get your enr on, from the makers of the hilarious get your war on.

William Fields turns the utterly pointless — albeit fun — googlewhacking meme into an intriguingly useful, potentially powerful community-building notion to which he refers as submonitions.

Good to see that Steve Baum is back to his inimitable yarn-spinning at Ethel the Blog again. His Jan. 25 short piece about some new options in peer-to-peer music distribution is intriguing, especially because I’ve (finally) arranged for a broadband ‘net connection instead of the 56K dialup that’s sustained me for so many years (I was an early adopter of the US Robotics Dual Standard modem, back when there were dual standards, and one of the first to upgrade to .v90). By the way, Baum is one of the luminaries who should have been invited to contribute to American Samizdat, IMHO. Dr Menlo??

Bitter Shack, which pointed me to this distortion of Oliver North’s 1987 testimony before the Iran-Cotra hearings circulating on the Internet in the aftermath of 9/11, called it “further evidence that conservatives are dumb.” Urban Legends Reference Pages

Brain Scans Link Two Key Pieces Of Schizophrenia Puzzle: this is big big news in the effort to elucidate the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, which affects around 1-2% of the world’s population. It has long been known that schizophrenic symptoms come from dysfunctions in two brain areas — underactivity in parts of the frontal cortex (which probably underlies the cognitive and ‘negative’ symptoms of the disease) and dopamine overactivity in a deep region called the striatum (probably related to the florid ‘positive’ symptoms — delusions and hallucinations — of the disease). Classical antipsychotic medications block dopamine in the latter areas, thus treating some of the dramatic symptomatic episodes but not more fundamental impoverishment suffered by the schizophrenic patient. The newer ‘atypical’ antipsychotic medications help to modulate, either instead or in addition, the frontal underactivity and thus allow more global restitution of function. But, although I and others have long suspected, it had never been demonstrated until this study by some of the luminaries of NIH (National Institutes of Health) schizophrenia research, that the dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex is primary and that dopamine activity in the striatum is under prefrontal control. The principal investigator comments, “These results provide a long-sought insight into the roots of dopamine dysregulation in schizophrenia. They suggest a possible treatment strategy that targets prefrontal cortex dysfunction, not just excess dopamine.” They may allow the rational, rather than trial-and-error, design of treatment strategies that would get at root causes, rather than slapping bandaids on end manifestations, of the illness. ScienceDaily

Cancer and Folie à Deux

(case report): In this case, the patients delusional system had a grave impact on her ability to make rational healthcare decisions, for which she was deemed incompetent. The first choice for her healthcare surrogate, her husband, was so affected by his sharing of her psychotic condition that he could not fulfill this role. In assessing a suspected case of folie à deux, awareness of several issues the point at which religious overideation becomes delusional, the spectrum of competency, informed consent, and treatment refusal is important.

Yale researchers are able to vaccinate users against the euphoriant effects of cocaine and prevent drug abuse relapse. The inoculations actually stimulate the immune system to produce anti-cocaine antibodies, à la classical immunizations, that inactivate cocaine circulating in the bloodstream. EurekAlert!

They are being dubbed the ‘Binmen’, a burgeoning number of Islamist terror suspects being detained as the UK wakes up to its enemy within. The Observer uncovers al-Qaeda links from Brighton to Bolton to reveal that Muslim extremism is not limited to a few fiery mullahs. Guardian UK

After Green Beret Operation, Townspeople Have Questions About Bound Bodies: Townspeople say the target may have been in error and that people in the compound pleaded for their lives, saying they would surrender. Corpses in the compound were burned after being shot; several were found outside with their hands bound behind their backs with heavy strapping. The bodies have beeen buried and are not available for examination. [If true, file under ‘barbarism.’ -FmH] “The Pentagon defends the raid as an appropriate military action,” reports the New York Times correspondent.

‘With his nomination of Mississippi District Court Judge Charles Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals, President George W. Bush is substantiating fears that he would attempt to turn the federal judiciary into a right-wing monster.’ Detroit Free Press

Wealth spawns corruption. ‘Physicists are explaining how politics can create the super-rich.’ Nature

Anarchist in the Academy: ‘Philosopher Robert Nozick died Wednesday, at the age of 63. Nozick, a Harvard professor from 1969 until his death, wrote on many topics, but he remained best known and most discussed for his first book, the National Book Award-winning Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). This was the first book to make libertarian views on the nature and legitimacy of the state respectable in academia.

Anarchy, State and Utopia set out to prove, in a manner both intellectually rigorous and playful, that the only morally defensible state is one restricted to the minimal functions of adjudication and defense against force and fraud. No welfare state, no industrial policy, no bailouts, no anti-discrimination laws allowed.’ Reason

New technology raises concerns about grocery shoppers’ privacy:

You swipe your savings card against a screen mounted on a supermarket shopping cart. As you move around the store, the screen flashes ads for products you usually buy, notes that you haven’t bought toothpaste in six months, and provides recipes and health information.

All the while, your every move – including which aisles you go down and how long you spend in each department – is tracked for marketing purposes via the savings cards, also known as loyalty cards.

Such technology is in the works and privacy advocates – already concerned about the proliferation of cards that monitor customers’ purchases – are outraged. Fresno Bee

Marijuana’s Effects: More Than Munchies: “Scientists have …learned that the drug, which an estimated 70 million Americans have at least tried, may be highly addictive to a small percentage of those who use it.” NY Times

NASA’s on-again-off-again plans to explore the fringe are — for now — on again. NY Times

Bush Reconsiders Stand on Treating Captives of War. In an execrable display of hubris, Dubya ‘said he was reconsidering whether Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should be protected under the Third Geneva Convention. But he quickly added that they were “killers” who would not be granted the status of prisoners of war.’

NY Times

And: Let Them Be POWs, editorializes Nicholas Kristof.

When I first wrestled with this issue, I thought I was going to wind up endorsing President Bush’s view that the prisoners are, as he put it today, “killers” rather than P.O.W.’s. But as I read the convention and talked to legal experts, it became clear that the administration’s arguments, while initially persuasive, have the disadvantage of being wrong.

To be more precise, they conflict with the letter and spirit of the convention. Moreover, as some in the Pentagon are quietly trying to point out, they set a terrible precedent for our own Special Operations soldiers. NY Times op-ed

Word of the Day: esemplastic (es-em-PLAS-tik) [adjective]:

Having the capability of moulding diverse ideas or things into unity.

[From Greek es- (into) + en, neuter of eis (one) + plastic. Coined by poet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), apparently after German Ineinsbildung

(forming into one)].

“Here is how Coleridge used the term in his 1817 Biographia Literaria or

Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Vol. I, Chapter 13:”

On the imagination, or esemplastic power.

O Adam! one Almighty is, from whom

All things proceed, and up to him return

If not depraved from good: created all

Such to perfection, one first nature all

Indued with various forms, various degrees.

Wordsmith

Latest news, little of it good, on threats to indigenous peoples from the exemplary NGO Survival International. One-click links to take action.

Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, contemplates the possibility that the next theater of operation in the WoT could be Somalia again. Guardian UK

Pentagon Plans New Command For U.S.: “The Pentagon has decided to ask the White House for approval to set up a new four-star command to coordinate federal troops used to defend North America, part of an intensified effort to bolster homeland security, defense officials said.

” Washington Post

And:
another way to make your head disappear.

The definitive guide to ALT texts in IMGs, which grapples with the essential distniction between content and metacontent in HTML. “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon,” as the Buddhist truism goes…

“Don’t we run drug tests on interns?” — Bill Gates Virus Responsible for Gates Security Memo: ‘An embarrassed Bill Gates admitted today that a memo outlining Microsoft’s new focus on security called Trustworthy Computing was sent out in error when an idealistic intern sent him the fanciful, pie in the sky report in a virus infected e-mail.

“I forgot to patch my Outlook Express and it went out to my entire address book,” said Gates. “You would think that if anything were to get us to focus on security in our software that it would be a gaffe like this. To ensure security in all our software, however, would mean dropping half of our product lines and I have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders.” ‘ BBSpot [thanks, David!]

Register as a Patriot Now!

“As part of the Bush Administration’s ongoing efforts to obliterate all traces of terrorism in the United States, the Department of Justice has commenced registration of each and every American Patriot. By registering all non-terrorists within our borders, it is our intention to make use of the process of elimination to identify the evil ones who walk among us. If you are a non-terrorist (American Patriot), your participation is required. Please register below.

– John Ashcroft

United States Attorney General”

Union Spies

Suppose that on Monday, January 7, President George W. Bush had branded hundreds of Justice Department employees as potential security risks because they were union members?

Might we have expected a question or two at next day’s White House press briefing? Would the networks, perhaps, have been at least mildly interested? Or the newspapers?

Apparently not, because on January 7 President Bush did exactly that to some five hundred labor union members who work in United States Attorneys’ offices, Interpol’s U.S. branch, the Criminal Division, the National Drug Intelligence Center, and the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.

Mr. Bush’s order said that since these offices “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” the presence of unionized workers would not be “consistent with national security requirements and considerations.” Bad Attitudes

Human For Sale – How much are you worth? Have you been thinking about putting yourself up for sale lately? Ever wonder how much money you could get on the open human market? HumanForSale.com will attempt to place a value on your life using a variety of criteria in 4 basic facets of life (physical, mental, lifestyle, personality). This is obviously a very subjective matter and is not intended and does not claim to be scientifically accurate. The more honestly you answer the questions, the more realistic the dollar value returned will be.

Addendum: Graham Leuschke writes: “Humans for Sale is almost certainly a data-collecting mechanism – it’s been around since August, and mentioned at the following places (that I know about):

• http://www.leuschke.org/log/archives/00000119.html
  

• http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/9392
  

• http://www.kottke.org/notes/0108.html#010806“

As Leuschke posted, here’s, allegedly, a site that lets you opt-out and get your data expunged after you’ve gotten sucked into this ingenious strategy for harvesting your provate demographic information, as I did.

Vigilante justice at the hands of an angry net-mob Chicago Tribune

John Grohol: Psychology of Weblogs

The most popular weblogs are those spearheaded by strong personalities, by dynamic individuals who have something to say. Not just about some random link, but about an ongoing theme in their lives that is displayed in a dozen different and unique ways every week, or even every day. These individuals (or groups of individuals) have opinions and you are going to hear them. In a social setting, face-to-face, they may be nothing like their online persona. Some are shy, ingratiating. Others are just as anarchic as their online writing is. But they gain a following for taking a stand, for sharing their innermost thoughts, not because they always take a popular stand or point of view, but because they take a point of view at all. They take one, over and over, day in and day out. The more controversial a person is, the more noteworthy (and often famous) they become. Look at Howard Stern, Dr. Laura, or Jerry Springer in the offline world.

The best weblogs and online journals, however, are not always the most popular. The most popular fall into the same trap as nearly anything driven by popularity – the need to outdo oneself, to remain on top. That pressure affects the writing, and it affects the mission of the person’s site (or in offline terms, the quality of their show). For proof of this, just look into the archives of any old popular weblog or online journal and see how the writing has changed. The subjects that were once original and thought-provoking often become stale, dry, and overwrought. The authors turn to commenting on the mundane, or take up meaningless causes, or rattle on about any old thing in their lives. They become more melodramatic in their writing, and start talking back to their foes. Instead of originality, they become self-referencing, circular, and ultimately, boring.

Sounds like he’s got a grudge against some popular webloggers… Grohol, by the way, is a Psy.D., not an MD, to whose online persona I long ago took an instant dislike after observing that he always insists on referring to himself in print as “Dr John Grohol”. Sure, Ph.D. and Psy.D. psychologists have earned a doctorate, but in a medical environment someone’s claim that by referring to themselves as a doctor they didn’t intend to create the misconception that they were a medical doctor is pure disingenuousness. He’s jockeyed for position as the world’s leading cyberpsychologist for at least a decade, but his Mental Health Page does have some merit. His online biography lets us know, among other things, what car he drives, the name of his pet, and (because he’s sure his readers are passionately interested?) his marital status.

Grohol’s name struck a chord with another weblogger who sent me this pointer to a search of references to him on MetaFilter, especially this thread, the gist of which relate to the fact that he was probably the anonymous author of deadat32, a pathetic attention-getting web project to which I paid little attention, as did few others, in which the writer wrote of his conviction that he would be, yes, dead at 32. (He pulled the plug before his 33rd birthday scheduled for September, 2001.) Grohol denied, rather unconvincingly in the face of a cabal of MetaFilter websleuths, that he was the deadat32 guy.

Fascinating little glimpse of web sociology and individual dynamics seemingly by a guy who studies them in others, and if true a warning to us all about the sordid little axes people grind in private behind their public faces.

How to tell if your ass is too small

Googlewhacking: The Search for The One. Can you find a Google query that’ll return only one result? Opine Bovine (“just another silly cow with an opinion about everything”), I noticed, has come up with a few, e.g “uvula + television” and “faux + beverage”. What does it all mean that these things generate any hits at all??

Fairvue Central >> Features >> Second Annual Weblog Awards: time to vote. One of the new treasures I discovered browsing the nominees is Dollarshort. Among other things, this is a visually understated and gorgeous Movable Type weblog.

Arafat: ‘I’m Like George Washington’

“Did you ever accept the British occupation of the United States,” Arafat asked. “Didn’t George Washington fight, along with his people, until they freed the United States?”

Arafat made his statements one day after the Palestinian cabinet called on all Palestinian factions to abide by the PA’s cease-fire orders of December 16.

Arafat’s vow yesterday to continue the “struggle until victory” was no contradiction to the cabinet’s call for a cease-fire, and was not in defiance of the American demand that he do more, Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to the Palestinian leader told The Jerusalem Post. The Jerusalem Post

Apparently, Arafat has been encouraging this simile for awhile now. It provoked this response in December from Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley:

Incredibly, when the tide began shifting last week, some in our community attempted to rally support by comparing Arafat and his suicide bombers to George Washington and the heroes of the American Revolution. Nice try.

Washington raised an army of patriots willing to die for liberty and used conventional military tactics to defeat a superior foe. Arafat fights with pitiful fanatics who are brainwashed into believing that by murdering innocents they’ll gain a greater heavenly reward.

Washington was a freedom fighter. Arafat is a terrorist.

(…)

It took three months longer than it should have, but the moral equivalency argument was at last blown to pieces in the suicide bombings that killed 26 Israeli civilians last weekend.

The Bush administration finally understands there is no equating the intentional slaughter of children on a family outing with the occupation of Palestinian territories, or the accidental deaths that result from subduing terrorism.

The only moral equivalency that can be drawn today is between the death and destruction inflicted on the United States on Sept. 11 and the daily torment suffered by Israelis.

If only George W. Bush had seen that sooner. Perhaps the dozens of Israelis murdered in recent months might have been spared.

The similarlties, however, may be more apt than his detractors would acknowledge — but turned on their head. Couldn’t you imagine the Founding Fathers targeting British civilians for terrorist attacks if they had had access?

“Don’t we run drug tests on interns?” — Bill Gates Virus Responsible for Gates Security Memo: ‘An embarrassed Bill Gates admitted today that a memo outlining Microsoft’s new focus on security called Trustworthy Computing was sent out in error when an idealistic intern sent him the fanciful, pie in the sky report in a virus infected e-mail.

“I forgot to patch my Outlook Express and it went out to my entire address book,” said Gates. “You would think that if anything were to get us to focus on security in our software that it would be a gaffe like this. To ensure security in all our software, however, would mean dropping half of our product lines and I have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders.” ‘ BBSpot [thanks, David!]

Blogger Pro rolls out, but for now it’s just for Internet Explorer users. Enought of a reason for me to jump ship from Mozilla and whore for Microsoft?

The Collective Unconscious Project:

‘Users can contribute to the site by logging their dreams. This has a double effect, both helping to grow the database of dreams that the project can explore, and creating a personalized dream log for each user. The explore section of the site is the realization of TCUP. This is an environment that allows you to travel from dream to dream in a nonlinear yet interconnected way — without being made fully aware of what those connections are, and without being in control of the path you take.

In this way I hope to make the environment itself very dreamlike. The next dream that you view will be based on the dream you are currently viewing, what emotions are related to that dream, etc. Unexpected connections will be made, and interesting stories will be told. Images will also surface and pass by. Unable to be viewed for very long, these snapshots of memories aid to the dreamlike interaction.’

Blinkenlights

Celebrating its 20th anniversary the Chaos Computer Club has made a special present to itself and the city of Berlin. Since Sept 12, 2001, the famous “Haus des Lehrers” (house of the teacher) office building has been enhanced to become world’s biggest interactive computer display: Blinkenlights.

The upper eight floors of the building have been transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 lamps behind the building’s front windows. A computer controls each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels.

During the night, a constantly growing number of animations can be seen. But there is an interactive component as well: you can play the old arcade classic pong on the building using your mobile phone and you can place your own loveletters on the screen as well.

Turning Macs on Thievery: ” Stolen computers are notoriously difficult to recover. But a Houston

man cleverly found his sister’s stolen iMac using remote control

software, friends on the Net, luck and brains.” Wired

Death Knell to Cloning Movement?: “News this week that researchers can take versatile stem cells from

bone marrow worries backers of cloning because they fear they’ve lost

their best argument.” Wired

The Others: Howard Zinn, moved by The New York Times’ monumental memento mori to the WTC victims, wonders if putting a human face on those who have died under our bombs might affect those Americans who declare their support for Dubya’s “war on terrorism”. The Nation

New Theories Dispute Existence of Black Holes — ‘Two U.S. scientists have questioned the existence of black holes and suggested, in their place, the existence of an exotic bubble of superdense matter, an object they call a gravastar. The two are pointing out that physicists have swept some “humiliating” problems with black holes under the carpet. By confronting these problems, they claim to have found an alternative fate for a collapsing star.’ Cosmiverse

What Is An “Unlawful Combatant,” And Why It Matters

‘According to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters currently being held captive at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not prisoners of war, but “unlawful combatants.” What’s the difference?

The short answer is that a prisoner of war is entitled to the protections set forth in the 1949 Geneva Convention. In contrast, an unlawful combatant is a fighter who does not play by the accepted rules of war, and therefore does not qualify for the Convention’s protections.

Buried within that short answer, however, are a host of complexities and troubling implications.’ FindLaw [via dangerousmeta]

Taleban army rises again to face US

A renegade army of 5,000 Taleban soldiers with 450 tanks, armoured carriers and pick-up trucks is locked in a tense stand-off with American special forces in Afghanistan.

The troops fled Kandahar with their commander and more than 100 senior Taleban figures in December after reneging on a surrender agreement. They have regrouped among villages in the mountainous region of Ghazni province, northwest of Kandahar.

Amid growing concern that powerful pockets of resistance loyal to Osama bin Laden remain in Afghanistan, an American soldier was wounded in the foot and 15 Taleban and al-Qaeda guerrillas were killed yesterday in a gunfight north of Kandahar. The Times of London

Robert Fisk: “The man who would testify against Sharon is blown up. Was this another targeted killing?”

Why would anyone want to car-bomb the former Lebanese Phalangist militia leader and government minister Elie Hobeika in Beirut – less than two days after he agreed to give evidence against Mr Sharon in a Belgian court, which may try the Israeli leader for the murder of up to 1,700 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in September, 1982?

Independent UK

The last gasp of celebrity culture? “The end of Talk magazine this week was big news–if you live within 75 miles of Times Square (OK, 10 miles), or in ZIP code 90210, northwest Washington and maybe Boston. This isn’t to say that the people who live in the rest of the U.S.’s 3.6 million square miles don’t care about celebrities and buzz and what’s up below East 14th Street. They’re just not preoccupied with, well, talking about it.” WSJ OpinionJournal

Simson Garfinkel: Message in a Bottleneck

Many people who have never tried wireless messaging think that it’s just another techno-gadget—a technology looking for a market. But as soon as they try it, most realize that it’s friendlier, faster, more reliable, less intrusive and generally a lot cheaper than making a cell-phone call. The big difference is synchronicity. With the phone, Beth and I both have to be present at the same instant. With messaging, I can send her a question when I want, and she can answer it on her own time—handy if she’s changing a diaper when I try to reach her (or doing something really important, like sleeping).

This combination of attributes has given rise in the United States to a dedicated, but perplexingly small, following for two-way wireless messaging systems. MIT Technology Review

Broadband Walks the Last Mile: “If you want fast access from home, your only hopes are cable-modem and DSL services. Or are they?” MIT Technology Review

How Amazon finally made a profit: ‘Seattle-based online retailer, one of the poster children of the Internet, surpassed even Wall Street’s expectations, recording a net profit — one without qualifications — for the first time in its six-year history. The news sent its stock up 24 percent yesterday to $12.60.’ Seattle Times

Unlocking door to homes of tomorrow

The latest round in the home entertainment wars was kicked off by Steve Perlman’s start-up company, Moxi Digital. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, Moxi unveiled the Media Centre (MC): “a combination digital set-top box, video and music jukebox, media server, and internet gateway and firewall”, says the company. It will play your DVD movies, CDs and MP3 music files. It will record broadcast TV, just like a TiVo personal video recorder (PVR).

And licenses permitting, it will stream multimedia to any personal computer or TV set in your home. It is, according to Forrester Research’s principal media and entertainment analyst Josh Bernoff, “the first true entertainment gateway”. Guardian UK

Searchin’ for the Surfer’s Saint

A group of Vatican elders is angling to give the Internet a patron saint –­ a holy helper with a dedicated connection to the Divine.

The church’s leading candidate is a seventh-century Spanish encyclopedist, Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636). A theologian and a scholar, Isidore was best known for his massive, 20-volume Etymologiae, ­an attempt at compiling all the world’s knowledge, covering grammar, medicine, law, geography, agriculture, theology, cooking and all points between.

Wired

Palm to unveil wireless device. “According to the sources, the i705’s key feature will be always-on, secure wireless e-mail access through its Palm.net service. The service will also be able to notify subscribers when there is a new message in their in-box.

The i705 will cost $449 and will also come with a Secure Digital expansion card slot, 8MB of memory and a monochrome screen with a resolution of 160 pixels by 160 pixels.” CNet As a longtime Palm fan watching painfully as the company has floundered in its last several iterations, one can hope that they’ll get it right next time, can’t one?

Bluetooth for existing mobile phones: “Plantronics recently announced its M1500 Cordless Headset Solution with Bluetooth support at the Winter 2002 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), as the first solution that brings Bluetooth to those who already have mobile phones and would like to Bluetooth-enable them. The M1500 includes a cordless headset and a Bluetooth adapter that plugs directly into the headset jack of many popular mobile phones.” infoSync

Qaeda Moving Into Indonesia, Officials Fear — ‘For the last two years, Osama bin Laden has been working to establish a beachhead here in the world’s most-populous Muslim nation, say American and Asian officials. Members of his organization Al Qaeda have slipped in and out of the archipelago, bringing millions of dollars in cash for radical Islamic organizations, recruiting members, and providing military training, those officials say.’ NY Times

“Media Alliance is a 25-year-old nonprofit training and resource center for media workers, community organizations, and political activists. Our mission is excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media in the interests of peace, justice, and social responsibility. MA offers a wide variety of services and support to its 3,000 members and groups affiliates, as well as to the general public. We publish MediaFile, the Bay Area’s media review, and People Behind the News, a comprehensive guide to media outlets and journalists throughout the Bay Area; and we train hundreds of community organizations and activists every year in media and computer skills and media advocacy techniques. We have also conducted analyses of media coverage of welfare legislation, affirmative action, and bilingual education and published the results of our analyses.”

Recent articles in MediaFile include:

• Terry Messman: Justice Journalism: journalist as agent of social change, from William Lloyd Garrison to Indymedia.
  

• Andrea Buffa: Watt’s Up? Behind the media’s coverage of the energy crisis.
  

• Jeremy Rifkin: Media Giants Lobby to Privatize Broadcast Spectrum

Great list of links to media-related resources online.

If their work is appealing to you, they’re appealing to you. “Though it is on the opposite coast from you, I thought you might be interested. Heard about Media Alliance via an SFGate article and was impressed with their history, etc. Unfortunately, they are having funding issues and I was dismayed to think another voice of dissent might be silenced,” writes an FmH reader.

Former ‘Beirut hostage’ Terry Waite: The Guantanamo Prisoners, Justice or Revenge? “I can recognise the conditions that prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba’s Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet; beaten on the soles of my feet with cable; denied all my human rights, and contact with my family for five years, and given no access to the outside world. Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled at the way we – countries that call ourselves civilised – are treating these captives. Is this justice or revenge?” CounterPunch

The New York Times tone: It’s there whenever the Paper of Record takes a look at any of the quirkier aspects of modern culture — as if to offer a distanced, bemused reassurance to its readers of the entertainment value of taking a tour of the slums — it occurred to me as I read these two articles in quick succession. (That’s all they have to do with each other, of course):

• When Nerds Collide: Bots in the Ring
  

  At first glance, it’s obvious why “BattleBots,” the robot fighting show on Comedy Central, would draw television viewers like passers-by to a car crash.

  It is, after all, a series of staged battles between remote-controlled machines equipped with spinning blades, ramming spears and swinging maces. It has noise, wreckage, pseudo- sports commentary modeled on professional wrestling and the all-too-obvious décolletage of Carmen Electra, proffered to the camera as she asks a robot designer, after a bout, how it felt to have his weapon lopped off.

  In short, it is mildly nasty, mechanically brutish and thoroughly tasteless — the perfect television show.

  And yet, talking to one of the show’s creators, you get the idea that the whole BattleBot universe is a giant math class, much more effective than those that take place in a classroom. Trey Roski, president and chief executive of BattleBots, would have you believe that the show is almost nothing but redeeming social value.
  

• “Kiss someone who has just eaten Marmite, and you’ll think you were licking paint…” Long live Marmite! Only the British could love it. The vegetable and yeast extract celebrates its centennial.
  

  That no foreigner has ever been known to like it simply adds to its domestic allure and its iconic status as an emblem of enduring British insularity and bloody-mindedness. Were Hogarth to paint a still life in a 21st century British pantry, a jar of Marmite would have to figure in it.

In Personal Anecdote, Some See New Distance Where Others See New Strategy: ‘…(P)eople close to Mr. Bush said his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch, served as a convenient device for him to distance himself from the Enron debacle and to appear more empathetic to its investors and employees than to the wealthy business executives who escaped the Enron collapse with flush bank accounts.” NY Times And: Why Bush deserves his share of the 9/11 blame — Aaron Marr Page: “Did Bush, at a key moment, dismantle the Clinton administration’s increasingly effective anti-Al Qaeda apparatus (which, though hardly flawless, was far better than nothing)?” The American Prospect

Jonathan Chaitt: Reform School: “At first glance, the Enron scandal suggests we need campaign finance reform. Upon closer inspection, it suggests we need it desperately.”

Noam Scheiber: Business School: “Campaign finance reform seems the obvious way to prevent future Enrons. Except that campaign finance didn’t buy Enron its influence.” The New Republic

Froma Harrop: Was Enron also a cult? “There is, of course, one big difference between Lay and traditional cult leaders. Koresh and Applewhite perished with their followers. Lay had no intention of sharing their fate. While urging his employees to stay the course with Kool-Aid, he cashed out of Enron stock to the tune of many millions. No team-playing fool he.” Providence Journal

Digital divide: racism’s new frontier

“The internet is slow to recognise its responsibilities as an ethical player. If we have racism, a digital divide is its new colonial frontier. Passions surrounding the access and control of IT worldwide have triggered a cultural revolution.” Guardian UK

Cheney’s old firm on shaky ground. ‘A Texas energy giant finds itself on the financial ropes despite spending years currying favor with Washington. Nevertheless, the company can still claim a special friend in the White House.

Enron? Nope. This would be Dallas’ ailing Halliburton Co., whose former chief executive is Vice President Dick Cheney.’ San Francisco Chronicle

Important Seymour Hersh story on a secret Pakistani airlift of 5000 or so Pakistani nationals and other non-Afghani fighters for the Taliban trapped in the Northern Alliance siege of Kunduz. The US assented to, or even assisted in, this evacuation after stalling on surrender negotiations. General Musharraf persuaded the US that his slender hold on power in Pakistan would be jeopardized if his people came home in body bags. Reportedly, the US was supposed to have, but has never gotten, access to interrogate those evacuated.

India, whose intelligence service is the source of this story, is incensed but wary of offending the US with a public denunciation. Diplomatic notes of protest to the US and the UK have reportedly been ignored. Indian intelligence is convinced that many of the airlifted fighters will be encouraged to infiltrate into the ongoing Kashmiri conflict; Musharraf cannot afford to have them remain in Pakistan.

Hersh quotes sources who feel that India’s enraged “jilted lover syndrome” over this and other evidence of the Bush Administration’s decision to make Pakistan its chief ally in the Afghanistan war has contributed to the escalation of Indian-Pakistani belligerency in the wake of the December 13th attack on the Parliament Building. The precariousness of the standoff between these two hairtrigger nuclear powers grows daily.

India’s grievances—over the Pakistani airlift, the continuing terrorism in Kashmir, and Musharraf’s new status with Washington—however heartfelt, may mean little when it comes to effecting a dramatic change of American policy in South Asia. India’s democracy and its tradition of civilian control over the military make it less of a foreign-policy priority than Pakistan. The Bush Administration has put its prestige, and American aid money, behind Musharraf, in the gamble—thus far successful—that he will continue to move Pakistan, and its nuclear arsenal, away from fundamentalism. The goal is to stop nuclear terrorism as well as political terrorism. It’s a tall order, and missteps are inevitable. Nonetheless, the White House remains optimistic. An Administration official told me that, given the complications of today’s politics, he still believed that Musharraf was the best Pakistani leader the Indians could hope for, whether they recognize it or not. “After him, they could only get something worse.” The New Yorker

The First Six Months of George W. Bush: “Whatever your beliefs, know what your president is doing.”

A new group blog from the estimable provocateur Dr. Menlo, American Samizdat, themed so: “underground word lines especially needed by progit-heavy U.S.” It will include contributions from invited participants including “Fred Pyen of Metascene, Andrew Aab of gmtPlus9, Kirsten Anderson (founder, owner and curator of Seattle’s first and best alternative art gallery, the Roq La Rue), Brooke Biggs (formerly purveyor of the Bush Files over at Mother Jones, who now does the highly recommended Bittershack)…”, that ol’ Bushwacker Fred Lapides, Adam Rice from randomWalks, Mark Woods of wood s lot, and Jim of jimwich. RU Sirius was invited too, but no sign of him yet…

I’m honored to have been among the invitees, and may post there from time to time. Dr. Menlo astutely reassured me in the invitation letter that he doesn’t intend this to take any more time than my preexisting weblogging activities — that would be like blood from a stone — but that I might get extra mileage from time to time from posting some of the items from FmH on issues that particularly incense me.

Brain disease shaped Boléro

Brain disease influenced Ravel’s last compositions including his Boléro, say researchers. Orchestral timbres came to dominate his late music at the expense of melodic complexity because the left half of his brain deteriorated, they suggest. Timbre is mainly the province of the brain’s right hemisphere.

French composer Maurice Ravel suffered from a mysterious progressive dementia from about 1927 when he was 52 years old. He gradually lost the ability to speak, write and play the piano. He composed his last work in 1932, and gave his last performance in 1933. He died in December 1937.

Neurologists have puzzled over his illness ever since. Nature

Gravity leaps into quantum world: ‘Far from falling smoothly, objects moving under gravity do so in lurching, quantum leaps, a French experiment has revealed. The finding confirms that gravity, like the Universe’s three other fundamental forces, can have a quantum effect.’ Nature

Stephen Metcalf: Little Darlin’ – Wes Anderson, the sequel to Quentin Tarantino — ‘Too much creative control too soon equals too little self-control, a hothouse delight in one’s own talent.’ Slate

Consumers fight back against new protected CDs — ‘All across the world, people are dropping newly purchased $17 CDs into their CD-ROM drives and freaking out. In some cases, the CD won’t play at all in their computers. In other instances, the CD cannot be ripped into digital files for use on MP3 players. And sometimes, the CD will play only with Windows Media Player.

For people who have grown accustomed to using their PC to play CDs, this is tantamount to fraud. In some countries, these so-called protected CDs have labels on them so that computer users know which ones to avoid. However, this is not the case in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. The music industry’s head-on collision with technology has never been a thing of beauty, but I think that selling people CDs that are effectively broken has to be a new low…

Thanks to a site called Fat Chuck’s, irate consumers are compiling their specific knowledge of protected CDs (Chuck calls them corrupted ) into a database. You can search and browse the database as well as send in reports of the corrupted discs you buy so that others won’t make the same mistake. Even better, Fat Chuck–whoever he is–tries to verify the comments that people make, so you’re not just getting feedback from people who don’t like the CDs they buy for other reasons.’ CNet

The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath: ‘… the psychopath has the image of a cold, heartless, inhuman being. But do all psychopaths show a complete lack of normal emotional capacities and empathy? Like healthy people, many psychopaths love their parents, spouse, children and pets in their own way, but have difficulty loving and trusting the rest of the world. Furthermore, psychopaths do suffer emotionally as a consequence of separation, divorce, death of a beloved person or dissatisfaction with their own deviant behavior.’ Psychiatric Times

E. Fuller Torrey, MD: The year neurology almost took over psychiatry:

In December 1880, the emerging profession of neurology almost absorbed psychiatry, which had established itself four decades earlier. The final confrontation was the culmination of an extremely bitter three-year battle, and the outcome was very much in doubt as representatives of each side prepared to testify before the New York State Senate Investigative Committee on Asylum Management. One possible outcome would be the recommendation that neurologists be given administrative control of the state asylums and, effectively, of psychiatry. Other states watched New York’s battle closely and seemed likely to follow its lead.

The Urge to Punish Cheats: Not Just Human, but Selfless. ‘In the ferocity of the public outcry, and the demand from even those with no personal stake in the Enron collapse that “justice” be done, some scientists see a vivid example of humanity’s evolved and deep-seated hatred of the Cheat. The Cheat is the transgressor of fair play, the violator of accepted norms, the sneak who smiles with Chiclet teeth while ladling from the community till.’ NY Times

Ethical Reporting ‘Journalists have long been accused of wielding power without responsibility. But a group of more than 200 UK-based editors, writers, producers and reporters have spent the last year acting on the Primo Levi principle: “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Together they have produced a book, Reporting the World, a guide to “ethical reporting” in times of conflict.’ MediaChannel

Write here, write now: “Soon you’ll be able to post a message in the air wherever you go. Bennett Daviss explores a weird new way to keep in touch:

… Pinning messages in mid-air, using the location’s Global Positioning System (GPS) reference, could become the next craze in communications. The messages are not actually kept in the air: they’re stored on an Internet page. But that page’s Web address is linked to coordinates on the Earth’s surface, rather than a person or organisation. As you move about, a GPS receiver in your mobile phone or PDA will check to see if a message has been posted on the website for that particular spot. If you’re in luck a snippet of info-left as text or a voice recording by someone who passed there previously-will pop up on your screen or be whispered into your earpiece.” New Scientist

“President Bush’s war Cabinet is drawing up a secret plan to topple Saddam Hussein as soon as six months from now.

A new Afghanistan-style strategy is being finalized to use Iraqi freedom fighters, backed by U.S. military forces, … a Bush administration adviser is reported to have said.

The adviser is quoted as saying that a “general consensus” has emerged among members of Bush’s inner circle that the dictator must be ousted.” New York Post […bastion of responsible journalism. -FmH]

Notes from a Blogger Pro demo at the Weblogger Interest Group meeting in Mountain View. This won’t mean much to those of you who don’t use Blogger, but I’m salivating.

How to seem smarter — ‘The goal behind this painless four-step plan is to seem smarter without having to read any books, listen to classical music, or depend on crutches like word-of-the-day toilet paper. By making a few minor modifications to your behavior, you will give the impression to those around you that you are smarter–not only smarter than you were before, but, more importantly, smarter than they are.’ ReadyMade

Leon Wieseltier on Cornel West: All and Nothing at All

Since there is no crisis in America more urgent than the crisis of race, and since there is no intellectual in America more celebrated for his consideration of the crisis of race, I turned to West, and read his books. They are almost completely worthless. The man who wrote them is a good man, an enemy of enmity; but he is, as he writes again and again, for “a better world.” Who is not? And who, at this late date in the history of the attempt to better the world generally, and to better the world of what West calls “America’s chocolate cities” specifically, can still use this expression without irony, or without an anxiety about the degradation of idealism?

West’s work is noisy, tedious, slippery (in The American Evasion of Philosophy, “evasion” is a term of praise, a description of an accomplishment), sectarian, humorless, pedantic and self-endeared. His judgment of ideas is eccentric. The New Republic

“Slow Wave is a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world, and drawn as a comic strip by Jesse Reklaw. A new strip is uploaded every week on the first minute of Saturday in San Francisco; 3 AM Friday in New York; 6 AM Saturday in Paris, France; and 3 PM Saturday in Sydney, Australia…

Submit your dreams.”

Human Rights Watch World Report 2002 (Human Rights Developments in 2001)

Director Calls Bush ‘An Embarrassment’ — ‘Veteran filmmaker Robert Altman is venting about President George W. Bush again.

Altman, who’s been showered with critics’ accolades and a Golden Globe of late with the comedy murder mystery “Gosford Park,” first announced before the 2000 presidential election that he would leave the country if Bush were elected president.

He said a Republican victory “would be a catastrophe for the whole world,” taking issue with Bush’s plans to cut taxes and raise military spending.

Now in an interview the The London Times, Altman became enraged when speaking of Bush and the American government.’ The Boston Channel

“States must tighten their procedures for issuing driver’s licenses. That was clear after Sept. 11, when it became known that several of the hijackers had obtained licenses by using false identities.

But how far should the tightening go? Should these essential state identification cards become national IDs?” Christian Science Monitor

National ID in development : “…(T)he public’s willingness to trade some privacy for the promise of increased security seems to be slipping. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll released last week says just more than half of all adults would support a national identification card that includes fingerprint information. Two months ago, several polls indicated that more than two-thirds of all adults would support a national ID card.” USA Today [… a paper that’s not good for much, but when even it reports that Americans are disappointing conservative expectations it’s worth noting… -FmH]

Mickey Kaus: What Black Hawk Down leaves out; that Somalia raid really was more a debacle than a victory. Slate [No surprise unless you’re getting all your history from Hollywood… -FmH]

‘More people in America watch ‘Friends’ than have friends.’

“Leading American sociologist Robert Putnam made this semi-serious claim in a talk he gave recently to a large audience at the Brisbane Convention Centre.

Professor Putnam cites public health research which shows that people who are socially isolated are as much at risk of death as people who smoke.

Robert Putnam is the author of the term ‘social capital’, which refers to community bonds and interpersonal connections. These, he argues, are just as

important for the public good as economic wellbeing.

His bestselling book Bowling Alone: The Decline and Revival of American Community described how on many measures social capital has declined dramatically since the 1970s. Putnam analysed factors such as membership of voluntary organisations, how often people went on picnics, and levels of

philanthropy, and found sharp declines on all fronts.” abc.net.au

How a woman ‘nose’ who to mate

Women are designed to sniff out men with body odour similar to their fathers.

Researchers believe the discovery is an example of the way nature ensures the right individuals mate through subtle smell signals.

The research from the University of Chicago shows odours relate to the immune system genes a woman inherits from her father.

Ananova

Molly Ivins: What’s that sound that we’re not hearing?

After six years as governor of Texas, George W. Bush was infuriated by a federal report ranking Texas No. 1 in hunger. “You’d think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas,” he said. Well, Texas had been No. 1 in hunger since the feds started keeping count in the 1960s. It’s a permanent condition here, but the governor had never seen it.

We better stop, hey, what’s that sound

Everybody look what’s going down. Dallas-Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

What is Art Music? Orlando Jacinto Garcia:

As we enter the next century the music world can seem a bit confusing. Twenty-five years ago what was considered the Western Art music canon consisted of music from either Antiquity or the Renaissance through the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and into the 20th century. The music called by many in the general public “classical” music was relatively well defined in so far as the composers and their works. Today, this repertoire is not the only music deemed as relevant. Especially in post-modern times where categories are being redefined, it is easy for many to assert that a tango, a rock tune, and a Beethoven symphony are all the same except perhaps for the musical parameters that define the style. This can have its positive as well as negative ramifications. The positive perhaps being that all types of music are understood as having similar importance, the negative that everything is considered in many ways as being the same. NewMusicBox

Teaching Aesthetics to Artists

Artists tend to be repelled by aesthetics, for a number of reasons. Many are suspicious that too much analyzing of their art will harm their creativity; it will encourage them to develop their rational ego at the expense of their creative unconscious. Or they suspect that aesthetic analysis will have no effect on them, that thinking about art in this way is simply useless. Give a group of artists a copy of the latest issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and their response is likely to be that it simply doesn’t interest them, that the issues discussed are not ones that they face as artists, and that it seems to consist mainly of academic nit-picking and hair-splitting which has little to do with the real worlds of art.

Larkin’s lover bequeaths to church £1m of poet’s agnostic legacy:

Friends and admirers of the poet Philip Larkin were yesterday interested, surprised and in some cases affectionately amused to hear that £1m of his legacy had gone indirectly to the Church of England.

Larkin, who declined the poet laureateship a year before he died in 1985, remains best known for his reverently agnostic poem Churchgoing. However, he also said: “The Bible is a load of balls of course – but very beautiful.”

Guardian UK

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches will fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone ?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation - marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built

This special shell? For, though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognized, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that some many dead lie round.

Dum & Dummer – Michael J. Sheehan: “Our parents taught us not to speak negatively of others, but what’s a person to do when ignorance, the absence of knowledge, rears its empty head? Any thesaurus will provide us with substantives such as blockheadedness, denseness, doltishness, dumbness, dullness, stupidity, shallowness, incomprehension, unintelligence, and unenlightenment, but when we need heftier words or more striking language, where do we turn?” The Vocabula Review

We saw A Beautiful Mind last night. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) Jennifer Connelly is deservedly the critics’ darling, up for a Golden Globe. Ed Harris is underrated and breathtaking to watch in his limited time onscreen. Even more breathtaking is Russell Crowe, who does a wonderful job as John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician with a lifelong struggle against paranoid schizophrenia, except for some moments when he was obviously directed to be a dorky stereotype which, in reality, has nothing to do with schizophrenia. This allows a gratuitous and incongruous scene in which some longhaired Princeton students — it’s the late ’60’s or early ’70’s at this point — make insensitive fun of him. As a psychiatrist whose primary clinical activity is treating schizophrenia, I was far more moved by the film than the non-mental-health-professionals with whom I saw it. What is most difficult to understand about schizophrenic delusions — the subjective, and ultimately terrifying, experience of being unable to differentiate internal fantasies from consensus reality — is well-portrayed here, although through a cinematographic artifice of populating his world with people who turn out to be imagined. No adult schizophrenic I have ever treated or read about has this literal version of an “imaginary playmate”; most of their hallucinatory experiences are of disembodied voices about whose identities they either speculate or remain ignorant. The film also provokes the right questions about the relationship between genius and mental instability. To be overly simplistic, does Nash create because of or in spite of his illness? And, the flip side of the coin, how germane is his intellectual strength — the answer, it seems to me, is not at all obvious — to his perseverence in the face of his illness? Worth seeing.

Information page on Nyiragongo, the volcano that just erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A superb, well-organized colection of the woodblock prints of Hiroshige, which I have always found sublime. The above, “Thunderstorm at Ohashi and Atake,” from the Hundred Famous Views of Edo, has long had a special resonance with me.

[thanks to fruitlog — now plep??]

A dwelling for the gods — “The door handles took a year to design. The radiators took another. And then the ceiling had to be raised – by a few millimetres. Stuart Jeffries on what happened when Ludwig Wittgenstein applied his philosophy to architecture.” A review of “The Unknown Wittgenstein: Architect, Engineer, Photographer” at the Royal Academy of Art, London. Guardian UK [via Fimoculous]

Wallace and Gromit to return online — “The stars of animator Nick Park’s Oscar-winning The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave are to make their return on the internet, it was revealed today.

Wallace, a prolific inventor fond of red ties, green tank tops and Wensleydale cheese with creations such as the aforementioned mechanical trousers to his name, will be reunited with his plasticine dog, Gromit, in 12 one-minute movies.” Guardian UK [via Fimoculous]

“Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army’s biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s, during a turbulent period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists there, documents from an internal Army inquiry show.

The 1992 inquiry also found evidence that someone was secretly entering a lab late at night to conduct unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax. A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher, who left the misspelled label “antrax” in the machine’s electronic memory, according to the documents obtained by The Courant.”

Brussels can like it or lump it on sauce: “A spectacularly obscure EU body will meet in Brussels today to decide just how many lumps a sauce can contain before it ceases to be classified as a sauce and is regarded officially as a vegetable.” The Times of London

The C.I.A.’s Domestic Reach: “The charter of the Central Intelligence Agency expressly denies the spies any domestic police powers. … So the boundaries were drawn at the dawn of the cold war. The C.I.A. would find out what was going on outside the United States — and so prevent a second Pearl Harbor. The F.B.I. would work inside the United States to catch criminals and foreign agents.

That once bright line has blurred since Sept. 11.

Congress has given the C.I.A. new legal powers to snoop on people in the United States — not limited to investigating groups like Al Qaeda. It has been granted these new powers, along with billions of dollars, without any public post-mortem into how all these guardians of national security failed to protect against the September attacks.” NY Times

$100,000 Speeding Fine?

Why We Want Their Bodies Back: “As humans have evolved, they’ve learned there are good reasons not to bury an empty coffin… The desire for tangible proof of the death of someone we know or love is a natural human impulse. But often that desire extends well beyond a purely rational need for certainty. In circumstances where there is not the remotest chance that someone is still alive, we still expend great energy and often put other lives on the line in order to retrieve the dead.” Discover

Stress Causes Lasting Brain Changes: ‘The research team… looked at what happened to mouse brain cells and to live mice following brief exposure to different types of stress. Their findings appear in the Jan. 18 issue of Science.

They found that within minutes of exposure, brain nerve cells, or neurons, became hypersensitive. And the change lasted for several weeks — long after the stress was gone. This is in keeping with victims of posttraumatic stress, who despite time and distance from the original trauma remain physically, mentally, and emotionally agitated.’ WebMD

Poll: Bush Admin. Hiding Something, say almost two thirds of respondents. But will it change the Administration’s approval ratings in the face of the effective pressure for sheeplike loyalty? yahoo!