know the deal.

Your time behind bars might ruin your complexion, but it’ll do wonders for your image.” Salon

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

Air Force imagery confirms Columbia wing damaged. “High-resolution images taken from a ground-based Air Force tracking camera in southwestern U.S. show serious structural damage to the inboard leading edge of Columbia’s left wing, as the crippled orbiter flew overhead about 60 sec. before the vehicle broke up over Texas killing the seven astronauts on board Feb. 1.

According to sources close to the investigation, the images, under analysis at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, show a jagged edge on the left inboard wing structure near where the wing begins to intersect the fuselage. They also show the orbiter’s right aft yaw thrusters firing, trying to correct the vehicle’s attitude that was being adversely affected by the left wing damage.” [more] Spaceflight Now

Paint It, Black:

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

“Researchers have created the blackest black ever made on Earth… This new super-black coating … is designed to revolutionise the manufacture of optical instruments.

It reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the black paint currently used to reduce unwanted reflections in instruments. And this means the super-black coating may one day help improve the vision of the Hubble Space Telescope…” New Scientist

"We decided not to run it…"

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

‘Here’s an interesting story. It’s an important one, and it’s not being covered.

After Colin Powell spoke to the UN Security Council yesterday, a bi-partisan bill was introduced in Congress by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Ron Paul (R-TX). It wasn’t just any bill – this is legislation that looks to repeal the Iraq Use of Force Resolution passed by Congress in October.’

After the repeal, Congress could take a thoughtful look at the evidence and, if warranted, vote to authorize war in due time, but it would slow down the process and allow for continued lesser efforts in the meanwhile. Sound like a good idea? This piece goes on to describe how the bill has gotten virtually no major media attention. ‘It’s not news’??

(…)

‘Agree with DeFazio and Paul? Dial up the Congressional toll-free switchboard at 1-800-839-5276 and urge your Congressman to sign onto their bill, H.J. Res 20, which aims to repeal the Iraq Use of Force Resolution.’ Ruminate This

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

Gate-Crasher Hands Bush ‘Message From God’
‘The Rev. Richard “Rich” Weaver, nicknamed “Handshake Man” because of his knack for getting up close and personal with the high and mighty, struck again yesterday morning. The Post‘s David Montgomery reports that the 57-year-old Weaver, a nondenominational Christian minister from Sacramento, crashed the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton, breezing through the ballroom entrance without a ticket and handed President Bush what he later described as an eight-page typed “message from God” about Iraq.’ Washington Post. Oh my God, it could just have easily been a left-winger!

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

Speaking of Precedents:
Terry Jones: “I’m losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush. I’m really excited by George Bush’s latest reason for bombing Iraq: he’s running out of patience. And so am I!

For some time now I’ve been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street. Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I’m sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven’t been able to discover what. I’ve been round to his place a few times to see what he’s up to, but he’s got everything well hidden. That’s how devious he is.” Guardian UK

Dying for War

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

Missing the bloody point:

Saddam Hussein is a despot, a dictator, a torturer, and a fiend. That’s not the question. To be sure, the Iraqi people would be better off in a democracy. And perhaps Saddam really is hiding weapons he should not have (though convincing evidence has yet to be presented). The issue, rather, is whether risking the lives and health of American troops, provoking likely terrorist attacks on New York and other U.S. targets, and most certainly wiping out many thousands of Iraqis—the UN predicts upwards of half a million Iraqis requiring medical treatment as a result of “direct or indirect injuries” related to the war—is the best way to disarm Saddam and improve the lives of the people suffering under his rule. Not to mention the related consequences of gutting civil liberties and eviscerating social spending here, and taking the chance of regional conflagration in the Middle East.

Village Voice

Whose Smoking Gun? Powell’s evidence shouldn’t mean war:

Iraq hawks are troubled by the failure of some Americans to fall in line behind President Bush after Wednesday’s impressive performance by Colin Powell. Now that Powell has so clearly shown that Iraq has illegal weapons, they ask, how could anyone argue for continuing United Nations weapons inspections, rather than just fast forwarding to war? Actually, it’s not as hard as you’d think. — Robert Wright,

Slate

Failing to make the case for war:

The White House’s arguments for war all along have been less conclusions based on evidence than evidence based on conclusions – less like the determination of a judge, and more like the lawyers arguing to the jury. Powell’s presentation to the U.N., with its more concrete evidence and its more sober demeanor, should be considered every bit as critically, and skeptically, as those of the more hyperbolic prosecutors preceding him.

And, to quote the late, wondrous Peggy Lee: Is that all there is? — Geov Parrish,

AlterNet

Powell’s dubious case for war:

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council today wasn’t likely to win over anyone not already on his side. He ignored the crucial fact that in the past several days (in Sunday’s New York Times and in his Feb. 4 briefing of UN journalists) Hans Blix denied key components of Powell’s claims.

Blix, who directs the UN inspection team in Iraq, said the UNMOVIC inspectors have seen “no evidence” of mobile biological weapons labs, have “no persuasive indications” of Iraq-al Qaeda links, and no evidence of Iraq hiding and moving material used for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) either outside or inside Iraq. Dr. Blix also said there was no evidence of Iraq sending scientists out of the country, of Iraqi intelligence agents posing as scientists, of UNMOVIC conversations being monitored, or of UNMOVIC being penetrated. — Phyllis Bennis,

Foreign Policy in Focus via AlterNet

The inspections flap: both sides are wrong:

The verbal fight about the search for weapons in Iraq is a waste of words. This fractious debate, like the search for the weapons themselves, is a red herring – a diversion from the real reasons for war. Oddly, those who oppose the war are trapped by the inspection regime’s logic every bit as much as President Bush is. In a mirror image of each other, both are beholden to the wrong standards, pretending to follow the rules, and letting more important issues slide by. — John Tirman,

AlterNet

Trust Colin Powell? A retrospective:

The U.S. news media promoted two “themes” about Secretary of State Colin Powell’s trip to the United Nations where he buttressed George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq by presenting satellite photographs of trucks outside buildings and snippets of intercepted conversations.

While the “evidence” on its face didn’t seem to prove much of anything, the media’s first “theme” was that Powell is a trustworthy man of principle, a straight talker who wouldn’t be part of some cheap propaganda ploy. The second “theme” was that Powell’s appearance before the United Nations was a kind of sequel to Adlai Stevenson’s convincing case that Soviet missiles had been installed in Cuba in 1962.

But both themes – Powell’s trustworthiness and the Cuban missile precedent – may be misleading, as articles below from the Consortiumnews.com Archives will demonstrate.

The Consortium

E.J. Dionne and David Brooks, NPR’s Friday evening political pundits summarizing the week’s news on “All Things Considered”, come at it from the supposed two sides of the political spectrum, but they agreed in this evening’s commentary that the American public’s debate about the war is over after the State of the Union address and the Powell U.N. speech. If indeed the American public has been convinced, shame on them. First, if we had all this evidence for so long, why wait until now to pull it out of the hat? I just don’t buy the business about an intense debate within the administration about whether to jeopardize intelligence sources. We would never have insisted on reestablishing the inspection process if we already had proof (not to mention that it is proof that is not supported from on the ground, according to the chief inspector…). Secondly, all the evidence about Iraq’s concealing weapons misses the point, upon which the Europeans continue to insist, that there is no imminent threat from Iraq. Thirdly, to attempt to make the case for a clear and present danger by linking Iraq and al Qaeda is a stretch so huge that it was painfully embarrassing to listen to. Finally, and most important, it has been the dysadministration’s game of three card monte all along to configure this debate around WMD, which is only the pretext for war. Oh, so that’s why the big charade about the inspection process. If you’re only paying attention to what’s going on in my right hand, I can do anything I want with my left.. But:

Is this war now unstoppable?

In a host of developments yesterday, the Pentagon said 113,000 US troops were in the Gulf, on course for the target of 150,000 the accepted minimum for a war by 15 February. An important unit, the 20,000-strong 101st Airborne Division, was ordered to the Gulf.

Independent UK

Since Chirac has signalled that France will not change its position, and would use its UN Security Council veto to stop a second resolution authorizing force, the US will fall back on its “coalition of the willing” with its new toadies in eastern Europe, and exercise the right upon which it has insisted to go it without UN authorization. William Saletan, writing in

Slate, tallies How Powell Did in the Security Council:

In his presentation to the U.N. Security Council Wednesday morning, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell sought to convince the council of three things: 1) that his evidence was solid and damning; 2) that Iraq’s current level of cooperation was unacceptable under Security Council Resolution 1441, thereby justifying war; and 3) that this failure to cooperate rendered inspections futile, clearing the way for an imminent war decision.

After Powell spoke, representatives of the remaining 14 council members delivered their preliminary judgments of his presentation. Their comments on the three key questions, summarized in the table below, indicate that Powell succeeded on the first question and gained the upper hand on the second but failed to attract enough support on the third. The bottom line is that the council’s sanctions on Iraq will stay in place, and if the United States can wait, the council (as presently constituted) will eventually authorize war. But if the United States insists on going to war now, it will have to do so without that authorization.

So it is coming soon — the buildup, the rhetoric and the logistics say it has to be this year rather than next when the Presidential campaign will be gearing up, and it has to be before it gets too hot. Oh, and by the way,

France is no longer an ally of the United States and the NATO alliance “must develop a strategy to contain our erstwhile ally or we will not be talking about a NATO alliance” the head of the Pentagon’s top advisory board said in Washington Tuesday.

Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and now chairman of the Pentagon’s Policy Advisory Board, condemned French and German policy on Iraq in the strongest terms at a public seminar organized by a New York-based PR firm and attended by Iraqi exiles and American Middle East and security officials.

UPI

To cap it off,

US chooses Saddam’s successor

Sydney Morning Herald.

Caught in the Act:

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

British dossier on Iraq copied academic paper

A British government dossier intended to show how Iraq is obstructing of UN weapons inspectors via an “infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation” has been revealed to have lifted significant sections from academic papers.

The document was issued by the UK in January 2003 and described as drawing “upon a number of sources, including intelligence material”. It aims to demonstrate “how the Iraqi regime is constructed to have, and to keep, weapons of mass destruction”.

But a number of pages of the document were copied virtually word for word from a paper published in the journal Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002. This was written by Ibrahim al-Marashi, an academic at the Centre for Non-proliferation Studies in California in the US.

Further sections of the dossier were copied from articles written by Sean Boyne and Ken Gause that appeared in the military journal Jane’s Intelligence Review in 1997 and 2002.

Military analysts and opposition politicians in the UK have described the copying as “scandalous”, saying the dossier was presented as being the product of the very latest government intelligence.

(…)The revelation is particularly embarrassing as US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave special mention to the dossier in a key presentation of evidence against Iraq at the UN Security Council on Wednesday. New Scientist

Women ‘better at baby-talk’ than men:

Posted on 7 Feb 03 by FmH

“Women are better at talking to babies than men, researchers say.

But experts warn the finding should not be used as an excuse for men to leave women holding the baby.” BBC

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

Brought to our knees…
Today and tomorrow are the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Great Blizzard of 1978, which covered eastern Massachusetts with a sudden fresh 27″ of snow atop the previous week’s base of 21″, then sculpted it with 90 m.p.h. Nor’easter winds into drifts higher than the rooftops. The Boston metropolitan area shut down, it was illegal to drive on any streets anywhere in the disaster area, and I had a blissful week cross-country skiing around town and testing my prowess at digging snow caves and building igloos, although I did do some duty with the National Guard delivering medicines to shut-ins. This was one of the first experiences during which I marvelled that human hubris could be so readily cut down to size by the majesty of nature at its furious worst (best?), and revelled at that peculiar liminal suspension of social norms that allows the efflorescence of unmediated human kindness and community, however brief and awkward. Although mindful of the loss of life, I still feel that way hearing of most natural ‘disasters’.

‘Dr. Strangelove’ meets ‘The Madness of King George’?

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

The Madness of George Dubya: “(The) idea is very simple: to apply the premise behind Terry Southern’s Strangelove script to a war with Iraq. So we have the crazed head of a US air base in Britain, who regards UN weapons inspectors as “pinko, degenerate subversives”, launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Saddam Hussein.

While George Dubya cowers in his bunker clutching his teddy bear, panic ensues in Downing Street. But as the dithering PM finally authorises troops to break into the American base, the US military relish the prospect of all-out nuclear war.” Guardian UK Big hit in the UK; how far off Broadway would it have to be to be tolerable in America?

Two from New Scientist:

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

Tadpoles take the blame for human hiccoughing

There are many similarities between hiccuping and gill ventilation in animals like tadpoles, the researchers argue. Both are inhibited when the lungs are inflated, for example, and by high carbon dioxide levels in air or water. But why do we still hiccup 370 million years after our ancestors began hauling themselves onto land?

If the team is right, hiccupping before birth is just an early stage in the development of suckling, a little like learning to crawl before you can walk. Straus thinks the circuitry that controls the movements of the gills and glottis was conserved during evolution because it formed a building block for more complex motor patterns, such as suckling in mammals. “Hiccups may be the price to pay to keep this useful pattern generator,” he says.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology will soon be testing a controversial theory about the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

According to an analysis by a leading fire-safety expert, had the fire-proofing insulation on the towers’ steel structures been thicker, the towers would have survived longer and might even have remained standing after they were hit by the hijacked planes. The work is being seized on by lawyers representing victims’ families and insurance companies.

If confirmed, it could also lead to changes in building codes.

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

Mexican rebels: ‘We don’t want tourists’.
Zapatista rebels are threatening to seize a ranch and guest house owned by U.S. citizens and are running tourists out of parts of southern Chiapas state — an unexpected turn for a country whose third-largest income source is tourism.” Seeing this headline [courtesy of dangerousmeta], I wondered at first if the article was referring to the ranch the Harvard University Chiapas Project owned, and maybe still does, in San Cristobal de las Casas, a major tourist destination in the highlands of Chiapas and a gateway to the indigenous territories of the post-Mayan peoples associated with the Zapatista rebel movement. The ranch was used for continuous anthropological research under the direction of Harvard Professor Evon Vogt and others who studied the modern-day Maya. It was an important training site to teach anthropology students fieldwork techniques. As I’ve described here before, I was a member of the Harvard Chiapas Project in the ’70’s and my undergraduate thesis arose from fieldwork I did there.

The ranch threatened by the Zapatistas, however, is an ecotourism resort fifty miles east of San Cristobal. I’ve wondered at times if the Harvard program still exists (Vogt is retired now and has already written a memoir of its efforts) and, if so, if it has been responsive to the indigenous uprising or in its way.

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

North Korea Intensifies War of Words With U.S., threatens pre-emptive strike against the US. NY Times The dysadministration response is to dismiss the threats as the usual North Korean rhetoric. While it probably is bluster, it misses the point . The Bush war-fighting doctrine abandons restraint in embracing such options as preemption (i.e. starting wars), suggesting the permissibility of tactical nuclear weapon use, military provocation before exhausting skillful diplomatic approaches, and unilateralism in defiance of world opinion. This is sure to be cited as a precedent by other rogue states [If it isn’t clear, I mean rogue states other than the U.S. —FmH] with the capability and recklessness to act on their threats even if North Korea does not, and the U.S. will never see its responsibility for the lawlessness that follows, just as it is taboo to explore its responsibility for being targeted by radical Islamist terrorist wrath.

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

U.S. Mourns? Don’t Believe It. John Balzar captures exactly what has troubled me since Saturday’s accident. However, I’ve also wondered if some of the pathos of the reaction to the shuttle disaster isn’t just the diversion from the looming war weighing heavily on our collective psyche although not consciously acknowledged in many circles.

“The hype, not the accident, is what’s shocking. The disintegration of a space shuttle is a big story. But it’s not that big. We’re all moved by the death of astronauts, just not that moved. It’s a tragedy for sure. But …

Does it really warrant the preposterous questions we hear being asked?

Will President Bush have to rethink Iraq? Will he find it easier to bend Congress to his will for the sake of tax cuts? Are critics of the president once again unpatriotic? Has Bush displayed anew his remarkable leadership? Should humankind abandon the quest to explore our universe? Is everything different now? Blah, blah.” LA Times [via dangerousmeta]

Military cremation would alter tradition:

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

“The Pentagon is considering cremating remains of troops who may die in a chemical or biological attack in a possible war with Iraq, officials said Thursday.

(…) The reason for the high-level policy review is the prospect of mass casualties, especially from smallpox or anthrax, that would require the quick disposal of bodies to protect the living. ” CNN

Posted on 6 Feb 03 by FmH

Emily Dickinson:
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

[A little Dickinson tidbit, for George and Laura Bush as one in a series honoring the ‘banned’ poets of Feb. 12th.]

Examining the ‘Liberal Media’ Myth:

Posted on 5 Feb 03 by FmH

Wood s lot compiles a set of blinks on this issue. The right-wing bloggers invariably use the claim that their viewpoint is disenfranchised to justify their self-righteous biliousness. [I prefer leftwing righteous biliousness myself. —FmH]

What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News: Eric Alterman. A pdf of the introduction is available here.
“The Liberal Media” — A Poltergeist That Will Not Die: Norman Solomon fair
Examining the “Liberal Media” Claim; Journalists’ Views on Politics, Economic Policy and Media Coverage

fair
The Liberal Media Myth

[thanks, mark]

Suicide 101:

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

Lessons Before Dying

Type “suicide” into an Internet search engine, and among the sites advertising therapy, hotlines and antidepressants, you’ll find a handful of pages where suicidal strangers counsel each other on the best way to die.

The largest site, called alt.suicide.holiday, or ASH, combines a public newsgroup, chat rooms and guide files instructing visitors on how to kill themselves using everything from aspirin to rat poison.

Local news reports have so far linked ASH to three suicides. Wired News was able to confirm another seven deaths associated with the site in interviews with relatives over the last month. In addition, ASH itself lists another 14 suicides as “success stories,” but those could not be verified because of the anonymous screen names used by the people who allegedly died.

Evidence exists that at least one person downloaded carbon monoxide poisoning instructions from the site before killing herself.

The ASH site, which started as a Usenet bulletin board in 1991, has spun off a related newsgroup and chat rooms.

In addition to the main newsgroup, a kind of online diary whose participants vent feelings of unhappiness and comment on each other’s suicide plans, visitors can find advice on funeral arrangements, writing goodbye letters and an agony calculator that computes the pain and lethality factors of various types of suicide.

‘Let me get this straight: You’re looking for advice for dealing with hopelessness and depression from someone who’s hopeless and depressed? How logical is that?’ — a psychiatrist interviewed for his reaction to this phenomenon, which is the first part of a three-part series in Wired. The second part is here: No one asked why he wanted to die. My reaction is abit more complicated than a neat soundbite, I hope. It starts from first principles — the mission of mental health professionals is not to prevent all suicide but only preventable suicides. It sounds like a tautology (it isn’t proven preventable until you prevent it, right?) but, believe me, even though we don’t have a crystal ball, it isn’t. Certain psychiatric illness is a terminal disease, the suicide associated with it inevitable; certain suicide is a rational choice, not a product of the impaired judgment, thought, impulse control or emotion of a mental illness; certain self-injurious behavior is nonetheless not of suicidal proportion; and certain seemingly suicidal ideation is merely “as-if”.

To construe one’s mission as preventing all suicide would be not only impossible, of course, but worthy of the type of paternalistic society a John Ashcroft envisions, clicking neatly with the nondiscerning and obsolescent attitudes (of Ashcroft or his ilk, my guess is) which consider suicide either a crime, a sin, or both. If you believe in free will, it would be a mistake, although one readily made in grief and bewilderment after a suicide, to blame anyone external for providing the know-how or even the means, even if they are actively encouraging. This is only a new issue insofar as it is web-based; the Hemlock Society has fought for the right to publish how-to manuals for suicide for a long time. Even if you believe they intend them to be used only to alleviate the suffering of those with painful fatal medical conditions, others certainly have access to them.

I train other mental health professionals in suicide assessment and prevention, and certainly feel it is our burden to thoughtfully evaluate the potential self-lethality of anyone expressing suicidal thoughts who comes our way. In many instances that requires the person’s voluntary participation; in others they can be confined against their will. I believe that the commitment statutes for involuntary hospitalization to prevent self-harm have wisdom in insisting that committability depends on having a mental illness, not merely expressing the wish to end one’s life. I see the statutes abused in several ways — first, to confine people who, although they harm themselves in other ways, do not represent a threat to their lives or intend to end their lives; and second, to confine people who do not have a legitimate mental illness. I am particularly troubled by the “attention-getting” patient who makes gestural suicidal pronouncements or self-injurious acts but is at no greater than baseline suicide risk; our response merely reinforces the pathological attention-seeking and wastes increasingly scarce mental health resources. But in a litigious society, no one wants to take the risk of liability for having been wrong in their assessment of whether someone is truly self-lethal (and, of course, even a gesture can go wrong and mistakenly kill oneself), so nondiscerning crisis services and outpatient providers have everyone locked up — which is exactly why ASHers don’t talk to health professionals about how they feel. In this sense, groups like ASH may actually do a service, in several ways. First, by providing accurate information about suicide methodology, they may dissuade some from attempting at all, or influence them to postpone an otherwise impulsive act. Secondly, by making it clear how lethal various methods are, they make it less likely that a “gesturer” will mistakenly choose a lethal method. Thirdly, and most importantly, they tolerate how the person with suicidal ideation feels nonjudgmentally and supportively. This is what mental health professionals were once taught to do as the sine qua non in treating the suicidal patient, but it is a task at which we fall woefully short (for a coalescence of reasons enumerating which would be a treatise in itself). Often, not being heard or tolerated is the proximal precipitant to someone’s crossing the line and taking thir life.

Deadend.com Makes Film Inroads

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

“It was a new twist on interactive entertainment. In the summer of 2000, the makers of deadend.com, a road movie about three teens in a suicide pact, asked visitors to their website to e-mail story ideas. Wired News

Shower Rice to stop the war

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

‘We can do no great things, We can only do small things with great love.’ “An anti-war action is sweeping through the churches. It has worked before. It can work now. Everyone can do this:

Place 1/2 c. uncooked rice in a small plastic bag (a snack-sized bag or sandwich bag works fine).

Squeeze out excess air and seal the bag.

Wrap it in a piece of paper on which you have written: “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. (Romans 12:20)” Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them.”

Place the paper and bag of rice in an envelope (either a letter-sized or small padded mailing envelope – both are the same cost to mail) and address it to:

President George Bush

White House – 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20500

Make a second package and mail it to (you don’t need to affix postage if mailing within Canada):

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien

Office of the Prime Minister

80 Wellington Street

Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A2

[I’m not sure if it would make sense for non-Canadians to send the second one to Chrétien. This post is taken from the Thunder Bay, Ontario, IndyMedia Centre. — FmH]

Drop this in the mail today. It is important to act now so that President Bush and Prime Minister Chrétien get our letters as soon as possible!

In order for this protest to be effective, there must be hundreds of thousands of such rice deliveries to the White House and Parliament Hill. We can do this if we all forward this message to our friends and family. If we get the message out, there will be packets from hundreds of thousands of people!

There is a positive history of this protest! Read on!“

". . .’keep a step ahead, keep your mind ahead’ —

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

Neal Cassady (2/8/26-2/4/68) died <a href=”http://www.todayinliterature.com/today-ct.asp?id=2/4/2003

“>on this day.

“. . .’keep a step ahead, keep your mind ahead’ — (I heard his insistent voice) — ‘don’t butt your dumb head against their walls, man! – look for doors, and then GO – Just leave them snarled up in their worries, their motives – it’s their kick man, it’s their dreary high – But, listen – never knock the way the other cat swings.'”

— John Clellon Holmes, Go (1952),
[Generally acknowledged to be the first Beat novel and preceding Kerouac’s On The Road by five years, it is also about Cassady.]

Related: Why did John Perry Barlow spell Cassady’s name wrong in his heartfelt paean?

While we’re at it, here’s more from Go:

‘Last week l got the idea that the one aim of my intercourse with other people is to prevent them from noticing how brittle and will-less l have become,” Paul Hobbes was writing. ‘l cant seem to dance without a piper. Would you believe ill of me? l actually yearn for life to be easy, magic, full of love. How wonderful (and simple) it would be if we were all naked on a plain, as Gene Pasternak says. You probably wouldn’t like him at all, but l can learn something from him because he’s written an annoyingly good novel. And anyway he believes in himself, and also in life…. As of this moment, l only believe in the spring outside the window on Lexington Avenue, and in you. Is there spring up there on Riverside Drive too? Let’s all go out and be naked on a plain. . . .”

Angrily, Hobbes stopped typing, surrendering to his feeling that the letter was basically aimless. He pulled the sheet out of the machine, looked it over for a moment, thrust it aside, and got up. He began to walk noisily up and down the floor. It was after five and Pasternak had been sleeping since nine that morning.

Everything in sight made Hobbes impatient: the shelves he had built for their books, the borrowed frameless paintings on the walls, the couches in need of a brush; everything that he and his wife, Kathryn, had collected and arranged so carefully in the last years. They were not enough somehow; nor were his desk, his manuscripts, and the novel upon which he had been biting his nails too long. Only the soft spring evening, which hung like some impossibly romantic water-color behind the towers of midtown Manhattan, escaped his dissatisfaction. He was filled with that heightened sense of excitement and restlessness that spring brings to New York, when evening becomes graceful and warm with promise. A joy without object or reason rose within him, but like all such joys ebbed into frustration almost immediately because he did not know how to express it.

He went to the phonograph, pulled out an album and put on a soft jazz record. He did not want to keep quiet, he wanted everything to begin; but an overly-developed sense of propriety prevented him from going to the bedroom, and waking Pasternak with cruel brightness so they could talk. Instead he sat down again and began to re-read what he had written.

File-Trading Manifesto:

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

Embrace file-sharing, or die: “A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can’t be wrong.” — John Snyder [president of Artist House Records, a board member of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and a 32-time Grammy nominee], Salon

Poets Against the War

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

A week ago Sam Hamill sent an open letter — printed below — to a few friends. Word has spread like wildfire from mailbox to mailbox, and to date over 3,600 poets have submitted poems or personal statements to register their opposition to the Bush administration’s headlong plunge toward war in Iraq. In doing so, they have honored a long and rich tradition of thoughtful and moral opposition by poets and other artists to senseless and murderous policies, including those of our own government.

In the face of the near unanimous opposition from U.N. members, despite the disapproval of the vast majority of citizens of the world, in defiance of the advice of its own intelligence agencies, and contrary to both common sense and fundamental notions of morality, the Bush administration seems to be on a rocket sled headed for war.

The next few weeks will likely prove to be critical. Please register your protest and add your name to our numbers by submitting a poem or brief commentary. Be part of our National Day of Poetry Against the Waron February 12.

[Febuary 12th was to have been the day of the now-cancelled “Poetry and the American Voice” symposium at the White House. — FmH]

Welcome back:

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

ghost rocket returns.

Guernica, Iraq:

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

Comparisons between the Pentagon’s war plans for the looming war in Iraq and the Nazis’ bombing of the Basque village of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 are rife. For a sampling, see this Google Search: ‘Guernica & Iraq’. As Gar Smith commented in Alternet:

U.S. military strategists have announced a plan to pummel Iraq with as many as 800 cruise missiles in the space of two days. Many of these missiles would rain down on Baghdad, a city of five million people. If George W. Bush gets the war he wants, Baghdad could become the 21st century’s Guernica.

On April 26, 1937, 25 Nazi bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs and incendiaries on the peaceful Basque village. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed and 1,500 people, a third of the population, were killed.

The Pentagon now predicts that the Iraq blitzkrieg could approximate the devastation of a nuclear explosion. “The sheer size of this has never been … contemplated before,” one Pentagon strategist boasted to CBS News. “There will not be a safe place in Baghdad.”

The Pentagon dubbed its cold-blooded attack plan “Shock and Awe,” a bizarre conjunction of trauma and admiration.

//roland.tardieu.free.fr/Picasso/Guernica.jpg' cannot be displayed]

A full-size reproduction of Picasso’s “Guernica”, which he donated to the U.N., hangs in its lobby and is the backdrop against which diplomats make their press statements. Now comes word that a large blue curtain has been used to cover the work. A U.N. spokesperson, asked why, would only say that the curtain is an “appropriate background for the cameras.” But it appears to be rather a matter of sensitivity to US mouthpieces such as Colin Powell or John Negroponte who would have to advocate for “Shock and Awe” in front of an overpowering depiction of women, children and animals shouting in horror as they are attacked from the skies. Art Daily [thanks, Adam]

In related art news, fittingly from the same day’s Art Daily as the above, Rubens’ early masterpiece “The Massacre of the Innocents” (1609-1610) will be on display at the National Gallery in London for three years on loan from the new owner who recently acquired it at a record-breaking auction, it has just been announced. Only recently affirmed to be a Rubens, the piece was so detested by its former owner that it was lent to a monastery until sold last fall.

//www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/personal/DHart/Images/WarArt/Rubens/MassacreInnocents1621.JPG' cannot be displayed]

Those crafty curators are always making statements with their art choices, aren’t they?

Finally, here’s a concise guide to The Art of War and Peace.

Posted on 4 Feb 03 by FmH

The Negro Speaks of Rivers — Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

(for George W. Bush as one in a continuing series honoring ‘banned’ poets)

[One of my favorite Hughes’ pieces ever since Gary Bartz set it to sublime music thirty years ago. mark wood put up another of my favorites, “Let America Be America Again”, the other day in noting Hughes’ birthday. — FmH]

Derrida, Derrida, etc.

Posted on 3 Feb 03 by FmH

“History will remember Derrida, and it surely will, not for what he himself has said but for what his revered status says about us.” — Mark Goldblatt, National Review

Gene test to help you beat death…

Posted on 3 Feb 03 by FmH

…sparks row on ethics

Do you want to know how you will die and when? Or would you rather live without that knowledge? Such a dilemma might only be expected to face characters in a science fiction novel or film. Until now.

The Observer can reveal that genetic tests that promise to foretell accurately our medical future are being sold in growing numbers across Britain.

Dubbed health ‘horoscopes’, they claim to be able to predict with certainty what illnesses you are likely to get throughout your lifetime by revealing inherited traits.

Delivered to your home wrapped like an expensive box of chocolates, the Genovations test offers people the opportunity to find out how likely it is they will suffer from heart disease, cancer, thrombosis, osteoporosis, asthma and a range of other serious medical problems. The Observer

Looks like we’ve bitten the hand that feeds us

Posted on 3 Feb 03 by FmH

Review — Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man by Michael Boulter: ‘Worried about overpopulation, pollution, dwindling natural resources and global warming? Well, the good news, according to British paleobiologist Michael Boulter, is that our selfish behavior as a species may not, in the long run, destroy our beautiful planet or most of the life forms that inhabit it. The bad news, however, is that our abuse probably will put an end to most of the larger mammals, in particular us, the soi-disant Homo sapiens, apparently less sapient than billed.

A professor of paleobiology at the University of East London, Boulter has been studying extinction, including the five major mass extinction events that have occurred since the beginning of life on Earth. The largest single factor in each case, he concludes, was radical change in the environment, leaving erstwhile flourishing species suddenly unable to survive. “Evolution,” Boulter explains, “is less to do with winning battles between species and individuals, more to do with being able to live well together in the same environment.” ‘ LA Times

Posted on 3 Feb 03 by FmH

Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness ed. by Bernard J. Baars, William P. Banks, and James B. Newman: “Consciousness is at the very core of the human condition. Yet only in recent

decades has it become a major focus in the brain and behavioral sciences.

Scientists now know that consciousness involves many levels of brain

functioning, from brainstem to cortex. The almost seventy articles in this book

reflect the breadth and depth of this burgeoning field. The many topics covered

include consciousness in vision and inner speech, immediate memory and

attention, waking, dreaming, coma, the effects of brain damage, fringe

consciousness, hypnosis, and dissociation.

Underlying all the selections are the questions, What difference does

consciousness make? What are its properties? What role does it play in the

nervous system? How do conscious brain functions differ from unconscious ones?

The focus of the book is on scientific evidence and theory.” amazon.com

Sagrada Familia in New York?

Posted on 3 Feb 03 by FmH

God’s architect design for Twin Tower space? “Antoni Gaudi, the avant-garde architect of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia church who could soon be beatified has become the latest candidate to design a replacement for New York’s destroyed World Trade Centre

Gaudi (1852-1926) was commissioned in 1908 to create a 366 metre skyscraper hotel for Lower Manhattan. Although the project was never realised, he left a spaceship-type design, topped by an observation platform in the shape of a giant glass star, which has now been submitted by a US-Spanish team of artists and academics.”

Posted on 3 Feb 03 by FmH

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), Leaves of Grass:

Of persons arrived at high positions, ceremonies, wealth, scholarships, and the like;

To me, all that those persons have arrived at, sinks away from them, except as it results to their Bodies and Souls,

So that often to me they appear gaunt and naked;

And often, to me, each one mocks the others, and mocks himself or herself,

And of each one, the core of life, namely happiness, is full of the rotten excrement of maggots,

And often, to me, those men and women pass unwittingly the true realities of life, and go toward false realities,

And often, to me, they are alive after what custom has served them, but nothing more,

And often, to me, they are sad, hasty, unwaked sonnambules, walking the dusk

(dedicated to George W. Bush as one in a continuing series honoring ‘banned’ poets)

"In the event of a moon disaster"

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

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Nixon was prepared for astronaut eulogies:

When man first landed on the moon 30 years ago, President Richard Nixon had a speech all ready in case man would not get off again.

A contingency statement was prepared for Mr. Nixon, an eerie, poignant tribute that he would deliver while the astronauts were still alive but when there was no longer any hope for them.

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace wills stay on the moon to rest in peace,” says the statement, incorporated in a memo titled “In Event of Moon Disaster.”

The memo is dated July 18, 1969, two days before the moon landing.

Mr. Nixon never had to act on it. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin made it safely off the moon, back to the command module with Michael Collins, and home. The words were drafted by William Safire, then a Nixon speechwriter and now a columnist for the New York Times.

The memo ended up in the National Archives and was reported by the Los Angeles Times. Associated Press

Time passages

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

‘Many of Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptures last only as long as nature allows. A new movie, ‘Rivers and Tides,’ captures his ephemeral efforts.’ Boston Globe I’ve loved Goldsworthy’s work since my time in Scotland years ago. It is time for a broader appreciation…

Wild People, Unite!

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

A manifesto:

As I see it, here in the early 21st century, triage requires we look beyond our management-plan differences and unite to fight for all our Places, for all our kids — cowboys and Indians, multi-generational rancher and rural-refugee relative-newcomer (just more in a multi-millennial line of migrators) — or we’ll soon have nothing left to argue about. If we can’t look past our personal political agendas toward some deeper shared roots, then it just may be that all of the meaningful nooks and crannies left on the land will be engineered, profiteered, privatized, regulated, marketed, and paved away. We can argue about the details, but first we must unite against those who have no meaning of Place beyond the money that can be extracted from the land; and who, in that money-worshipping land-sacrificing, will suck the Place out of the places needed by those of us who still need that meaning. In a growth-buzz addicted culture, even the stems and seeds get smoked.

Here’s my new bumper sticker: Save the wild people. I envision next to that slogan the picture of a little kid giving the finger. — Ken Wright, The Exquisite Corpse Manifesto Issue

ZOCK:

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

Outlaw manifesto of the century:

In March 1967, at the dawn of what became known as the summer of love, Otto Muehl published “ZOCK,” one of the most fanatical nihilist credos ever written. In this intense instance Otto might be compared to Sergei Nechaev–Dostoyevsky’s model for the fictional Verkhovensky in The Possessed–and his very real Catechism of the Revolutionist. Both manifestoes carried to an ultimate extreme lewdness and severity, of mystical satire in praxis. In both there are suggestions of older, shadowy millenarian uprisings, the writer depicting himself as a complete immoralist, bound to commit “any crime, any treachery, any baseness or deception” to create a New World order. The stories of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, even Jesus and Judas are taken not as rogue elements but implicitly as paradigms of brotherhood, of fierce love. Both Nechaev and Muehl oppose history to project the future of mankind into a primordial time when communication between heaven and earth, gods and mortals, was not merely possible, but easy and within the reach of all mankind. In both there is an unstated belief in redemption through sin. Every acute and radical Utopianism that is taken seriously tears open an abyss in which by inner necessity these antinomian tendencies and libertarian moral conceptions gain strength. — William Levy, The Exquisite Corpse Manifesto Issue

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

Walt Whitman (1819–1892), Leaves of Grass:

79. Thought

Of obedience, faith, adhesiveness;

As I stand aloof and look,

there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men,

following the lead of those who do not believe in men.

(dedicated to George W. Bush, as one of a series of posts honoring ‘banned’ poets)

Happy Birthday James Joyce!

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

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“On this day in 1922, James Joyce’s fortieth birthday, Ulysses was first published. Joyce was very superstitious, and very apprehensive of a hostile reception for the novel that had been seven years in writing and sixteen years in gestation; he chose the birthday publication for luck.” Today in Literature

Wurst-Case Scenario Causes Police Alert

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

“A man who mistook a salami for an automatic pistol triggered a major police operation on Friday in southern Germany, involving 10 police cars and a helicopter.” Yahoo! News

Weapon of the Weak:

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

Richard Reeves: “A foolish President brags about assassination: ‘ Oh, you don’t think that happens here? Americans don’t do such things?

If so, then you were not watching and listening carefully to the president last Tuesday night. I literally leaped out of my seat when Bush said this…’ [more]

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Deer

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

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The Strange and the Beautiful: “It takes a while to figure out why Dr. Mark Mahowald’s grainy sleep-lab videos are so spooky. One immediate reason is the phenomena on the footage — a class of disorders called ”parasomnias,” which are defined as unwanted and involuntary behaviors during sleep and are by definition occult, because they appear when most people are unable to witness them. But even the scientists who stay up late by profession never quite get used to what they see.” NY Times

Time passages

Posted on 2 Feb 03 by FmH

Shuttle Disaster

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

In case you hadn’t heard, contact with the space shuttle Columbia was lost shortly after 9:00 a.m. Eastern time this morning as it began reentry from its recent orbital mission, heading for a landing in Florida. Multiple contrails were seen in the sky and debris has fallen over central Texas. There was no indication of any difficulties aboard the craft in prior communication with NASA. While not acknowledging that the vehicle had exploded or fragmented, NASA warned area residents of the dangers of the debris and cleanup crews are working in the area. There does not appear to be any possibility, it probably goes without saying, that any of the astronauts on the crew could have survived. Security for the flight was tight because of the presence of an Israeli astronaut, who had been selected in 1995 to be a guest on a US shuttle mission. There are no indications of terrorist actions in the shuttle’s destruction. Warnings From NASA on Falling Debris; Bush Calls Meeting NY Times. My thoughts are with the astronauts’ loved ones. Let’s hope there is not a media feeding frenzy upon their private grief in days to come.

Spooky Action at a Distance:

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

Light Particles Are Duplicated More Than a Mile Away Along Fiber: ‘Employing a facet of quantum mechanics that Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” scientists have taken particles of light, destroyed them and then resurrected copies more than a mile away.

Previous experiments in so-called quantum teleportation moved particles of light about a yard. The findings could aid the sending of unbreakable coded messages, which is limited to a few tens of miles.

The new experiment used longer wavelengths of light than earlier ones, letting the scientists copy the light through standard glass fiber found in fiber optic cables.’ NY Times

The Empire Strikes Back

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

The Tribal Rites of America’s Military Leaders:

‘This Saturday, more than a thousand of America’s top military and government leaders and their guests are scheduled to gather at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., for a secretive tribal rite called the 103rd Annual Wallow of the Military Order of the Carabao. And they won’t be singing “Kumbaya.”

In fact, on what these days feels like the eve of war, nothing says “imperialism” better than the annual Wallow, which celebrates the bloody conquest of the nascent Philippine Republic a century ago in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War.’ Village Voice

Collecting Bug

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

Teresa Nielson Hayden goes in search of the truth about animal hoarding and writes a post several people have pointed me to. Lay readers will find the phenomenon disturbing and fascinating. As a psychiatrist I see more than my share of these folks coming to the attention of the mental health authorities and hospitalized on my service for being unable to care for themselves. While TNH, too simply, notes that “hoarding used to be thought of as an eccentricity, but more and more it’s being recognized as a social problem–and, more to the point, a form of mental illness”, there are delicate decisions and a complicated evaluative process to be faced in each given case to decide if it is evidence of psychiatric disturbance or merely an eccentricity of which an (often socially isolated) person should not be deprived and for which they should not be penalized with the loss of their autonomy. It may be both; the tolerable quirkiness of the longterm ‘cat lady’ may turn eventually — only in the end — to tragedy for both the animals and their benefactor when she (almost invariably a woman, almost invariably elderly) is disabled by physical or mental illness or inanition and no longer able to care for them. It is psychiatrically trendy to recognize hoarding as a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder (don’t forget, OCD is treated by the best-selling serotonin reuptake inhibitor class of antidepressants — Prozac and its cousins — and, if your favorite tool is a hammer, it pays to see everything as if it were a nail) and to lump animal hoarding in with other bizarre and out-of-control collecting pnehomena. This is too simple, however; in cases where animal hoarding is due to an illness, the definitive stroke in the person’s inability to care for herself and her animals is often a dementing process such as Alzheimer’s Disease or a late-life psychotic disorder instead.

One point that has struck me over and over again is how serendipitous it usually is that the squalor and misery in which such a person is living comes to anyone’s attention and provokes an intervention. TNH cites statistics about the estimated prevalence of the problem, but my strong instinct is that the recognized cases represent the tip of the iceberg. As such, they dramatize the epidemic of social neglect of the elderly in our society. I would love to see statistics of the prevalence of animal hoarding in other societies correlated with their community and social welfare infrastructure.

As she concludes her post, which does an impressive job of collecting and presenting what she has gleaned from intelligent googling on the topic, TNH starts to slide down the slippery slope of villifying — or citing sources which villify — the ‘cat ladies’ for their denial and their control motivations. Again, I would emphasize that this is tarring with a broad brush, and it is largely the brush of the animal welfare advocates who share the social prejudices about the odd, the different, the deviant, the offensive. Every case is different; some are harmless eccentrics; most are mentally ill and not in control, and needing help rather than prosecution (although I fully support the interventions of the animal welfare agencies and the health departments which often have to condemn the dwellings in which these unfortunate scenes have played themselves out). Very few are malevolent in their conscious intent.

Simplicity: A Unifying Principle in Cognitive Science?

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

Abstract:

Much of perception, learning and high-level cognition involves finding patterns in data. But there are always infinitely many patterns compatible with any finite amount of data. How does the cognitive system choose ‘sensible’ patterns? A long tradition in epistemology, philosophy of science, and mathematical and computational theories of learning argues that patterns ‘should’ be chosen according to how simply they explain the data. This article reviews research exploring the idea that simplicity drives a wide range of cognitive processes. We outline mathematical theory, computational results and empirical data that underpin this viewpoint. Trends in Cognitive Science [via BioMedNet]

Meat Role in Human Evolution Questioned

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

Tubers, scavenging, and women — “this might have been the winning combination that spurred human evolution about 2 millions years ago, according to a provocative hypothesis by American anthropologists.

Writing in the current issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, University of Utah anthropologist James O’Connell and colleagues challenge the conventional wisdom that meat, brought home by man the hunter and shared out, fueled the rise of early humans.” Discovery

Golden Rule:

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

1.618 is the magic number

Think of any two numbers. Make a third by adding the first and second, a fourth by adding the second and third, and so on. When you have written down about 20 numbers, calculate the ratio of the last to the second from last. The answer should be close to 1.6180339887… [Technically, this is the number which is one more than its reciprocal, i.e. the solution to the equation x-1=1/x, which is 1/2(1+sqrt[5]). — FmH]

What’s the significance of this number? It’s the “golden ratio” and, arguably, it crops up in more places in art, music and so on than any number except pi. Claude Debussy used it explicitly in his music and Le Corbusier in his architecture. There are claims the number was used by Leonardo da Vinci in the painting of the Mona Lisa, by the Greeks in building the Parthenon and by ancient Egyptians in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Guardian UK

Proto-Pharmaco-Obstetrics?

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

Primates found popping prenatal drug: “A Madagascan lemur has been revealed as the first animal known to

self-medicate when pregnant. Female sifaka eat plants rich in poisonous

tannins in the weeks before giving birth, researchers have discovered.

It is unclear why the sifaka does this. In other mammals, small doses of

tannins kill parasites and stimulate milk production. And vets often use

tannins to prevent miscarriage, raising the intriguing possibility that by

eating the plants the sifaka is protecting its developing baby.” New Scientist

Scientists Question Whether Fast Food Is Addictive

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

“A steady diet of hamburgers, fries and foods high in fat and loaded with calories may not only pile on the pounds — some scientists are questioning whether it could be addictive.

Researchers who have been testing the biological effects of fast foods are discovering that they can trigger hormonal changes in the body which could make it difficult to control eating.” NY Times

Conscious objector

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

“The ultra-modern view of consciousness turns science upside down, writes Colin Tudge in The Guardian: “Is the brain simply a computer, and is consciousness merely the feeling we get when we think? Or is consciousness a primary component of the universe, which the brain can latch on to, like a radio receiver? A definitive answer will always be elusive, but scientists are making intriguing forays into the subject, and if they are not explaining consciousness, they are certainly telling us a great deal about the nature of science.”

‘Silent Talker’:

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

Lie Detection: “A new technique which interprets facial gestures has been developed by scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University and could be the most accurate lie detector yet created. ‘Silent Talker’ detects and analyses the thousands of “microgestures” which indicate someone might be telling untruths and which go unnoticed by both trained and untrained professionals.” BBC

Blair Says Britain Must Back Bush

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

“Urging his nation to “see the big picture” and not focus on one issue, British Prime Minister Tony Blair today explained that unflinching support for President George W. Bush is particularly necessary now if Great Britain is ever to become the 51st U.S. state.” BBSpot [via Walker]

Vaccines against bioterrorism

Posted on 1 Feb 03 by FmH

Who will build our biodefenses? “Pharmaceutical firms would like to create the drugs needed in the war against terrorism. But governments have yet to make it worth their while.” The Economist

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

A THOUGHT went up my mind to-day	

That I have had before,	

But did not finish,—some way back,	

I could not fix the year,	

  

Nor where it went, nor why it came

The second time to me,	

Nor definitely what it was,	

Have I the art to say.	

  

But somewhere in my soul, I know	

I ’ve met the thing before;	

It just reminded me—’t was all—	

And came my way no more.



                     — Emily Dickinson

(dedicated to George W. Bush, as one of a series of posts honoring ‘banned’ poets)

Tipping Point

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

Will a war once again bail out a faltering presidency? Or will it crystallize for voters all of the contradictions of the Bush regime? Robert Kuttner: “Bush’s stock was not particularly high on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The economy was wobbly. He had alienated Republican moderates and sacrificed GOP control of the Senate. He was using a tenuous mandate to push radically conservative policies at odds with what most Americans had voted for. Then terrorists struck, and the Bush presidency was transformed.

It has taken 20 months for Bush’s slide to resume, yet he has an uncanny ability to step around blunders and deceptions that would sink an ordinary president. Will he do it again with another national security crisis, this time of his own invention?” The American Prospect

The Goods on Saddam –

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

Fred Kaplan: The problem with showing our Iraq evidence at the U.N. : “…U.S. intelligence officers, who are putting up fierce internal resistance to declassifying the Iraqi evidence, probably have good reasons for their dissent.

Their big concern is that the United States will blow a lot of highly sensitive intelligence dataâ€”the sort of sources and methods that are rarely even discussed, never deliberately revealedâ€”and the cache still won’t be persuasive enough, especially not to the layman, to justify war.

Nobody on the outside knows exactly what sort of data dump Powell is assembling. But one can make some guesses and extrapolate reasons why the spy agencies might be nervous… Slate

Fast Burn –

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

Why recordable DVDs won’t last: “Don’t worry if that Best Buy hawker convinced you to invest in a DVD burnerâ€”or, for that matter, a DVD recorder for your TV. The self-burned DVD still has a few years of glory left, and they’re perfect for backing up the files on your computer. But if you’re on a tight budget, and all you really want to do is swap video files with your friends, keep in mind that you likely won’t need a DVD burner to share 2005’s Man vs. Beast IV: Final Confrontation.” Slate

skeeterbites.com:

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

Nationwide Mosquito Alert Forecast Information: “By using local

air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, and drought/soil

conditions, Skeeterbites.com forecasts mosquito activity throughout the

U.S. The 3-week forecast is updated weekly and predicts your probability of

being bitten.” Courtesy of Cutter®

End Game

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

Lawrence F. Kaplan: “Bush gambled that inspections would make it easier to go to war. He gambled wrong.” The New Republic This is essentially an elaboration on the point I made here the other day — if we know better than the inspectors how much Iraq is supposedly concealing, then why insist on the inspection process. Bush is caught in a trap of his own devising. Actually, it may be symptomatic of the fundamental divisions inside the dysadministration between the more diplomatic and the more rabid.

So how does the administration get out of the inspections trap? One way would be to orchestrate an “Adlai Stevenson” moment in which the Bush team unveils a smoking gun– a la Stevenson’s presentation to the United Nations 40 years ago of photographs showing missiles in Cuba. The problem is, the administration has no smoking gun. What it has instead, according to senior administration officials, is a collection of guns that smell vaguely smoky, which a task force under deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley is busily sifting through–photographs of activity around suspected weapons sites, evidence of Iraqi attempts to conceal items before the arrival of weapons inspectors, and communications intercepts. Powell plans to present this evidence to the United Nations on February 5. But State Department and Pentagon officials remain far from certain that even a dramatic presentation will change many minds overseas, where any evidence that bolsters America’s case tends to be viewed as suspect.

Option number two is to hope that the French and others will abandon their opposition on the eve of war, when the prospect of an Iraq closed to French business looms more immediately. If even this fails to budge the Europeans, the argument goes, then surely images of liberated Iraqis rejoicing in the streets will. If all this seems like wishful thinking, well, this is where the inspections route has gotten the administration. Its members were right the first time around: The inspections process was bound to be a sham. But so was their effort to pretend it was anything else.

They’re Afraid of Your Words:

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

White House Cancels Poetry Symposium:

“Two former U.S. poet laureates criticized the White House on Thursday for postponing a literary symposium it believed would be politicized. Stanley Kunitz and Rita Dove characterized the decision as an example of the Bush administration’s hostility to dissenting or creative voices.

The Feb. 12 symposium on “Poetry and the American Voice” was to have featured the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. The postponement was announced Wednesday and no future date has been set for the event, to be held by first lady Laura Bush.” Austin American-Statesman

I propose that like-minded webloggers (close kin to poets in sensibilities…) enact their scorn for the Administration’s fear of free speech and honor the memories of Whitman, Dickinson and Hughes by featuring their poetry prominently in the days between now and Feb. 12th.

Motion-Picture Windows: Soon on a Wall Near You?

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

“Windows that double as television screens, computer monitors or stereo systems are being unveiled today, on the first day of the International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas, by Andersen Corp., the country’s largest window manufacturer.” Washington Post

Companies test prototype wireless-sensor nets

Posted on 31 Jan 03 by FmH

‘Self-organizing wireless-sensor networks, a realization of the Pentagon’s “smart-dust” concept, have reached the prototype stage worldwide. The smart sensors, or Motes, were created by the University of California at Berkeley and Intel, and are being tested out worldwide today…

Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) proposed the smart-dust concept four years ago. The idea was to sprinkle thousands of tiny wireless sensors on a battlefield to monitor enemy movements without alerting the enemy to their presence. By self-organizing into a sensor network, smart dust would filter raw data for relevance before relaying only the important findings to central command.’ EE Times

"On this day in 1933…

Posted on 30 Jan 03 by FmH

//www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/exhibits/sixties/images/pisan.jpeg' cannot be displayed]

… Ezra Pound met with Benito Mussolini. This was a brief, one-time talk, but it would bring out the worst in Pound’s personality and lead to personal disaster. It would also inspire some of the best of modern poetry — the Bollingen Prize-winning Pisan Cantos, written while Pound was in detention, charged with treason.” Today in Literature

U.S. may try to find haven for Saddam

Posted on 30 Jan 03 by FmH

“The United States would try to help find a haven for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, his family and close aides if he would agree to leave Baghdad, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday.” Salon

Surely we must realize that US bellicosity has united Iraqis behind Saddam and increased his resolve to previously unheard-of levels?

More Reason Not to Use M$ Internet Explorer:

Posted on 30 Jan 03 by FmH

Sneaky Toolbar Hijacks Browsers:

‘When I find the bastards who programmed this thing I’d be happy to castrate them with a pair of dull pinking shears,” fumed one of Xupiter’s many unhappy victims in a newsgroup posting.

Xupiter is an Internet Explorer toolbar program. Once active in a system, it periodically changes users’ designated homepages to xupiter.com, redirects all searches to Xupiter’s site, and blocks any attempts to restore the original browser settings.

(…) “When Xupiter first appeared, we spent a week trying to figure it out,” said Mike Healan, of SpywareInfo. “There’s a monstrous thread with over 26,000 page views where a couple dozen of us tested it until we figured what it did and how to deal with it.”

But Healan said that every time people sort out what Xupiter is doing, Xupiter’s programmers tweak its code. It also appears that Xupiter may be selling its “service” to other websites. ‘ Wired News

‘Libya Should Not Chair U.N. Commission’ — Human Rights Watch

Posted on 30 Jan 03 by FmH

“African governments’ nomination of Libya as chair of the next United Nations Commission on Human Rights undercuts their new commitment to promote human rights and good governance, Human Rights Watch said today.

Africa is due to chair the next session of the commission on a rotational basis, and Libya was nominated by the African regional group. Libya’s nomination was confirmed at the recently concluded inaugural summit of the new African Union. The commission will begin its annual session in March 2003.”

Related Material:

HRW Letter to President Thabo Mbeki

Libya Confirms Why It is Wrong for UN Human Rights Chair: ‘Libya’s claim that its “security and stability” prove respect for human rights demonstrates why Libya is the wrong choice to chair the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch reiterated its call on the African Union to abandon plans to nominate Libya as next chair for the Commission.’

Science Against Voodoo Politics:

Posted on 30 Jan 03 by FmH

“Forty-two US Nobel Prize winners have signed a declaration denouncing any unilateral, pre-emptive strike by the US against Iraq.

The statement was announced on the day of President George W Bush’s annual State of the Nation address. In his speech, Bush pressed the case for military action to remove the weapons of mass destruction the US says Iraq holds.” New Scientist

War Is Fare for Commentators

Posted on 30 Jan 03 by FmH

“When columnists and cartoonists comment about a possible U.S. strike against Iraq, there seems to be room for more diversity of opinion than when these creators tried to express themselves in the months immediately following 9/11.” Editor & Publisher

Thank heaven the country has gotten beyond the post-9/11 view that any questioning is unpatriotic, to which it seemed the press, with few notable exceptions, caved sickeningly. Which is not to say, as this article indicates, that antiwar columnists or cartoonists don’t get angry recriminations from readers, but they’re not taking it personally. But is the press leading the move to question the wisdom or legitimacy of the administration’s war plans? I think not; it seems rather a response to the burgeoning misgivings in the public at large, bless their hearts. Now, the biggest question: will disapproval from the press, or the commonweal, make a whit of difference in the madmen’s prosecution of their war plans? A Canadian observes: “The foreign policies of the U.S government, however, have failed to a large extent to reflect the American people’s values. Many Americans find it hard to relate to those policies. In fact, the harshest critics of U.S. foreign policies come from American citizens.” Dr Ali Mekky, a member of the Toronto Star editorial board, pleads for peace and wonders, Are We Heading into a New Dark Age?

Ominous as the likelihood of impending war is in itself is the dawning awareness that the US war plan embraces the possibility of using nuclear weapons against Iraq. Courtesy of wood s lot come these links:

The US Has Lowered the Bar for Using the Ultimate Weapon , says military affairs analyst William Arkin at CommonDreams, either against hardened Iraqi targets (e.g. underground facilities) impervious to conventional armaments, or to thwart any Iraqi moves to use weapons of mass destruction. Arkin lays out several ominous aspects of current nuclear posture — the move away from accepted no-first-use assurances (which may encourage other nuclear nations to consider their heretofore unthinkable preemptive use, just at a time that nonproliferation is breaking down and many more nations are lining up to join the nuclear club); the lumping of nuclear armaments with all other options for war-fighting, and the reflections of these policy changes in a change of command structure controlling the decision to go nuclear. Arkin, from Johns Hopkins, dubbed by ABC News “one of the most respected nuclear weapons analysts in the United States”, says he has been shown documents confirming the dysadministration’s policy shift.

To my way of thinking, the longterm impact of these nuclear posture changes on the fate of the earth far outweighs the immoral obscenity of provoking a war with Iraq. As much of an incipient outcry as there is against the latter, there ought to be ten times the outraged rabid outpouring of opposition if the war plans erode the barriers against the nuclear option, bringing the entire world that much closer to the brink from which we have been painstakingly edging away for the past decade. Time for new Days of Rage? It behooves us all to wrap our heads around these unthinkable prospects rather than continue to live in blissful denial. Then go gather a thousand of your friends and sit down in front of some government building, or block a troop train or something. Many of us were doing it thirty-five or forty years ago; it isn’t hard and, if anything, is more urgent now than it was during that obscene little war in Indochina. Evidence is that antiwar sentiment now may be ahead of its progression during the Vietnam War, when it took the arrival of American body bags to build beyond the early, principled, opposition.

Internet cafe to open on Everest

Posted on 29 Jan 03 by FmH

by the grandson of Sherpa Tensing…in March.

Tsering Gyaltsen Sherpa, 32, will be opening the cafe at the Khumbu glacier at 5,300 metres to allow climbers to access the web.

Expeditions, which cost almost £40,000 on average, are expected to pay some £660 for using the transmitter that will be installed on a slope 300 metres higher than the camp. Ananova

State of the Union Cut-Up:

Posted on 29 Jan 03 by FmH

In a way, it makes more sense than the original. [Tony Manzo]

What he did made me curious about something; I ran the text of the State of the Union through a word frequency counter and sorted it in descending order. Here’s the list of words used (or misused) more than five times, barring the trivial ‘the’, ‘of’, ‘a’, etc.:

84 WE

73 IS

70 OUR

64 THAT

56 FOR

49 WILL

42 HAVE

42 THIS

38 NOT

36 ARE

33 I

32 PEOPLE

31 HAS

29 ALL

28 YOU

27 WEAPONS

26 WORLD

26 HE

26 WITH

25 IT

25 ON

25 FROM

25 AMERICA

24 S

24 BE

24 BY

22 MORE

20 AS

19 COUNTRY

19 THEIR

19 SADDAM

19 HUSSEIN

18 THESE

18 WHO

18 MUST

17 AMERICANS

16 NO

16 MANY

15 OR

15 EVERY

15 UNITED

15 AN

15 CAN

15 AMERICAN

15 ONE

14 IRAQ

14 NATION

14 THEM

13 YEARS

13 AT

13 US

13 YEAR

12 MILLION

12 NUCLEAR

12 GOVERNMENT

12 AIDS

12 THAN

11 WAR

11 COULD

11 ITS

11 NEW

11 THEY

11 HELP

11 TONIGHT

11 INSPECTORS

10 ECONOMY

10 NATIONS

10 THREAT

10 CONGRESS

10 INTELLIGENCE

10 POWER

10 OWN

10 SECURITY

10 THOSE

10 AGAINST

10 WORK

9 PEACE

9 ASK

9 STATES

9 LIFE

9 HAD

9 HIS

9 DO

9 CITIZENS

9 CARE

8 ONLY

8 SHOULD

8 ENERGY

8 AL

8 QAEDA

8 WHEN

8 NOW

8 GOOD

8 YET

8 SO

8 DRUGS

8 MATERIALS

8 MAKE

8 YOUR

8 TAX

8 IRAQI

7 AFRICA

7 GREAT

7 WHICH

7 CHEMICAL

7 CHILDREN

7 INCOME

7 NEXT

7 OUT

7 TERRORISTS

7 HEALTH

6 KEEP

6 CONTINUE

6 BRING

6 PLAN

6 TERROR

6 UP

6 PROTECT

6 IF

6 BIOLOGICAL

6 USE

6 FREE

6 DAY

6 ALSO

6 MEN

6 NEED

6 TERRORIST

6 DISARM

6 INTERNATIONAL

6 REGIME

6 KNOW

6 SENIORS

6 FIRST

6 OTHER

6 U

6 EVIDENCE

6 MUCH

This too elucidates Bush’s thought process as well as the original, for example, “People has all you weapons world he with it on from America.” Or how about, “By more as country Saddam Hussein these who must Americans no many or every united an can American one Iraq nation them. Years at us, year million nuclear government aids than war could its new they help tonight inspectors economy nations threat. Congress intelligence power own security those against work peace ask states life. Citizens care only should energy al Qaeda yet so drugs materials make your tax…” But, of course, it’s the speechwriters we have to thank, not the eloquence of Dubya himself.

Spike Wrote to Say Goodbye:

Posted on 29 Jan 03 by FmH

I missed it, way down at the bottom of this recent column, but the Spike Report at OJR is, as Spike puts it, ‘slated to cease publication at the end of this month if sponsorship for the column can’t be found’, after a venerable five years’ of eclectic, eloquent and erudite observation. Any sugar daddies out there who can forstall the silencing of one of the more witty, whimsical and acute observers of the scene? Spike (who reveals he is the secret identity of Gideon Brower) posted his final column today, he wrote to say.

Gulf War 2: The Game

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

“This is a projection of the most likely outcome of a new war in the Gulf. I used sophisticated temporal algorithms and historical semiotic analysis to achieve an accuracy rating of 99.999%. It’s the mother of all Flash games.” [thanks, Adam]

World On Fire

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability: ‘A new book (by Amy Chua) argues that when Third World countries embrace democracy and free markets too quickly, ethnic hatred and even genocide can result.’ Salon Books

Master Key Copying Revealed

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

“A security researcher has revealed a little-known vulnerability in many locks that lets a person create a copy of the master key for an entire building by starting with any key from that building.

The researcher, Matt Blaze of AT&T Labs-Research, found the vulnerability by applying his area of expertise — the security flaws that allow hackers to break into computer networks — to the real-world locks and keys that have been used for more than a century in office buildings, college campuses and some residential complexes.

The attack described by Mr. Blaze, which is known by some locksmiths, leaves no evidence of tampering. It can be used without resorting to removing the lock and taking it apart or other suspicious behavior that can give away ordinary lock pickers.

All that is needed, Mr. Blaze wrote, is access to a key and to the lock that it opens, as well as a small number of uncut key blanks and a tool to cut them to the proper shape. No special skills or tools are required; key-cutting machines costing hundreds of dollars apiece make the task easier, but the same results can be achieved with a simple metal file.” NY Times

Also:

the research paper by Blaze describing the vulnerability, Cryptology and Physical Security: Rights Amplification in Master-Keyed Mechanical Locks (.pdf)

Blaze’s apologia for making the information public, Master-Keyed Lock Vulnerability crypto.com

Weighting Game

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

“A careful survey of medical literature reveals that the conventional wisdom about the health risks of fat is a grotesque distortion of a far more complicated story. Indeed, subject to exceptions for the most extreme cases, it’s not at all clear that being overweight is an independent health risk of any kind, let alone something that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. While having a sedentary lifestyle or a lousy diet–both factors, of course, that can contribute to being overweight–do pose health risks, there’s virtually no evidence that being fat, in and of itself, is at all bad for you.” — Paul Campos, the New Republic [How much do you guess Paul Campos weighs? — FmH]

Big Brother Is Also Being Watched, With New Alarm

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

The FBI is rewarded for 26 years of surveillance of subversive [I use the term lovingly, in case you were concerned. — FmH] American artist Arnold Mesches with his public exhibition of a collage of information from his dossier, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. NY Times

The Decline and Fall (cont’d.):

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

More evidence of American inanity in Superbowl aftermath.

The Lost World of Lake Vida

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

“A lake hidden beneath 19 meters of ice has been found near the bottom of the world that might contain an ecosystem completely separate from our own. In a modern version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic book Lost World, scientists are now plotting a mission to drill down into the lake and take out a small part to see what’s there. Lake Vida, buried under Antarctic ice for over 2,500 years, is liquid only because of its high salt content. Previously, scientists drilled to within a few meters of the lake and indeed found frozen microbes. Their existence bolsters speculation that similar microorganisms could be found in frozen brine beneath the surface of Mars. If living organisms are found in Lake Vida, they may give an indication that life might even still exist under similar frozen ice-sheets, such as under the larger Lake Vostok, parts of Mars, and even moons of Jupiter such as Europa.” Astronomy Picture of the Day

Moving stadium dents team performance

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

‘If your favourite team is moving to a plush new sports stadium, prepare for disappointment. Making the switch can have a dramatic effect on a team’s performance, a new study has found.

“It’ll probably cost you a couple of points in a season, and in some sports, that’s the difference between winning and second place,” says Richard Pollard, a statistician at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.

Pollard studied results of professional baseball, basketball and ice hockey games in the US between 1987 and 2000. He found that teams that moved stadiums lost on average 24 per cent of their home advantage – the tendency for teams to get better results when playing at their home ground. Other sports, like American football, are likely to be similarly affected, he says.’ New Scientist

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." (Plato)

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

//cagle.slate.msn.com/media/1/122939/2072483/2076294/2076295/030127_bush.jpg' cannot be displayed]

And even participating is no hedge against it:

To Some in Europe, the Major Problem Is Bush the Cowboy:
“In Europe, it often seems that it is not only the wisdom of a war against Iraq that lies at the heart of trans-Atlantic differences, but the personal style of George W. Bush himself.” NY Times

Credibility Problem:
Paul Krugman: “The State of the Union address could restore the president’s political fortunes, if he isn’t held accountable for promises made last year.” NY Times op-ed

US to Make Iraq Intelligence Public:

“The Bush administration has assembled what it believes to be significant intelligence showing that Iraq has been actively moving and concealing banned weapons systems and related equipment from United Nations inspectors, according to informed sources.” Washington Post That should be intelligence in quotation marks, it is apparent. Of course, it is lost on no one that (a) the US pulls this cat out of the bag just as it becomes generally acknowledged that support for the war is flagging domestically as well as internationally, and (b) if it knew better than the UN arms inspectors anyway, why would we need inspections? Clearly, this is not going to be a ‘Just War’ as much as a ‘Just Because War’, as somebody put it.

So much for my daily spasm of scorn for Dubya. The man and his dysadministration are so easy to hate, doesn’t it seem, or is it just that my need is so great? [Am I going to get a visit from General Ashcroft’s men for this? FmH] It does seem that they are particularly bad at lying to the American public, so contemptuous of us, doesn’t it?

Users Uneasy on SBC Claim to Patent on Web Tool

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

“When British Telecom claimed in 2000 that it had patented the Web’s ubiquitous hyperlink, the Internet erupted in a fit of protest that lasted until the company lost its test infringement case against Prodigy Communications last summer.

But that has not stopped Prodigy’s parent company, SBC Communications, from asserting a patent claim on a Web navigation technique nearly as widely used. According to letters SBC sent out last week, the company believes that any Web site that has a menu that remains on the screen while a user clicks through the site may owe it royalties.” NY Times

The Wifely Duty

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

Marriage used to provide access to sex. Now it provides access to celibacy:

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented. There is nothing like uninterrupted cohabitation and grinding responsibility to cast a clear, unforgiving light on the object of desire. Once children come along, it’s easy for parents to regard each other as co-presidents of an industrious little corporation. Certainly, all sound marriages benefit from sudden and unexpected infusions of good will—What luck! Here we are, so many years later and still as happy as ever! But the element that regularly restores a marriage to something with an aspect of romance rather than of collegiality is sex.

— Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic

Super Bowl Ads: A Postmortem

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

The Carnage Was Everywhere The Morning News

‘Does Tony have any idea what the flies are like that feed off the dead?’

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

Robert Fisk: Independent Argument “The things we see – the filth and obscenity of corpses – cannot be shown. First because it is not “appropriate” to depict such reality on breakfast-time TV. Second because, if what we saw was shown on television, no one would ever again agree to support a war.” Independent UK

OWOW

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

OLED displays: fast, bright, thin, cheap to produce, low power consumption, too good to be true? Pocket PC Thoughts

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

the null device is really ‘on’ recently, with items about:

the torture cells developed by the Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War based on surrealistic art

speculation on why, noticing his broadband connection was slowing, a California netsurfer with “subversive and potentially un-American” reading habits who did a traceroute discovered all his traffic was routed through a US government machine in Virginia

Britain’s consideration of withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights

the scandal of the Bloggies and “the downsides of a reputation economy”

“Kudos to the first person to explain satisfactory why (it) is not terrorism” that the Pentagon battle plan for the Iraq war involves hitting it daily with more than the total number of Cruise missiles launched in the entire 1991 Gulf War “in order to demoralise the population”, targeting all regions.

‘a useful list of smutty phrases in French (cut out and keep in wallet or purse)’ from Nerve

‘a look at three films Hollywood wouldn’t dare make after 9/11: Dune, Starship Troopers and Fight Club‘

Flirting with disaster?

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

Brash and controversial, former US representative Cynthia McKinney could lead the Green Party to prominence in 2004… When the party’s presidential exploratory committee put out feelers to Greens around the country about whom they wanted to run for president, the number of recommendations McKinney received was second only to those for Ralph Nader, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000. McKinney, a former Democratic US representative from Georgia who lost to Judge Denise Majette in a primary challenge last August (Majette eventually defeated Republican Cynthia van Auken in the general election), has yet to change her party affiliation or indicate she’s willing to run as a Green. But the Greens want her. Her name was high on a list of potential candidates compiled by the national Green Party (other names included MSNBC talk-show host Phil Donahue, actress Susan Sarandon, and filmmaker Michael Moore). Boston Phoenix

Mystery illness tied to Sept. 11…

Posted on 28 Jan 03 by FmH

…but not to WTC:

Glenn Abatemarco got sick two weeks after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and he has not fully recovered his ability to breathe normally.

That in itself is not unusual. A lot of people in Lower Manhattan who were exposed to the acrid dust and smoke from Ground Zero developed the persistent lung irritation known as World Trade Center Cough. But Abatemarco, 41, does not fit the pattern, and therein lies a medical mystery.

First, he lives in Brooklyn, miles from Ground Zero, and works in midtown Manhattan, where he is a vice president at a financial services company. He had no intense exposure to the dust cloud from the towers’ collapse and no chronic exposure afterward. But he got sick anyway, and he did not get well. The only explanation his doctors have been able to come up with — after three trips to the emergency room, a CT scan, a battery of allergy tests, dozens of days of lost work and a six-week exile in Arizona last fall to try a desert cure — is the date his symptoms began. Houston Chronicle

Is it just because I’m a mental health practitioner, or is it odd that the article doesn’t even mention the possibility that these ‘outliers’ have a psychosomatic ailment?

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