Chilling Effects Clearinghouse: “A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and University of San Francisco law school clinics.

Do you know your online rights? Have you received a letter asking you to remove information from a Web site or stop engaging in an activity? Are you concerned about liability for information that someone else posted to your online forum? If so, this site is for you.

These pages will help you understand the protections intellectual property laws and the First Amendment give to your online activities. We are excited about the new opportunities the Internet offers individuals to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But we’ve noticed that not everyone feels the same. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence online users. Certainly intellectual property rights should be respected — and we hope this site will aid you in doing so — but they shouldn’t be misused to impede legitimate activity…”

The Libertarian Party’s powerful anti-WoD* ad is a rejoinder to the disgusting ads the US aired during the Superbowl drawing the equation between teenage drug use and World Trade Center deaths. (.pdf download, requires Adobe Acrobat Reader) David Farber, on his IP mailing list, has an amusing anecdote about the Libertarians contacting him for a photo of ‘drug czar’ John Walters for the ad, as the White House had refused to provide them with a publicity shot.
*War-on-Drugs

“How’s Your News? is a documentary film which features a team of five news reporters with mental and physical disabilities. We all met at a summer camp in Massachusetts. To make How’s Your News? we drove across America in a hand-painted RV, interviewing the people we met along the way.” The link is to the project’s homepage and includes a FAQ (e.g. “Is this project exploitation?”). Here’s a Village Voice review from October 2001.

Is Weblog Technology Here to Stay or Just Another Fad? “…perhaps undermining the hegemony of global media giants.” I like that… New York Times [thanks, Abby] Kottke’s answer: to wonder if the universe of weblogs is an emergent system:

One possible answer is that the collective act of weblogging is producing a basic form of journalism, which you might call “bottom-up journalism” or “peer-to-peer journalism”.

It works like this: individual webloggers, each acting in their own self-interest (the “simple-minded component parts” Johnson refers to), post bits of information to their weblogs.

Then the feedback loop starts. Readers and other webloggers take those initial bits of information, rework them, and feed them back into the system in the form of weblog posts, email feedback, or comments on individual weblog posts. Rinse. Repeat.

At the end of the line, in some instances, you eventually get a story that has been collectively edited by the system. Repeat this process millions of times a month with hundreds of thousands of participants, and you’ll get a few such stories a month. [thanks, David]

Report: Americans Would Be Outraged If They Understood Enron Collapse. David sent this to me, wondering quite rightly if The Onion has gone somewhere else beyond satire.

Tim Wise: The Invisible Whiteness of the Olympic Beer Riot: ‘When white folks rioted over beer at the Olympics, it was

laughed off in a “gee, don’t they have anything better to do”

way. What if blacks or latinos had done the same?’ AlterNet

Resisting Bush’s War: Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-OH) becomes the first member of Congress to openly repudiate Bush’s war, the “axis of evil”, etc:

“We licensed a response to those who helped bring the terror of September the Eleventh. But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the response, and to correct the response.

Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.

We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.

We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.

We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.

We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.

We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.

We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus.

We did not authorize assassination squads.

We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.

We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.

We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.

We did not authorize national identity cards.

We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities.

We did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.

We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases.

We did not authorize war without end.

We did not authorize a permanent war economy…”

AlterNet

NPR’s The Connection hosted Bruce Cockburn on Feb. 11th; the page includes a link to listen to the hour-long show in Real Audio.

‘Rumsfeld’s new press corps has been cooking up headlines for

foriegn papers, such as “Loud Explosion Heard Last Night Was Not

American Bomb; dead civilians later found to just be real sleepy.” ‘ AlterNet But, alas:

Rumsfeld Says He May Drop New Office of Influence: “Mr. Rumsfeld today reiterated comments he made last week after The New York Times reported the office’s existence and proposed activities: he said the military would not be permitted to tell lies to promote American policies or views. But he said today that the disclosures about the office’s potential activities may have doomed its credibility.” NY Times

US faces European ban over death penalty: “The United States faces possible exclusion from the Council of Europe, where it enjoys observer status, over its continued use of the death penalty, a council spokeswoman said Friday.

The comments follow a decision of the council’s Committee of Ministers on Thursday to ban the death penalty in all circumstances, including for crimes committed during war and the imminent threat of war.” United Press International

“I’ll be ever’where–wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’–I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build–why, I’ll be there. See?” –Tom Joad, in Grapes of Wrath

Wednesday is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Steinbeck (Feb. 27, 1902 — Dec. 20, 1968).

In Forest Debris, the Odor of Dead Monarchs: “Walking up the steep path through what remains of the montane forest at the Rosario sanctuary, it is hard at first to notice the monarch butterflies everywhere. Then the wind shifts and the smell of rotting insect corpses hits the steady stream of tourists going by. What had seemed at first to be fallen leaves and forest debris reveals itself as a lumpy carpet of millions of butterflies that perished in the largest known die-off ever of these insects.” NY Times

Operation on Fetus’s Heart Valve Called a ‘Science Fiction’ Success. His heart was a ‘moving target the size of a grape…’ NY Times

Bin Laden Alive? Top General Thinks So: ‘Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden may be alive despite U.S. efforts to kill or capture the al Qaeda leader, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Sunday.

“It’s possible that he is no longer alive, but I think the odds are he probably is alive,” Myers said on Fox News Sunday…

The New York Times reported on Sunday that unidentified U.S. administration officials said they have new indications that bin Laden is living along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.’ Reuters via Yahoo! News

Also: The Telegraph UK

reports that US and British special forces are “hunting for Osama bin Laden in the Indian state of Kashmir after intelligence reports stated that he had sought the protection of an extremist Islamic group…” The paper’s anonymous source said, ‘He knows we are not going to start bombing the area or sending in the marines, but there are lots of other things we can do and if he is alive he is definitely not safe.’

Angola Displays Body of Slain Rebel Leader Jonas Savimbi; they finally got him. What will be the next stage of this bizarre on-again-off-again 25-year civil war involving, among others, a Cuban expeditionary force fighting South Africans as Cold War proxies?

“It’s not that consumers won’t tell you what’s on their minds. It’s that they can’t.”

Penetrating the Mind by Metaphor. This market researcher well-versed in neuroscience holds the rights to the first patented market research technology. He makes an insightful, if insidious point, that there is an inherent contradiction between conventional market research — in which subjects are supposed to tell you how a consumer would respond to a pitch or a product — and the fact that most marketing and advertising tactics work on an unconscious level, so that the consumer does not know what s/he thinks, and most product reaction is imagery not easily verbally conveyed. Hence, better manipulation of your buying habits is forthcoming.

U.S. drops pledge on nukes: “The Bush administration is no longer standing by a 24-year-old U.S. pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, a senior administration official said yesterday.” Washington Times There is nothing to say with more than four letters to capture my indignation at this latest from this illegitimate, monumentally incompetent dysadministration which represents one of the greatest threats to the survival of the human race we’ve ever had in office.

E-mails detail Indiana Guard ‘ghosts’: “Evidence continues to grow that National Guard units across the country are undermanned and have faked their troop level reports to Washington for years in order to protect their flow of federal money and to hide their inability to retain troops.: USA Today [via Red Rock Eaters]

“It’s not that consumers won’t tell you what’s on their minds. It’s that they can’t.”

Penetrating the Mind by Metaphor. This market researcher well-versed in neuroscience holds the rights to the first patented market research technology. He makes an insightful, if insidious point, that there is an inherent contradiction between conventional market research — in which subjects are supposed to tell you how a consumer would respond to a pitch or a product — and the fact that most marketing and advertising tactics work on an unconscious level, so that the consumer does not know what s/he thinks, and most product reaction is imagery not easily verbally conveyed. Hence, better manipulation of your buying habits is forthcoming.

Paul Krugman: “Celebrating victory well in advance seems to be the style lately. And that includes the economic front. Both the administration and many business leaders have taken a modest improvement in economic indicators as proof that the economy is poised for full recovery. They could be right — but don’t count on it.” NY Times

The Zen TV Experiment: “I want you to watch TV with acute awareness, mindfulness and precision. This experiment is about observing television scientifically, with Beginner’s Mind, rather than watching television passively with programmed mind. Ordinarily, if you are watching TV you can’t also observe and experience the experience of watching TV. When we watch TV we rarely pay attention to the details of the event. In fact, we rarely pay attention.” Adbusters

Dennis Mahoney: How to Write a Better Weblog : “After posting my own short list of things that ought to be banned from weblogs, I realized that a list of things to be encouraged would be more useful. ” A List Apart

Microsoft Admits XP Media Player Spies on Users: “Microsoft has confirmed that the Windows XP version of its Windows Media Player is programmed to track which CDs users listen to and which DVDs they watch. The company also has altered its privacy statement to admit that its player software tracks DVD content, which was not previously mentioned.

However, the company downplayed privacy concerns. For example, Microsoft disputed claims by snooping software watchdog Richard Smith that Windows Media Player 8, which comes bundled with Windows XP, cannot be turned off and poses a threat to privacy because of its tracking capabilities.

Privacy advocates said the media player’s capabilities fly in the face of Microsoft’s “trustworthy computing” initiative, a new dedication to security and privacy that the company announced last month.” NewsFactor

Privacy Watch: Rental agency hit for spying on speeders: “A Connecticut car rental company that used satellites to track customers and then charge them for speeding was ordered Wednesday to pay back the $10,000 total to the drivers it fined.

The Connecticut Consumer Protection Commission said that Acme Rent-a-Car’s practice of assessing customers $150 each time they crossed the speed limit violated the law.

The company tracked the customers’ driving habits through global positioning devices that many rental agencies use to locate their vehicles in case they are stolen or taken across state or national borders.” C/net

Professor touts plan to train agents on campus: “A former CIA director is encouraging a Kansas University professor to move forward with a plan the professor says will help prevent future terrorist attacks on the United States.

Felix Moos, a KU anthropology professor, is promoting a plan to create ROTC-like programs on university campuses to train future national security and intelligence officers.” Lawrence (KS) Journal-World

Star trek criteria: ‘Interstellar travellers should be “motivated, tolerant and nice”.’ Nature

Ripping yarn: How did From Hell play in Whitechapel, scene of the 1888 Jack the Ripper murders the film depicts? sp!ked

Post-radical depression: “We all know about ‘Chick Lit’ – the phenomenon of young female writers getting big advances for novels based on the singleton lives of themselves and their friends.

What’s next, it seems, is ‘Guilt-trip Lit’, where the menopausal mothers of the women’s fiction world turn their attention to the fucked-up lives of their grown-up children’s generation.” sp!ked

Myths of immunity: Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, the medical columnist for sp!ked, continues with important reflections on the sociocultural context of healthcare. I wrote last month about his concerns, which echo my own, about the meaning of unquestioning acceptance of the validity and extent of ‘chronic fatigue syndrome.’ Now he considers the metaphorical significance of widespread fears about side effects of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination.

The term ‘immune system’ is now so familiar that it has the aura of a medical or scientific concept that has been around since the seventeenth century. In fact, the term is scarcely 30 years old. It was first used, by the immunologist Niels Jerne, at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology in 1967 (2). As Anne Marie Moulin, a historian of immunology explains, the term was introduced as a pragmatic device to hold together two contending factions within the discipline

.

Study Finds Utah Leads Nation in Antidepressant Use: “Some point to the pressures of Mormonism, especially for women, to explain the surprising findings.” LA Times

CD-rom of key Nato secrets feared sold: “The United States military’s European Command last night appealed for the return of a CD-rom said to be packed with a wealth of secret military information on the Balkans.

In a report to be published today, the German magazine Stern said the disk had turned up in a laptop computer auctioned on the internet.” Guardian UK

Lioness adopts another antelope: “A Kenyan lioness which perplexed wildlife experts last month by adopting a newborn antelope astonished them again on Valentine’s Day by taking on another.

Game wardens at Samburu National Park say the lioness spent yesterday lying down with the delicate oryx calf in the shade of an acacia tree, grooming it and warding off predators.” Guardian UK

If you hate to receive snail mail, you can arrange to redirect your mail deliveries to this new service which will scan them in and send them to you as email. Optionally, they’ll filter out your junkmail before sending.

Boarding Games: “…I decided to spend an entire day at the airport — or as long as I could bear — ambling from gate to gate and recording exactly how many people were searched, how the ethnic composition of the searchees compared to that of the flight overall. The good folks at Los Angeles International Airport have apparently observed a dangerous pro-terrorism bias in the press, for they will not let even credentialed journalists past the security checkpoints. Unless, of course, they have tickets. So I was forced to buy the cheapest one I could find and go undercover as a ticketed passenger, a guise that I figured I’d have little trouble pulling off. Who notices a white man with a laptop in an airport?” LA Weekly [via Spike Report]

Wendy Kaminer: On the Contrary… “As the Bush administration is learning… attempts by presidents to keep public information private are likely to attract press attention and lawsuits. Lesser officials keep secrets with less public scrutiny.” The American Prospect

Michael Kinsley: The absurd controversy over mammograms Slate

A reader pointed me to Snopes’ coverage of the Dr Pepper controversy about which I wrote yesterday. [thanks, Kareem] Snopes points out that the words “under God” were not part of the Pledge of Allegiance as originally written, but added by an act of Congress in 1954. I seem to recall earlier controversies about the phrase, perhaps from militant atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair? I stopped reciting the Pledge of Allegiance decades ago — not, as you might imagine, because of finishing school but in response to my opposition to the Vietnam War. [Up on stage as the valedictorian at my high school graduation ceremony, I shocked the 1200 graduating seniors’ families (and my own family…) by conspicuously remaining seated as the Pledge was recited. Part of my fifteen minutes of fame, I suppose. I also spurned Gen. William Westmoreland’s offered handshake on nationwide TV…] But if the Pledge were a part of community life these days, it’d be important to antagonize the God-fearing fundamentalist Shrub-types by conspicuously omitting the phrase. Why not write a letter to Dr Pepper telling them you know it was disingenuous of them to say they left out the offending phrase out of space considerations, when clearly they were trying to be ecumenical and avoid controversy, but that you applaud their action and that, even if the boycott doesn’t amount to anything, you’re going to drink more of their product to show your support? [Only half-serious, of course, but only half-joking… -FmH]

What can animals teach us about staying healthy? “A great deal, argues Cindy Engel. Animals, she says, are constantly self-medicating, eating anything from charcoal to leaves to ward off illness and to treat sickness. An animal behaviourist at the Open University, Engel came upon the new science of animal health while searching for a cure for her own illness. Now she has brought together all the knowledge of the field in a book. She tells Maggie McDonald a few secrets from the animal world–such as what leads sheep in the Shetlands to bite the heads off live Arctic tern chicks.” New Scientist

Bill Gates Could Save Buenos Aires: “The hoodlums running Argentina have devalued the peso and, in the bargain, seized dollars on deposit in that country. …(T)he authorities have discredited not only money but banking. In a wink they have bombed their economy back to the Stone Age. How can an economy work without a medium of exchange? For a money supply Argentineans might as well use large round boulders of the sort formerly in circulation on the island of Yap.

Nothing that government can say or do about money will have any credibility, so salvation must come from outside. It could come in the form of software. I envision Microsoft as savior of the dispossessed in Latin America.” Forbes [requires free registration or use login:fmhreader, password: fmhreader]

“A biological weapons control expert yesterday refused to back down from her claim that the FBI has a prime suspect in last autumn’s deadly anthrax letters episode, despite strenuous denials by the bureau. She speculated that FBI agents might still be building their case against the suspect and possible accomplices.” New Jersey Online

Two PAC missiles fail to hit target in US land-based missile defense test

Enlisting Ice as an Ally of Skiers and Aircraft

Victor F. Petrenko, a professor at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College, proposes using the electrical principle that makes ice so difficult to remove from sidewalks to create electronic brakes to slow skiers or snowboarders automatically before they get into trouble. The technology can also be used to improve the grip of snow tires or, when applied in reverse, cause ice to burst off windshields, road surfaces or airplane wings at the push of a button.

… “Ice is very much misunderstood,” he said. “We don’t know much about its properties.”

Ice is one of the unusual semiconductors in which electrical charges are conducted by moving protons instead of electrons. It was that property of ice that particularly intrigued Dr. Petrenko.

“I thought that if you exchange very light particles such as electrons with protons, it must have some significant consequences,” he said. “It seemed that if we could somehow change the electrical properties of ice, we should be able to change its mechanical properties — and vice versa.” NY Times

Is US creating another ObL?: ‘With the cementing of a new US-Uzbek alliance as part of the “war against terror”, America is bolstering one of the former Soviet Union’s least-known, but most repressive, dictatorships.’ Red Pepper

Patents Prove Cell-Phone Dangers? The Baltimore attorney best-known for a high-profile suit against the cellphone industry claiming phone use was the cause of her client’s brain tumor says that the industry supports her claim by having filed for “dozens” of patents to create radiation-shielding technology. “Those patents aren’t snake oil. They’re from the defendants’ mouths themselves.”

Botswana leaves Bushmen in desert without water: “…The government cut off water supplies to the remaining Bushmen communities in its latest attempt to force them off their ancestral lands. Many of the 700 Bushmen still living in the reserve at the start of this month have now been forced to leave.

The Gana* and Gwi* have lived on their lands, which include the area covered by the reserve, for 20,000 years. Under international law, they own the land. But for 16 years the Botswana government have waged a campaign of harassment to force them off their lands and into ‘resettlement camps’ where they cannot continue their way of life, and where they are dependent on government handouts. Boredom, alcoholism and despair are rife in the camps, described by one Bushman as ‘a place of death.’ ” Survival International
(*The names Gana and Gwi contain sounds not conveyed by this spelling, and can be written as G//ana and G/wi. Survival omits the symbols ‘//’ and ‘/’ as they are not understood by most people internationally.)

Nicholas Kristof: A Life of Balances: “As I mourn Danny Pearl’s death, I hope — against expectation — that we journalists will be more cautious. And most of all, I honor all those foreign correspondents out there.” NY Times

‘Push off Sarah’ , says naked civil servant

The Register

Checkout the OS-free PCs at walmart.com

The arch-discounter is offering nine (own-brand?) Microtel PCs for sale online, with prices – sans monitor, as well as OS – ranging from a bargain basement $399 for 1GHz Duron and Celeron models, all the way up to $868.74 for a 2GHz P4 replete with 256MB of SDRAM.

The idea of the Windows-free promo is to attract tech- savvy custom at a time when consumer PC sales are flatter than a flat pancake. The idea is that buyers can install their own operating system – maybe open source, maybe a license from an dead PC (but make sure you have all the documentation, folks). The Register

Much captivating science news at the New Scientist site recently. A sampling:

• Kidnap the key to saving rare species: ”

  Temporarily kidnapping males with a sexual monopoly should give others a shot at reproduction, boosting genetic diversity”

• September 11 blood donations “wasted”: ”

  Less than one percent of the blood donated in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks was used to treat victims”

• Antimatter atoms captured for the first time: ”

  CERN researchers may have trapped thousands of the elusive particles – the few previous antiatoms were moving at the speed of light”

• UK computer theft takes sinister turn: ”

  Thieves might be selling brainpower from one of the UK’s largest academic super-computers to rogue states for weapons research”

• Eerie link between 17th century clocks explained: ”

  Christiaan Huygens’ pair of pendulum clocks always swung in opposite directions – now scientists know why”

• Japan plans tearoom for the ISS: ”

  The tearoom could be launched in 2004 – but the traditional ceremony does not lend itself easily to zero-g”

• Common virus linked to brain tumours: ”

  High concentrations of proteins produced by the virus are found in samples of malignant brain tumours”

• Anthrax screensaver finds promising new drugs: ”

  The project has hit paydirt in just four weeks – but not all participants are happy”

Abducting The Tragedy: Jimmy Breslin’s powerful, damning Newday column on Giuliani and his appropriation of the WTC tragedy. [thanks, Adam]

Dr Pepper under fire for ‘Godless’ Pledge: ‘The Dr Pepper soft drink firm is drawing criticism from religious groups for omitting the phrase “under God” in an abbreviated version of the Pledge of Allegiance on its “patriot can.”

The company began distribution of over 41 million of the promotional cans in a dozen states last November. A statement from Dr Pepper said that the special graphic presentation was designed “to show the world that we are a united nation of people who place a high value upon freedom.” The can features a portrait of the Statue of Liberty with the phrase “One Nation … Indivisible.” ‘ [via randomWalks] The Dr Pepper (the period after the ‘Dr’ was eliminated in the ’50’s, you know) website is here.

Reports: FBI Has Tape Proving Pearl Dead

“Several news outlets are reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a video which proves that kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is dead… A statement issued by the Wall Street Journal said that they now believe, based on the reports from the U.S. State Department that Pearl is dead.” TheBostonChannel

We should not be shocked, however, that journalists doing their job are no longer sacrosanct; another of the rules of civilization that has fallen by the wayside over the past decade or so, it seems. My thoughts are with Daniel Pearl’s loved ones…

Point-‘n’-Shoot Sound Makes Waves: “New transmitters can aim sound waves so that only individuals in a

crowd can hear them. The U.S. military sees a weapon in the making.” Wired

Howard Kurtz, Media Notes: Pounding a PBS Poohbah

The latest bugaboo for those on the right is Bill Moyers. Yes, he’s liberal. Yes, he worked for LBJ. But there’s something about the combination of Moyers’s lofty style and his PBS perch that makes some conservatives’ skin crawl.

The Weekly Standard is trashing him in a cover story.

What makes this a spectator sport worth watching is that Moyers is punching back. Hard. Washington Post

Brain Study Casts Doubt on Theory of How Human Intelligence Evolved

“According to a popular view of human cognitive capabilities, much of what sets our species apart from the other primates can be attributed to a disproportionate enlargement of a part of the brain known as the frontal cortex that occurred at some point in human evolution. But the evidence traditionally used to support that argument, say Katerina Semendeferi of the University of California at San Diego and her colleagues, comes from small studies that in many cases did not include data from apes, our closest relatives. Furthermore, the studies varied in the way they defined the region of the cortex.” Scientific American

UNESCO: 3,000 Languages Could Die Off. Just as the reduction in biological diversity from species extinction is a threat to the ecosystem, we should be concerned about the loss of linguistic diversity. Especially if language constrains and shapes the ways we think or can think, á la the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, is it a stretch to worry about the potential effect on of language loss on freedom of thought? I believe in the ‘weak form’ of linguistic determinism; while it is probably true that linguistic constraints don’t make us unable to conceive of certain things in certain languages, they certainly can make it easier or harder. Also consider that linguistic assimilation and oppression do not occur in a vacuum, but usually in the company of other aspects of cultural imperialism.

“The Philosophical Health Check is designed to identify tensions or contradictions (a Tension Quotient) between various beliefs that you have. The PHC does not aim to identify which of your beliefs are true or false, but where the set of beliefs you hold may not be compatible with each other.” Unlike the spate of meaningless but entertaining ‘tests’ on the ‘net (“What carbonated beverage am I?” :What rock star?” etc…), I was amazed at how readily this gets at meaningful potential inconsistencies in your worldview. It may make for painful self-examination. The Philosophers’ Magazine

Annals of Depravity (cont’d.): Man buried alive next to murdered son: “A man whose throat was slashed and who was buried in a shallow grave next to his slain 12-year-old son survived and later led police to two men charged with the boy’s murder.” SF Chronicle

The New York Times is doing a fullcourt press to influence Saudi chief of state Crown Prince Abdullah to formally announce his plan to spearhead normalization of Arab relations with Israel in exchange for a negotiated peace with the Palestinians, as Thomas Friedman described on Sunday (a blink to which I had here). Here’s an editorial and further op-ed analysis by Mideast analyst Henry Seigman. In the meantime, Israel and the Palestinians are closer to all-out war than they have ever been; Israel steps up ‘retaliatory’ attacks and the Palestinians are more explicitly targeting — successfully — Israeli troops in the occupied territories. Sharon pushes forward with plans for ‘buffer zones’ bordering Palestinian areas in Gaza and the West Bank to ‘achieve separation’ and ‘protect Israeli citizens.’ Reuters

William Safire: The Flipped-Over Rock: “Stop pretending Enron and Global Crossing are political scandals and start dealing with the accounting and financial derivatives scandals.” NY Times op-ed

A Grateful Artist Who Wants to Repay His Elephant Helpers —

For a decade Mya, Layang Layang and Dilberta have been the unheralded contributors to Chris Ofili’s rise to fame. The three Asian elephants, visited nearly every month by Mr. Ofili, the British-born painter, replenish the supply of dung that he uses in nearly all his paintings, including the one of a black Virgin Mary that enraged former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani when it appeared in the “Sensation” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999.

Now Mr. Ofili says the time is right to repay his friends. When the Armory Show 2002 opens in Manhattan on two Hudson River piers tomorrow, he will auction one of his latest paintings to benefit the Zoological Society of London, caretakers of the three elephants. NY Times

Pat Buchanan: “Whoever fed Bush those lines, or did not argue against his delivering them, disserved the president. For that speech has blown our coalition against terror to smithereens.” TownHall [thanks again, David!]

The Idler interviews Sam Vaknin on the relevance of pathological narcissism to the W-o-T®; interesting fellow:

former economic advisor to the President of Macedonia, and frequent contributor to The Idler on international affairs, is also the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited, owner of the Narcissistic Abuse Study List, and webmaster of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder Topic in Suite101. He is an economic and political analyst for United Press International (UPI).

I had a scurrilous thought, while reading this, that his characterization of the terrorists sounds alarmingly like us webloggers:

The terrorist and serial killer regulate their sense of self esteem and self worth by feeding slavishly on the reactions to their heinous deeds. Their cosmic significance is daily enhanced by newspaper headlines, ever increasing bounties, admiring imitators, successful acts of blackmail, the strength and size of their opponents, and the devastation of human life and property.

Seriously, though, read the interview. The concept of pathological narcissism is an undercurrent through late-20th century civilization and its discontents.

An Estimate of the Type, Quantity, and Value of Munitions Dropped on Afghanistan, October 7 – December 10, 2001 Dack

Predicting America’s Next Attack Against Terrorism Dack

Going down: “Tuvalu, a nation of nine islands – specks in the South Pacific – is in danger of vanishing, a victim of global warming. As their homeland is battered by ferocious cyclones and slowly submerges under the encroaching sea, what will become of the islanders?” Guardian UK

Ashcroft Invokes Religion In U.S. War on Terrorism; I thought the Bush administration worshipped only at the altar of the War Machine these days, but evidently I’m wrong. The official state religion they’re setting up is multifaceted; as well as Might making Right, there’s apparently an Almighty behind our superiority too. Washington Post Tom Tomorrow, from whence this blink arises, comments, in part:

Think about this: the Attorney General of the United States of America has publicly declared that the freedom of our nation is not derived from the Constitution, the work of that group of Deists and freethinkers who gathered one sweltering Philadelphia summer to lay the cornerstone of a government based on the rule of law –but is, rather, a miraculous blessing bestowed upon us by some supernatural entity.

In a sane world, that statement alone would be grounds for impeachment.

Beyond Survival: Slavery is a matter of caste and race in Mauritania; activists say “twisted notions of Islamic scripture” have been used to justify blacks’ servitude to their Moorish masters for centuries. This Village Voice essayist interviews a Mauritanian refugee from enslavement, now in Brooklyn’s ‘Little Mauritania’, about his life there and the fight for those who remain behind. As you might expect, despite a 1996 US congressional resolution decrying the persistence of “chattel slavery, with an estimated tens of thousands of black Mauritanians considered property of their masters and performing unpaid labor, …despite its legal abolition in 1980”, the Shrub Administration has turned its back on advocacy on the issue because Mauritania’s repressive chief of state Maaouya Ould Sidi Ahmad Taya, who came to power in a coup d’etat in 1984, is an important W-o-T® ally. Taya has taken the world’s preoccupation with the terrorist attacks as an opportunity to ban the Mauritanian anti-slavery opposition party.

The Enron Voice Mail System, 2002 WitCity [thanks, Pam]

at your digital watch: it’s 2002 2002 2002 (20:02, 20/02/2002). A symmetrical moment like this hasn’t occurred for 1,001 years and will never repeat itself…

This is where Chuck tells you to go if you don’t like his opinions on Looka!, I just noticed…

MGM becomes the first of the big seven Hollywood studios to offer film distribution to consumers by download, through a concern called CinemaNow!.

AmazonScan.com — “a program that scans different products on Amazon.com and records their sales ranking over time.” In related Amazon news, Dean Kamen is auctioning off three limited-edition Segway Human Transporters there. Current bids are over $60,000; bidding closes on March 28th.

Not All Asian E-Mail Is Spam: “Anti-spam activists confirm that a growing number of beleaguered systems administrators are now blocking all e-mail originating from Asia from their systems, in an attempt to choke off a flood of spam from China, Taiwan and Korea, an action that has upset non-spamming Asian e-mailers.” Wired

Games Elevate Hate to Next Level:

“Hate groups are increasingly using racist and anti-Semitic computer games to recruit young people, the Anti-Defamation League charged in a report released Tuesday.

Ethnic Cleansing, Shoot the Blacks and Concentration Camp Rat Hunt were some of the titles studied by the group. The objective of these first-person shooters are predictably similar — to kill as many non-whites, Jews and everyone else they hate as possible.” Wired

Why blacks love Bill Clinton

In her now-famous defense of a scandal-plagued Bill Clinton, Nobel prizewinner Toni Morrison, went so far as to call him “our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.” “Clinton,” Morrison wrote in the 1998 New Yorker essay, “displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.”

I remember reading Morrison’s essay and choking. Morrison’s estimation of Clinton’s blackness seemed shallow, offensive and beside the point. At the time, I wasn’t the only one unnerved, and I’m sure many people still have problems with calling Clinton “the first black president,” no matter how Morrison intended it. Yet, in retrospect, I realize that my sharp reaction had something to do with age: I was pretty young when Reagan and Bush were in office. Like most white people, I didn’t understand how Clinton related to the African-American community; I also had a limited memory of how other presidents treated blacks. Salon

Since I got a broadband connection (yes, I gave up 56K for Lent…), I can finally indulge productively in streaming media on the web. Here are two Oscar-nominated shorts I’ve enjoyed: Fifty Percent Grey (“In this gruesome black comedy about suicide, Sgt. Cray awakens alone in a desolate environment, with only a widescreen TV and a gun for entertainment.”) and Copy Shop (“Viennese director Virgil Widrich obsesses on the implications of replication in this … short composed of nearly 18,000 photocopied frames that Widrich animated and shot on 35 mm.”).

Spike sent this link my way a week ago and I’ve just slogged through my backlog enough to examine it and say thanks. In Put a Psychiatrist in His Corner, A GWU professor of psychiatry argues in the LA Times that Mike Tyson should be compelled to seek mandatory psychiatric care. “We don’t have to accept Tyson’s outrageous acts. For society’s sake, and for Tyson’s own sake, we must open our eyes to the perils of untreated mental disorders.

Instead of continuing to attack this sick man, we need to help him get well.”

Carol Kino: Ceci N’est Pas Surrealism – Even if you don’t know Surrealism, it knows you. “Since September, Surrealist exhibitions seem to be cropping up everywhere: in big surveys in London, New York, San Francisco, and soon, Paris, and in countless smaller gallery shows. Perhaps you feel that life in those and other cities has grown surreal enough already. But there’s a major difference between the little-s and big-S surrealisms: Our everyday use of the term shows how much we owe to the artistic movement of the same name, but it also glosses over its aims and accomplishments. If nothing else, the current explosion of historical Surrealism may help clarify the matter.

Even those who know something about Surrealism (the movement) often get it somewhat muddled…” Slate

Anne Applebaum: In Defense of Colin Powell – He wins friends and influences enemies. ‘…Powell’s ability to bring foreigners around to the American point of view is something this administration, which is carrying out nothing short of a revolution in foreign policy, needs badly—so why should Powell be thought of as a loser or an outsider? White-House-watchers always insist on seeing policy-making as a zero-sum game: If Condi Rice is up then Powell must be down; if Rumsfeld is in then Powell must be out. They should try, instead, to look at foreign-policy-making like a game of golf, in which you use the right iron for the right hole. Send Wolfowitz to scare Saddam. Send Condi to speak Russian to the Russians. Send Powell to build coalitions and keep the allies on board—and stop calling Powell a “fading global eminence.” ‘ Slate

Matt Welch pulls this ‘priceless exchange’ out of a Chicago Tribune interview with Ralph Nader:

Q. Would you have made an effective wartime president?

A. This war would never have happened had I been president, because for 30 years we have had an aviation safety group, and we have been urging the airlines to toughen cockpit doors and improve the strength of the locks, and they have been resisting for 30 years.

(What can be added to Welch’s reaction, “Good God, man, get ahold of yourself”?) If you’re curious about whether the impression this creates is distorted by being taken out of context, the entire interview is here.

Jomoh Temple: “Head Priest Ishiko of Daioh Temple feels that there is an unnatural balance existing between the reliance on material needs and the lack of concern for spiritual fulfillment. He believes that this imbalance is the reason why most people are not totally satisfied with their lives. Through this virtual temple, he hopes to draw attention to this imbalance and through it’s recognition help us to lead fuller, richer lives.”

Expert says anthrax suspect identified: ‘An advocate for the control of biological weapons who has been gathering information about last autumn’s anthrax attacks said yesterday the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a strong hunch about who mailed the deadly letters.

But the FBI might be “dragging its feet” in pressing charges because the suspect is a former government scientist familiar with “secret activities that the government would not like to see disclosed,” said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Chemical and Biological Weapons Program.’ New Jersey Online [via David Farber’s IP mailing list]

ex-Monty Python Terry Jones: OK, George, make with the friendly bombs: “To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that I can’t think why no one has thought of it before. It’s so simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today. Guardian-Observer

Another reason to take your vitamin C.

Tabloids: Elvis is Dead: “Bad news: The National Enquirer has become a little less insane.” The American Prospect

Right Wing Myths Exposed: The Red-Blue Myth, The Liberal Media Myth, the Myth of the Homosexual Lifesyle (a work in progress) [thanks to David]. [The myth of Andrew Sullivan? –FmH]

Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad: “The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.” NY Times If you think they were bristling already, what will our (former?) allies in Western Europe and the Middle East think of this??

Hijacking the Brain Circuits With a Nickel Slot Machine — in search of the neural basis of the unconscious:

“…(T)he brain systems that detect and evaluate such rewards generally operate outside of conscious awareness. In navigating the world and deciding what is rewarding, humans are closer to zombies than sentient beings much of the time.

The findings, which are gaining wide adherence among neuroscientists, challenge the notion that people always make conscious choices about what they want and how to obtain it. In fact, the neuroscientists say, much of what happens in the brain goes on outside of conscious awareness.” NY Times

Want a Fight? Pick One Book for All New Yorkers:

‘An ad hoc group of librarians, bookstore owners, educators and others has quietly hatched a plan to turn New York City into a giant reading group. Over the last few weeks, the committee has convened to select a single book that the organizers hope to see assigned in city schools, discussed in groups at public libraries, promoted in local bookstores and read by millions of New Yorkers.

Plenty of other cities have read books together. Last year, Chicago drew national attention with a campaign to read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and since then, dozens of towns have followed suit, usually by selecting novels that impart a civic-minded message of cultural tolerance and racial harmony.

But just what book to recommend to a city of eight million souls where more than 100 languages are spoken has already turned out to be a ticklish question, one about politics as much as about literature. And some say the difficulty of picking a single book suggests that New Yorkers may not be receptive to literary direction.’ NY Times

In search of extra dimensions: Hang on — a new reality may be around the corner.

‘ “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one,” according to the late Albert Einstein. But, “if everything is an illusion and nothing exists,” humorist Woody Allen has observed, “I definitely overpaid for my carpet.”

Hang onto your carpet receipts:

Our understanding of reality – that is, a world where events happen over time within a three-dimensional space – may be turned on its head by the year 2005, scientist Maria Spiropulu said today during the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting.

“The way we think about things is about to change completely,” said Spiropulu. “This is truly a revolution in the way we understand our world.”

And: more coverage from the annual meeting of the AAAS is here. EurekAlerts

“I can’t quite imagine what he thinks he’s up to. Although he wasn’t ever brilliant, he used to be an average poet and now he’s turning out twaddle.” — AN Wilson. Is Motion any good? “The poet laureate has written lyrics for a hymn to mark the Queen’s golden jubilee. But do they stand up to critical scrutiny? And what about his recent poems on Princess Margaret and the census? We ask poets, critics, a royal expert and a random 80s pop star for their verdicts.” Guardian UK

Big Brother is watching you read. “Increasingly, the government is demanding that bookstores reveal what books their customers have purchased.” Salon

The ideas factory: “You might not know much about the films, but you probably recognise the titles – and storylines – of a slate of forthcoming releases: Charlotte Gray, About a Boy, Killing Me Softly. Why the sudden rash of British bestsellers hitting our screens?” Guardian UK

One man’s explanation of the report of the Times’ scrubbing the 9-9 bin Laden warning article. [pointer from Rebecca Blood]

The Secret Life of Numbers: “The authors conducted an exhaustive empirical study, with the aid of custom software, public search engines and powerful statistical techniques, in order to determine the relative popularity of every integer between 0 and one million. The resulting information exhibits an extraordinary variety of patterns which reflect and refract our culture, our minds, and our bodies.”

Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog — blogging gets mentioned on NPR, and Wired covers it. I’m warning you, I’m going to get nervous if blogging goes much further mainstream…

Public Financing Is Key…: “If you want a government by the people and for the people, then the people have to pay the bill. Otherwise, the favors will flow right back to those who’ve actually picked up the tab.”Newsday Most cynicism about campaign finance reform cites the loopholes that will remain to be exploited, the likely cash flow from state party coffers to the national organizations, or the replacement of ‘soft money’ by ‘hard money’ at double the limit. Public financing will solve some or all of this but I think it misses the boat. We have to focus not on where the money comes from but where it goes. A political system in which campaign finance goes to hire consultants to tell the candidates how to read the public’s desires and then buy TV time to present themselves as that flavor-of-the-day is what’s bankrupt, however the money is raised. Oh, and an endlesly gullible electorate that eats it up uncritically no matter how much evidence there is that they’re being fooled again and again by the unreality industry.

To Protect Top Bureaucrats, NY Times SCRUBS Its OWN Osama Bin Laden Warning That It Published on 9-9-01

On 9-9-01 – just two days before Osama Bin Laden’s attack on the US – the NY Times published a lengthy and chilling article about Osama Bin Laden by reporter John Burns. Some time after 9-11, the Times SCRUBBED this article, replacing it with a completely different article that Burns wrote on 9-12. Both articles discuss a 2-hour videotape by Bin Laden that intelligence agencies first saw in June 2001, but ignored until September. Why was the 9-9 article scrubbed? Read it yourself – we’ve UNSCRUBBED it. We believe it demonstrates the GROSS NEGLIGENCE of the CIA, NSA, Justice Department, and the White House in the events leading to 9-11. These agencies had MANY warnings, but the people at the top IGNORED them, at a cost of over 3,000 lives and billions of dollars. ALL OF THESE SCREWUPS REMAIN IN THEIR JOBS!!! We demand a Blue Ribbon Commission on 9-11 and a thorough housecleaning – not a Congressional Coverup! democrats.com

State Department rejects portions of MTV profile of Powell “that depicts him as the sole dove and moderate in an administration of unreasonable hard-line unilateralist hawks”, reports Yahoo! . But was it that the Administration wants to persuade the public that there are other moderates?? Noooo, it appears rather that they wanted to make it clear that Powell is in line with the rest of the unreasonable hawks instead…