“Forget performance related pay and flexi-time, new research by Martin Corbett from Warwick Business School reveals large corporations increasingly use hip pop music to develop loyal, hard-working employees, and encourage workers, literally, to sing from the same hymn sheet. However, despite encouragement, not all employees dance to the same tune.” EurekAlert!

“Scientists and perfumers are searching for the chemical scent that drives humans wild… ‘Warning: Contains pheromones. (Wear if you dare!) May excite wild physical attraction.’ Thus beckons a suggestively shaped vial of ‘Chemical: Attraction’ in the CVS display. Vogue International offers this fragrance for men and women for just $14.99. Who could resist the temptation to conduct a field test?” Boston Globe

“Is Sesame Street really brought to you by the letters U, S and A?

The US Army – which partly sponsors the show’s makers, the New York-based Children’s Television Workshop – certainly loves Sesame Street. Especially its saccharine theme music about everything being ‘A-OK’.

Iraqi prisoners were treated to repeated playings of the ditty at ear-splitting volume by US psychological operations officers intent on encouraging their captives to submit to questioning.

This revelation seems to run contrary to everything the TV show for pre-school children has stood for since its first broadcast in 1969. Also, by bringing Big Bird, Elmo and Mr Snuffleupagus into such disrepute, the US soldiers may have tarnished a more subtle plan hatched by their masters back in Washington.” According to the article, elements in the Bush administration think Sesame Street is the ideal vehicle to export American values and teach the third world not to hate us. The Children’s Television Workshop objects to the characterization of its flagship show.

“The work of a shy and reclusive Bulgarian-born writer may seem like a strange source of inspiration for a computer game.

But the writings of Elias Canetti about the nature of power are behind a complex and ambitious game called Republic: The Revolution, which has just gone on sale in the UK.

Republic is a strategy simulation game that puts you in the role of a budding revolutionary, out to overthrow a despotic and corrupt regime.

Much of the artificial intelligence in the game is based on the book, Crowds and Power, by the 1981 Nobel Laureate in Literature.” BBC News

Calls for Papers:

“…Have individuals’ feelings of hope and

possibility been diminished by the ‘triumph’ of capitalism, economic

downturns (no longer referred to as ‘depressions’), corporate and

political scandals, the rise of the security state and increasing

threats to civil liberties, the apparent inevitability of certain

social problems, the limited successes (failures?) of the Left and

progressives? How might focusing on depression help us to understand

phenomena like political nonparticipation, the rise of

fundamentalisms, growing consumerism, and the retreat to the private

sphere? More hopefully, we wonder: might depression have a future in

politics?

Ultimately, the conference will work to dispel the notion that

disempowerment is the only prognosis for the depressed or that the

goal ought to lie in ‘getting happy.’ Instead, we will ask how

depression might be used politically. In particular, a guiding

question will concern the historical specificity of our own moment:

in a time when certain narratives no longer inspire optimism and when

a culture-wide sense of a totalizing despair has started to seem

natural, how might we see the political horizon opening up in new

ways? “

“There is much dismay and even despair over the slow pace at which broadband is advancing in the United States. This slow pace is often claimed to be fatally retarding the recovery of the entire IT industry. As a result there are increasing calls for government action, through regulation or even through outright subsidies.

A careful examination shows that broadband is full of puzzles and paradoxes, which suggests caution before taking any drastic action. As one simple example, the basic meaning of broadband is almost universally misunderstood, since by the official definition, we all have broadband courtesy of the postal system. Also, broadband penetration, while generally regarded as disappointingly slow, is actually extremely fast by most standards, faster than cell phone diffusion at a comparable stage. Furthermore, many of the policies proposed for advancing broadband are likely to have perverse effects. There are many opportunities for narrowband services that are not being exploited, some of which might speed up broadband adoption.” — Andrew Odlyzko, First Monday

Robert Scheer: “How distressing that it turns out to be Bush, leader of the world’s greatest democracy, who is the true master of denial and deception, rather than Hussein, who proved to be a paper tiger. Bush is such a master at deceiving the American public that even now he is not threatened with the prospect of impeachment or any serious congressional investigation into the possibility that he led this nation into war with lies.

But lie he did, at the very least in the crucial matter of pushing secret evidence that even a president of his limited experience had to know was so flimsy as to not be evidence at all. U.S. intelligence officials now say the administration was lied to by Iraqi émigrés.

That excuse for the U.S. intelligence failure in Iraq would be laughable were the circumstances not so appalling. It means Bush ignored all the cautions of career diplomats and intelligence experts in every branch of the U.S. government over the unsubstantiated word of Iraqi renegades. ” LA Times

. Okay, I promise to stop with the pat “Bush lied” posts soon, unless something too juicy to ignore comes along. It is not as if I have to influence the leanings of my readers int he next election, after all…

“Are you a neoconservative? Take this quiz to find out.” Christian Science Monitor Part of a CSM special report, Empire Builders: Neoconservatives and their blueprint for US power.

“From airport terminals decorated like Starbucks to the popularity of hair dye among teenage boys, one thing is clear: we have entered the Age of Aesthetics. Sensory appeals are everywhere, and they are intensifying, radically changing how Americans live and work.

We expect every strip mall and city block to offer designer coffee, a copy shop with do-it-yourself graphics workstations, and a nail salon for manicures on demand. Every startup, product, or public space calls for an aesthetic touch, which gives us more choices, and more responsibility. By now, we all rely on style to express identity. And aesthetics has become too important to be left to the aesthetes.

In this penetrating, keenly observed book, Virginia Postrel shows that the “look and feel” of people, places, and things are more important than we think. Aesthetic pleasure taps deep human instincts and is essential for creativity and growth. Drawing from fields as diverse as fashion, real estate, politics, design, and economics, Postrel deftly chronicles our culture’s aesthetic imperative and argues persuasively that it is a vital component of a healthy, forward-looking society.”

I haven’t read the book, but it sounds from the blurb as if Postrel is going to have to wrestle with whether an aesthetic imperative can be satisfied by superficiality, and whether the identities conveyed by such stylin’ have any substance..

“George W. Bush has officially told the people of New York City that as far as he’s concerned, they can drop dead. And thanks to his lies, many of them will.

With his latest attack on the Clean Air Act he’s said the same to millions more.

Bush has used the 9/11 ‘trifecta’ to build his popularity, fund the military and tear up the Bill of Rights. But the GOP’s cynical uses of the tragedy have gone to a new level.

The White House directly interfered with planned Environmental Protection Agency warnings about the toxic fallout from the World Trade Center explosions. It had ‘competing considerations’ that came before protecting the health of the people of New York. Among them were re-opening the stock exchange as quickly as possible, and limiting clean-up costs and liability claims.” The Free Press

Office of Naval Research to unveil the ‘matchbox’ atomic clock: “It loses only one second every 10,000 years.. In October 2003 the Office of Naval Research will unveil the performance of the next-generation, super-accurate clock no bigger than a matchbox. The Ultra-miniature Rubidium (Rb) Atomic Clock, 40 cubic centimeters in volume and using a minuscule one watt of power, doesn’t weigh much more than a matchbox either. And… it will lose only about one second every 10,000 years.”

Using cellophane to convert a laptop computer screen into a three-dimensional display: Abstract: “We present a novel, inexpensive, stereoscopic technique for generating 3D displays from cellophane and a laptop computer screen. Stereoscopy requires independent manipulation of the left and right eye views.1 Our technique takes advantage of two facts; the first is that the light from the liquid crystal display of a laptop computer is polarized light 2, and therefore we can easily manipulate its transmission with a polarizer sheet. The second fact is that a cellophane half-waveplate can change the direction of polarization of light. The direction of polarization of one half of the laptop screen was rotated by the cellophane half-waveplate. Two images displayed with orthogonal polarization on two halves of the screen become separable by wearing a pair of glasses of orthogonal polarization.”

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa reports from Iraq: “There are no police stations or banks, the American troops are scared and hated and anything that isn’t guarded is stolen or destroyed. Is there hope for the people of Baghdad?” Guardian/UK [props to Miguel]

Steve Gilliard asks if we recognize this scenario:

“Arrogant company founded by rich kids, hires on daddy’s former employees as advisors and then starts spending wildly.

Company embarks on risky venture against all industry practice and advice and gains early success. As time goes on, the business proves to be more difficult and the debt, run up so easily in the past, starts to be a burden.

The company, realizing the need for change, starts to negotiate for loans and investments. Only problem is that the people most likely to invest have pretty steep terms. The management, run by people who have no clue, demand to keep their seats on the board, and most of their shares. The investors, who never liked the management or the plan, shake their heads at the arrogance. They’re the ones begging for help, yet they expect to still have a say in running the company as the majority partners.

As the employees complain and quit, mangement portrays the company as healthy and functioning. When industry analysts depicted a troubled company, they attack the analysis and complain about bias.

Instead of bailing out the company, the investors wait for it to fail and then buy the assets at a fire sale.

That describes a hundred dotcoms. It also describes the fate of our policy in Iraq.

Why should the UN jump in on US terms, when, if they wait six months or so, can go to the Shias and Sunnis, insert peacekeepers on their terms, leaving a weakened, chastened US forced to accept it.. The US is not in the driver’s seat. There will be no money or troops as long as the US runs the show. That’s pretty much understood. There isn’t a country where a vote could pass parliament to send troops to Iraq which hasn’t already accepted US bribe money.”

Ed Fitzgerald, one of the most thoughtfl people I met through weblogging, has tentatively dipped his toe into the waters of the weblog world with unfutz. Everyone should give it a try. See what you think, for one thing, of the intriguing proposal for a “liberal rapid response team” he discusses.

…When No One Was Listening: “Tired of being reminded by other magazines that the best albums in the world were made by The Beatles, Beach Boys and Rolling Stones? So is The Wire magazine. They polled their writers to come up with a guide to 100 records that should have ignited the world’s imagination, except that everyone else was fiddling…” Wire Issue 175 [September 1998]

Even Republicans in Congress seek to combat a growing sense of unease at the Iraq debacle.

“Mainly, people want reassurance that the administration knows what it’s doing,” said Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), “that things are going better than CNN would have us believe.” Washington Post

Bare Your Bum at Bush!: “George W. Bush has already cancelled one visit to this country because he felt more than a little unwelcome. The man is terribly secretive about state visits, but Laura Bush recently let slip that a visit to the UK is being planned sometime in autumn. Our aim is to give the man the bum’s rush before he even arrives and/or show him exactly what we think of him in the finest British tradition.”

Construction worker survives drill through head: He fell onto a 1.5-inch diameter auger bit from his six-foot ladder. The drill bit went in one orbit (he has lost his eye) and pushed the brain aside without evident damage, coming out the back of his head through his skull. After reflection, the surgeons caring for him decided that unscrewing the bit would be the best way to extract it. CNN

“Six months after spitting in the face of the world, the Bush administration is crawling on its belly before the U.N. If the world doesn’t rush to help it, the White House has only itself to blame.” Salon

Ethel is back, and right on target. Thanks, Steve, for not abandoning us all.

Joshua Micah Marshall: Deception, Denial, and Relativism: what the Bush administration learned from the French:

“George W. Bush has a forthright speaking style which convinces many people that he’s telling the truth even when he’s lying. But in under three years, Bush has told at least as many impressive untruths as each of his three predecessors. His style of deception is also unique. When Reagan said he didn’t trade arms for hostages, or Clinton insisted he didn’t have sex with ‘that woman,’ the falsity of the claims was readily provable–by an Oliver North memo or a stained blue dress. Bush and his administration, however, specialize in a particular form of deception: The confidently expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion.” Washington Monthly

Marshall argues that the Bush team has both a need and a propensity for deception, analyzes why that might be and how it plays itself out. Readers of FmH have heard me both puzzle and despair over and over here about the American public’s obliviousness to and complacency about Bush’s truthlessness. This piece helps us understand how he gets away with it. Of course, it won’t be read by the people who need a wake-up call from their stupor.

Since the election campaign, I have been writing here that Bush’s appeal taps into a deepseated anti-intellectualism in the lumpenproletariat, that Bush is the self-styled stupider-than-thou President. Although it is disputed, I contend this is partially because of his own intellectual limitations. FmH’ers may recall discussion here about the evidence that he is dyslexic (although that isn’t necessarily an intellectual limitation), and an item about what a lacklustre student he was in business school. Listen to his discourse (when it is not scripted by his speechwriter handlers); his assertions have the vague generality and noncommittal vagueness of someone with unsophisticated conceptual ability who does not believe in his own analytic power. His word use is non-nuanced. He is clearly not intellectually curious. Early in the Presidential race in 2000, I was incredulous that the public could not see how limited he is. Later I realized that not only did they not care, but they found it appealing.

Recently, in discussing the administration’s contention that auto exhaust emissions are not air pollution, I refered to Bush (and by extension the people around him) as an ‘airhead’. I was trying to be ironic (since we were discussing air quality at the time) but I fully intended the derogatory connotations. In a comment, a reader took me to task for mistaking crafty malevolent manipulativeness for stupidity. My own impression is that Bush is dull and his handlers crafty, and the common confusion of messenger with message makes this difficult to recognize. His lieutenants clearly know how to exploit his stupidity, both in terms of molding him to their agenda and using it (rebranded as “folksy” or “down-home”) as the basis of his public appeal. (I felt similarly about the Reagan administration, particularly during his second term when a trained observer could already see signs of his encroaching Alzheimer’s impairments.) Marshall, to my reading, is careful to place the mendacity more in the administration as a whole than the person of GWB. To him, the administration’s tack is essentially a “war on expertise”:

In any White House, there is usually a tension between the political agenda and disinterested experts who might question it. But what’s remarkable about this White House is how little tension there seems to be. Expert analysis that isn’t politically helpful simply gets ignored.

Bush, intellectually intimidated, will not acknowledge or does not recognize expertise; his Machiavellian team does, and deliberately marginalizes politically dissonant or threatening input. And we can expect it to get alot worse, since his people never expected him to be going into reelection season with a half-trillion-dollar deficit and a utter failure of a foreign expeditionary morass on his hands. Look for a massive escalation of the lies in direct proportion to the magnitude of his administration’s failures and the informed political commentary on them in the election season.

Monks Incensed by Cancer Claims. The Citizen (Gloucestershire)

A pretty damning indictment of concerns from the left over depleted uranium weapons, if you can believe the science cited here, well-documented and footnoted.

Best I can make out, the depleted-uranium agitation by the antiwar left is more than just exaggeration, it’s pretty much invented whole cloth — garbage, in other words. You recall the naive old saying, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”? From what I’ve seen of propaganda mills blasting away full bore (full of lies), I’m much more taken by the comeback, attributed to John F. Kennedy, I believe: “Where there’s smoke, you’ll usually find somebody running a smoke-making machine!” — Michael E. McNeil, Impearls

Elsewhere on his site, McNeil also scoffs at the idea that a nuclear holocaust would mean doomsday for the human race, with a much more selective appraisal of the evidence, clearly in the service of his ideological biases.

Although “the name is not the thing” (Frege) and “the map is not the territory” (Bell), Geoff Cohen thinks ‘real maps’, embodying the simple concept of labelling a country with what its own people call it rather than anglicizing it, make sense, and so do I. He has tried his hand at a Real Map for Europe.

The Kuro5hin Introduction to the Cthulhu Mythos

Rumsfeld, Army leaders in discord: “‘You look at Rumsfeld, and beyond all the rationale, spoken and unspoken, he just dislikes the Army. It’s just palpable. . . . You always have to wonder if when Rumsfeld was a Navy lieutenant junior grade whether an Army officer stole his girlfriend,’ said Ralph Peters, a former Army intelligence officer who writes on national security issues.” Boston Globe

Bruce Sterling: “Having just put those 200 notes in order, I am now in a position to email the lot of them to anybody who wants them (Contact bruces@well.org). Why not decorate your own website with a free ton of Viridian propaganda?” The mechanics of this mailing list sound wonderful, to wit:

Internet mailing lists, such as this Viridian list,

are a form of publishing in which no money changes hands.

Nevertheless, there are two important forms of para-

economics involved. The first is “reputation economics.”

People tend to contribute to Internet exchanges because

there are useful personal benefits in spreading one’s

ideas, establishing one’s public expertise, and making

one’s name known to other interested parties. This

practice has a long and honorable history, and is well

known in the sciences and in academia generally. These

groups were the original source of the Internet and its

publication practices — along with the military.

The second para-economic aspect is “attention

economics.” This one is more problematic, because this is

where the cruelest forms of exploitation take place in the

Internet’s noncommercial world. It is easy to cut-and-

paste huge archives of found text and images, and to bomb

one’s hapless correspondents with them. The time and

attention of recipients suffers badly, since the work of

distribution can be accomplished in seconds, while parsing

all that text, and finally deciding that it is useless,

can take seemingly forever.

Our first formal innovation is an attempt to steal as

little of your attention as we can. We don’t fondly

imagine that every reader will find all posts in this list

to be equally fascinating. We are going to be covering a

lot of ground here, and much of our content will be not

only novel, but frankly weird. Therefore, we will begin

each Viridian Note with a useful set of its key concepts.

With some practice, we hope that you will be able to

reject a Viridian Note, confidently and without a pang,

within two or three seconds.

This effort, however, may not be enough. You may

still find yourself painfully tempted to actually *read*

the Note. We therefore offer a backup safety system, our

unique “Attention Conservation Notice.” This will begin

each Note by explaining to you, in some brief detail, why

you should NOT read it.

This has never been done before in print-based

publishing, but in the text-glutted electronic context, we

feel this practice makes a lot of sense. By saving your

attention, we are offering you a considerable value-added

service, which makes our Viridian list considerably

“cheaper” in attention-terms than the other, more

primitive lists you may be reading. They cynically

imagine that you are reading everything they spew; we,

however, know much better, and we are on your side…

We will follow the useful design edict to “Look at

the Underside First.” We’ll start each Note by explaining

the areas in which its design and intention fails,

rather than act as attention-hucksters, trumpeting the

work’s supposed benefits and demanding that you

concentrate.

With time, we hope to develop a standard set of

“Attention Conservation” disclaimers that will save you

much mental processing time. In future, the following

warnings may see considerable use in this list:

• “Highly speculative;”
• “Beautifully phrased but offers no
  
  evidence to support its claims;”
• “Of interest mostly to
  
  technical specialists,”
• “Written in postmodernese;”
  
• “Infested with subcultural jargon,”
• “Grimly accurate
  
  assessment, can cause feelings of despair,”
• “Contains violent
  
  partisan attacks,”
• “Writer’s original language not
  
  English,”

and so forth. (At least, those disclaimers

would be of huge benefit in most of the lists that we’re

reading right now.)…

Read more about the Viridian movement here.

…(W)e’re green, but there’s something electrical and unnatural about our tinge of green. We’re an art movement that looks like a mailing list, an ad campaign, a design team, an oppo research organization, a laboratory, and, perhaps most of all, we resemble a small feudal theocracy ruled with an iron hand by a Pope- Emperor. We have our own logo — or we will. We have our own font and our own typography. And we have an entire list of favorite Viridian-approved tie-in products: T-shirts, chrome stickers, socks, solar panels, ultrasonic sterilizers, and so on…. We’re going to be spending a lot of time picking bits and pieces out of the background clutter, and assembling them, and placing our stamp of ideological approval upon them. The future is already here. It just hasn’t been assembled as a cultural ensemble.

Starvation?

The reason I was taking another look at the Viridian site was that an FmH’er [thanks, Miguel] forwarded Viridian Note 00381 to me. Read it and scare yourself. “[Attention Conservation Notice: Nothing new about environmental activists hand-wringing over prospects of mass starvation. Kinda new to wonder if this might go from the unthinkable to a real-life truism in such short order, though.]” At its inception at the threshold of the new century, Sterling conceptualized the Viridian movement as an aesthetic response to impending global catastrophe (“… it’s a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that’s why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide…. What a cramp of our style. It’s all very foul and aesthetically regrettable…”) on a rather short timeframe — the little more than a decade until the Kyoto accords were supposed to have made a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions. Well, we’re a third of the way there and any vestiges of cooperation in keeping the world habitable have been dashed to pieces, largely due to the Bush junta’s explicit anti-environmentalism and its broader dismantling of the fragile framework of multilateral international cooperation and mutual respect as we turned from victim to bully after 9-11-01. This is the fourth year in succession that the world is not producing enough grain to feed itself; the summer heatwave in Europe is devastating crop production figures; its full impact is not even yet know; and it is but a foretaste of things to come as global warming accelerates. “The Viridian Movement is supposed to have an expiration date of 2012. Will we make it that far?” My questions for Sterling and others, then: Is this (and other Viridiana) a wakeup call or a dirge? Upon what does it depend? Can an aesthetic shift make a difference? fast enough to make a difference?

Theodore Dalrymple: “Both Althusser and Cantat illustrate the new moral law for modern man: that moral concern rightly increases as the square of the distance from the person expressing the concern. Only thus can a man be utterly selfish and egotistical on the one hand and a moral exemplar on the other;” reflections on the murder of French actress Marie Trintignant by rockstar boyfriend Bertrand Cantat in a drunken, jealous fit. Although the inimitable Dr. Dalrymple tilts at the windmill of moral hypocrisy, he has a knack for being sanctimonious only about leftist hypocrites (especially when he thinks that extracting the lessons from their hypocrisy will be a major maturing influence on his readers and his students). Dalrymple is, however, full of compassion, making an interesting point in the process:

When I look at the pictures of Cantat after his arrest, head bowed and misery patent for all to see, I am reminded of the many murderers I have met shortly after they have killed their lovers from motives of jealousy. Most of them have also tried, as did Cantat, to kill themselves afterwards (a third of British murders were once followed by suicide). Of course, jealousy is nothing new—where humans, their weakness and wickedness are concerned, there really is nothing new under the sun. Othello is more than sufficient to prove it. But this is not to say that some ways of life favor some human responses, while others do not. When the sexual revolution is lived as if it were possible to do so without consequences, the result is a huge increase in sexual violence…

Perhaps because I work in a prison and not a morgue—that is to say, I see the murderer rather than the murdered, lying bruised and battered on the slab—I feel an anguish for my murderers, at least of the jealous kind. Their suffering is intense, and their efforts to be reunited with their loved ones (religion is dead, but not the belief in a hereafter), so that they can undo what they have done, apologize and fall at their feet, genuinely move me. Cantat devoted his life to anti-art posing as art; he did not know himself as he should have done; but I still say, priez pour lui, as well as for Marie Trintignant of course. The New Criterion [as always, props to walker for keeping me informed of the juiciest of Dr. Dalrymple’s literary exploits]

“Camera technology designed to spot potential terrorists by their facial characteristics at airports failed its first major test, a report from the airport that tested the technology shows.

Last year, two separate face-recognition systems at Boston’s Logan Airport failed 96 times to detect volunteers who played potential terrorists as they passed security checkpoints during a three-month test period, the airport’s analysis says. The systems correctly detected them 153 times.

The airport’s report calls the rate of inaccuracy ‘excessive.’ The report was completed in July 2002 but not made public. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained a copy last month through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Logan is where 10 of the 19 terrorists boarded the flights that were later hijacked Sept. 11, 2001.” USAToday

I read Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby while on vacation, which flirts seriously with the concept; now, suddenly, I’m encountering the term “creative destruction” everywhere. Here’s a Google search on the phrase, which has a long and distinguished lineage, mostly in business management. I’m not sure why the concept has such legs…

“Planet PDF is now offering an assortment of some of the most popular classics — free! Help yourself to them, and feel free to share them with your friends. We’ll be adding new ones each week, so come back soon for new eBooks.” You don’t need to come back every week; what they’re offering already will keep you occupied for a long while. Time to revisit Moby Dick again — on my PDA.

I do so love having a book stored in my PDA, while we’re on the topic. If I have a free moment to grab to read, wherever I happen to be, it is with me, in my shirt pocket, even when I am inconveniently far from the nearest source of printed reading material or the ‘real’ book I carry around in my bag. However, eBooks will never totally supplant printed books for me. Part of the experience of buying and owning books is their sensuality and their substantiality. If I live long enough to see the death of the book publishing industry in favor of digital distribution, I will still, I venture to say, be an old curmudgeon jealously guarding my room full of filled boookshelves.

“There are folders on your computer that Microsoft has tried hard to keep secret. Within these folders you will find two major things: Microsoft Internet Explorer has not been clearing your browsing history after you have instructed it to do so, and Microsoft’s Outlook Express has not been deleting your e-mail correspondence after you’ve erased them from your Deleted Items bin. (This also includes all incoming and outgoing file attachments.) And believe me, that’s not even the half of it.” fuckMicrosoft.com [via Lockergnome]

“A plan to vaccinate nearly half a million healthcare workers in the US against smallpox in case of a bioterrorist attack has ground to a halt. Only 38,257 people have accepted vaccination, less than a tenth as many as planned.

But the failure may run deeper. In a damning report released last week, the US Institute of Medicine, an independent advisory body, says the problem is not that so few have been vaccinated, but that so much time and money has been spent on the vaccination programme. It argues that this should have been spent on more important defensive measures such as disease surveillance and response plans.” New Scientist

“Eating chocolate can boost the level of heart-protecting antioxidants in the blood, but consuming milk at the same time cancels the potential health benefits, according to a new study.

The researchers speculate that milk may also have the same effect on other antioxidant-rich foods, including fruit and green vegetables.” New Scientist Live longer; eat lots of dark chocolate, avoid milk chocolate, and don’t drink milk with it.

“The youngest children in a school year group have a higher risk of developing mental health problems than the oldest children, according to a new study.

A survey of more than 10,000 British schoolchildren aged five to 15 years old, found that those with birthdays in the last three months of the school year were more prone to psychiatric problems, such as hyperactivity and behavioural difficulties, compared to those born in the earlier in the school year.

‘Our study shows that those born in the first third of the school year have an 8.3 per cent chance of having a psychiatric disorder, whereas the youngest third have a 9.9 per cent chance,’ says psychologist Robert Goodman, who led the research team at King’s College London.

He suggests that the effects may be due to teachers having the same academic and behavioural expectations for all the children in a year group, even though there may be up to 12 months’ difference in their ages.” New Scientist

“A new version of the SoBig computer worm, expected in September, could not just overwhelm networks with infected mail but also lead to a massive increase in spam, according to some experts.

Many believe the SoBig.F computer worm, which infected many thousands of computers earlier in August, was designed to turn machines into ‘zombies’ capable of sending out a flood of spam. Data collected by the UK email-filtering company Message Labs shows that almost half of all computers sending spam have been infected with a computer virus. SoBig.F is programmed to stop working on 10 September and anti-virus companies say another variant may soon follow.” New Scientist

They are more like us than anyone had imagined, say scientists: “They feel pain, suffer and experience stress, affection, excitement and even love ” — Jeremy Rifkin, LA Times [via CommonDreams]

A physicist considers the creative tension between speculation and observation in modern science. What relationship do scientific theories have to ‘reality’? Physics Today

Our cozy world is probably much bigger — and stranger — than we know: “One morning last April, the New York Times op-ed page ran a piece by the Australian physicist Paul Davies warning readers not to be so gullible as to believe there could be more than one universe. The next month, Scientific American published a long article by the physicist Max Tegmark asserting that, to the contrary, parallel universes almost certainly do exist. Around the same time, bookstores received Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?, wherein Martin Gardner dismisses theories of multiple universes as ‘frivolous fantasies.’ If you had seen all this, you may well have asked yourself: Is this really a matter on which I need to form an opinion?” — Jim Holt, Slate

In a teaser for his forthcoming role as a columnist for the New York Press, Paul Krassner reminisces about The Realist.

‘I was publishing what was considered to be the hippest magazine in America, but I was still living with my parents, and I was still a virgin…

In 1964, I assigned Robert Anton Wilson to write a feature article, which he called “Timothy Leary and His Psychological H-Bomb.” A few months later, Leary invited me to his research headquarters in Millbrook, where I took my first acid trip. When I told my mother about LSD, she was quite concerned. “It could lead to marijuana,” she said. Mom was right.’

The consummately irreverent Krassner was always one of my counterculture heroes.

“Viagra can leave a trail of ruined lives and shattered hopes, says expert” Independent/UK

“With lateral thinking worthy of the great man himself, British scientists have hit upon a new way of explaining the intricacies of Einstein’s theory of relativity: dancing.” Guardian/UK

“The secret to heart attack chest pain may be on the tip of your tongue.

Although they may seem unlikely bedfellows, Penn State College of Medicine researchers found evidence to suggest that the same type of nerve receptors that register the burning sensation from hot peppers in the mouth may cause the sensation of chest pain from a heart attack.

‘Our study is the first to demonstrate that the ‘hot pepper’ receptor exists on the heart and may be responsible for triggering heart attack chest pain,’ said Hui-Lin Pan, M.D., Ph.D., professor of anesthesiology, Penn State College of Medicine. ‘Until now, the capsaicin, or ‘hot pepper’ receptor, was only known for sensing heat and pain from the skin. Our data suggest that the ‘hot pepper’ receptors could become a new target for treatment of some types of chronic chest pain, such as angina pectoris, that are resistant to other treatments.’ The study, titled ‘Cardiac vanilloid receptor 1-expressing afferent nerves and their role in the cardiogenic sympathetic reflex in rats,’ was published today (Sept. 1) in the Journal of Physiology, accompanied by an editorial article discussing the importance of the study.” Science Daily

“Four out of a group of five seriously sick Brazilian heart-failure patients no longer needed a heart transplant after being treated with their own stem cells, the doctor in charge of the research said Monday.

Such ‘regenerative medicine,’ in which stem cells extracted from patients’ own bone marrow are used to rebuild tissue, may one day become commonplace for patients with damaged or diseased hearts, some doctors believe.” Reuters

“A car that can park itself without the driver having to touch the steering wheel, said by maker Toyota Motor Corp. to be a world first, went on sale in Japan on Monday. Reuters

“Most people accept the idea that stress and depression chip away at the body’s natural ability to fight off disease. But many medical scientists have remained skeptical that the mind can exert such a direct influence over the immune system.

In recent years, however, evidence has accumulated that psychology can indeed affect biology. Studies have found, for example, that people who suffer from depression are at higher risk for heart disease and other illnesses. Other research has shown that wounds take longer to heal in women who care for patients with Alzheimer’s disease than in other women who are not similarly stressed. And people under stress have been found to be more susceptible to colds and flu, and to have more severe symptoms after they fall ill.

Now a new study adds another piece to the puzzle. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin are reporting today that the activation of brain regions associated with negative emotions appears to weaken people’s immune response to a flu vaccine.” NY Times

And avoiding negative emotion enhances physical wellbeing? On the surface of it, this may appear pretty self-evident, but negative emotions are a part of psychological health too; it is more a question of what one does with them, of course. Expressed in the right way, certain negative emotions — ummm, rage at the current regime in Washington comes to mind, for one — are quite healthy…

PostClassic, a weblog by Kyle Gann, self-described “composer (since I was 13), music critic (since I was 27), musicologist (since I was 32), and music professor (since I was 39)….”, joins a growing roster of ArtsJournal blogs. About PostClassic: “So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that questionable factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm. After all, classical music has died before, several times, and always manages to grow back…”

Many many thanks to acb for pointing me to this — I hesitate to call it a rant because that might sound like dismissing it for being insane — reflection by John Shirley on our collective mental health. Indeed, he leads off with a candid admission of his own history of mental health difficulties, segueing into a reflection on how easy it is for the ‘sane’ to shrug off the suffering of the mentally ill, to make fun of it, to romanticize it, certainly to lack the empathic, compassionate embrace of it to which he wants to get us with his suggestion that we are all closer to mental illness than we would like to think. Clinicians, of course, know this; that in electing to join the helping profession we must, to the extent that we are going to be helpful to others, encounter ourselves as similarly defective, ‘walking wounded’. But in this brief thoughtful meditation, non-clinician Shirley manages at least to touch upon most of the crucial issues — from neurotoxins and the gutting of social services for the mentally ill to the conditions of modernity such as alienated labor, political oppression, the erosion of social cohesion and community, the deterioration of privacy, information overload, and the devolution of meaning — with which I attempt to grapple daily. (Come to think about it, not surprising from a ‘cyberpunk’ writer…)

Awhile ago, I would have maintained that an essay of this sort is itself romanticizing and trivializing the mentally ill; that likening the suffering of the chronically psychotic or neuropsychiatrically damaged patients I treat to the suggested pervasive mental illness of our entire society is comparing apples and oranges. But we know alot more than we did even five years ago about the transduction of stressful experience into brain changes and we undestand that ‘reactive’ conditions such as depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress conditions, perhaps attention deficit problems, begin to look much less like isolated episodes and more like entrained and ingrained chronic conditions, little different from the bipolar or schizophrenic psychoses. So there may be more identity to the two categories than one would like to admit. And, too, there is the perspective of evolutionary psychology which elucidates how adaptive traits become pathological under conditions of modernity. Shirley highlights, for example, our evolutionary ill-preparedness for the number of interactions we must needs have in modern life, a point that has always struck me as profound. He ends with his truest, simplest point, suggesting that by truly taking care of the psychiatrically ill we would be taking care of ourselves… and vice versa.

Naomi Klein argues that

“(t)he spectre of terrorism – real and exaggerated – has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.” Guardian/UK

For those who are old enough to remember the Cold War, it is clear that the WoT® functions in precisely the same way, demonizing opponents with little rhyme or reason as a pretext for whatever the geopolitical aspiration of the moment was.

Klein is actually optimistic in a funny way:

“Many have argued that the War on Terror is the US government’s thinly veiled excuse for constructing a classic empire, in the model of Rome or Britain. Two years into the crusade, it’s clear this is a mistake: the Bush gang doesn’t have the stick-to-it-ness to successfully occupy one country, let alone a dozen. Bush and the gang do, however, have the hustle of good marketers, and they know how to contract out. What Bush has created in the WoT is less a ‘doctrine’ for world domination than an easy-to-assemble toolkit for any mini-empire looking to get rid of the opposition and expand its power.”

But the utility of the doctrine should not be judged by the ineptitude of its current practitioners any more than McCarthy’s downfall took the legs out from under the doctrinaire if more subtle anti-Communism that continued to dominate American foreign policy for four further decades and still seems like a gospel to the less sophisticated of the American masses. Klein’s argument in likening the WoT® to a marketing campaign resonates with my own practice of branding it as a trade name; it was clear from the outset that it was crying out for that little ®. True, our proxies of all political stripes can use the brand in the manner of a franchise to justify their own petty repressions (and Klein gives us plenty of persuasive examples), that is no more the ultimate significance of the WoT® brand than the profits of some small Mexican or Indonesian entrepreneur opening a Golden Arches franchise are the measure of corporate McDonald’s globalized reach (as Klein should know). A pandemic brand is no more than a particularly efficient tool of late-capitalism for psychic colonization and rape. The neo-con junta — inept or not, an unopposed superpower of unassailable military might unparalleled in world history — is branding an imperial reign, make no bones about it.

Several weeks ago, I mused about the time-traveller spam I’d been receiving. So, it seems, has a writer at Wired. Recall that the coordinates he gives for those wishing to meet with him to provide him with needed parts are in Woburn, Massachusetts, within several miles of me. The time traveller has been tracked down to that town, in fact. If the story is to be believed, he is a former commercial spammer against whom the Commmonwealth of Massachusetts in 2001 took its first ever antispam legal action and whom they are in fact still watching to monitor his compliance with his settlement agreement with the state. His time travel spam, rife with persecutory overtones of being under surveillance, began shortly thereafter.

Just now I’m glad my family and I drove instead of flying on our just-completed vacation travels.

Latest double-think from the airheads in Washington, a pretext for a giveaway to their friends in Detroit. They won’t enforce pollution controls on auto manufacturers because they don’t believe that the exhaust emissions fall under the strictures of the Clean Air Act. Seattle Times

Taliban Finds New Strength in Pakistan LA Times

and Al Qaeda Behind the Najaf Bombing: Report Nouvel Observateur [in French; translation here via Truthout]. Was Iraq War Worth It? Nearly half in CBS poll say no.

“The word lootocracy was originally coined to describe the corrupt cartels that have ruled and plundered countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and some of the former Soviet Republics. But with an amazingly small amount of national debate, George Bush is installing a more global and sophisticated version — one where those on top can do whatever they choose without the slightest constraints. ” — Paul Rogat Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time CommonDreams [via Adam] As Craig comments, “Finally, compassionate conservatism explained.”

“…Consumers — many of whom have complained for years about climbing ticket prices and Ticketmaster service charges — may be less eager for the next phase of Ticketmaster’s Internet evolution.

Late this year the company plans to begin auctioning the best seats to concerts through ticketmaster.com.

With no official price ceiling on such tickets, Ticketmaster will be able to compete with brokers and scalpers for the highest price a market will bear.” NY Times

“Marijuana went on sale Monday at Dutch pharmacies to help bring relief to thousands of patients suffering from cancer, AIDS or multiple sclerosis.

Around 7,000 patients will be eligible for prescription marijuana, sold in containers of .16 ounces at most pharmacies. Labeled ‘Cannabis’ and tested by the Ministry of Health, the drug will be covered by health insurance for the first time under a new law that went into effect in March.” AP

“You have to hand it to the Bush generation of neo-conservatives. They are nothing if not optimistic. Even in the rubble of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, they saw reason for hope.

The White House apparently believed that the atrocity would prove to be a tipping point that would persuade nations like India and Pakistan to send their divisions to help police Iraq, without no more of all that earlier talk about shared authority.

Colin Powell was dispatched to the UN once more to sell this dubious idea only to find that those nations that were reluctant to send their soldiers to a dangerous and volatile place to serve in a US-led occupation force before, still felt that way, only more strongly.

This stand has been portrayed by some in Washington as the typical manoeuvring of a morally bankrupt international community aimed at extracting political gain from a tragedy. Washington’s critics, according to this view of the world, will stop at nothing to clip America’s wings.

In truth, most UN members would happily put their troops under the command of an American general in the event of a justified war. No other military comes close in efficiency or technology, apart from residual concerns from the latest war that the friendly fire issue has clearly not been entirely solved.” Guardian/UK

“General Wesley Clark, the former Nato commander in Bosnia, and a probable presidential contender, has accused White House officials of trying to get him sacked as a CNN military analyst because they feared he would criticise the Iraq war.” Telegraph/UK

“It used to be that the pre-wedding ritual for men was the bachelor party, while the women’s equivalent was the bridal shower. Well, the times they have been a-changing for many years now, and women can have just as much silly, no-holds-barred fun as the men nowadays, according to a Penn State researcher.

Dr. Beth Montemurro, assistant professor of sociology at Penn State’s Abington Campus, has interviewed more than 50 women and personally attended many bachelorette parties in an attempt to determine what significance that bachelorette parties — especially those containing sexually charged themes — have for them.

In her study titled, ‘Sex Symbols: The Bachelorette Party as a Window to Change in Women’s Sexual Expression,’ published in a recent issue of the journal, Sexuality and Culture, Montemurro said the rise of bachelorette parties over the years signifies a shift in how women and their sexuality are viewed in society.” EurekAlert!

Do we need men?

The Y-chromosome – the ultimate symbol of machismo – is in a bad way. But…, apart from breeding, what real use is the male to the human race? Guardian/UK

“Commonly made claims about changes in family and other intimate relations are not supported by actual research, according to a new working paper sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council.

In a review of existing written works on the subject, Val Gillies, a senior research fellow at South Bank University, argues that there are two dominant accounts of present-day personal relations, each reflecting a particular ideological stance.

Today’s theorists tend to emphasise either family breakdown and moral decline, or transformation and democratisation. The more negative account of family change appeals to traditionalist, conservative interpretations, while liberals favour the more positive version.

A third perspective, claiming that there has been little substantial change in the way people relate to one another, is rarely heard, despite research evidence suggesting that individuals continue to place great importance on personal ties and obligations.” EurekAlert!

“‘Thousands of languages have come and gone, and we’ve studied that process for years,’ said Brigham Young University archaeologist Stephen D. Houston, the study’s Maya specialist. ‘But throughout history, maybe 100 writing systems have ever existed. We should know more about why they disappear.'” Washington Post

Increasingly, Americans Won’t and Don’t: “Labor Day in the United States should be one of the gastronomic high points of the year. By the time it comes around, most parts of the country are entering their fourth full month of frost-free weather, which means that there is an unparalleled bounty of fresh, local ingredients available. Yet, when it comes to bringing these ingredients together into a meal, be it on Labor day or any other day, Americans are increasingly saying ‘the less labor, the better’.” Utne Reader

“A top State Department expert on North Korea who advocated a policy of incentives as well as penalties to persuade the nation to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons has resigned, officials said today.” Wouldn’t you know it, the resignation points to a division within the US dysadministration over what approach to take to North Korea, and the conciliatory are being beaten back by the confrontational. The FmH reader who pointed me to the article commented, ‘Joe McCarthy cried “Who lost China?”, and successfully purged the government of anyone who knew anything about China; thus vastly increasing the chance of a nuclear confrontation. History now repeats itself in North Korea…’ NY Times [thanks,Adam]

WhereWare: “Lock on to location-based computing, the hottest thing in wireless, which offers new services to customers and new revenue streams to carriers, and could save lives in the process. The idea is to make cell phones, personal digital assistants, and even fashion accessories capable of tracking their owners’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. ” ’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. MIT Technology Review [via IP mailing list]

Troops get death and pay cuts; Bush gobbles barbecue and rakes in contributions: “Not since the days of Marie Antoinette, or at least Nancy Reagan, has there been such a disconnect between the ruling elite and what Marie and Nancy might call the unwashed masses. A potent symbol of this cynical detachment is provided by George W. Bush’s month-long vacation, during which his only forays among the unwashed masses have been to whack his little white balls around a golf course — and to host a ‘down-home’ barbecue to shake down rich donors for another run at the White House. The cover charge for barbecue with the Bushes? Each of the 350 ‘very special guests’ paid $50,000 to nibble on those Republican pig and cow carcasses.” Hartford Advocate

WhereWare: “Lock on to location-based computing, the hottest thing in wireless, which offers new services to customers and new revenue streams to carriers, and could save lives in the process. The idea is to make cell phones, personal digital assistants, and even fashion accessories capable of tracking their owners’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. ” ’ every movement—whether they’re outdoors, working on the 60th floor, or shopping in a basement arcade. MIT Technology Review [via IP mailing list]

I’ll be away from keyboard and Internet until Labor Day (Sept. 1 for you non-U.S. readers) weekend as my family and I head for the North Woods. Enjoy the remaining days of your summer, and please do come back in September. I will.

[Sun Aug 31: The above message was supposed to have been posted last Saturday with the aid of Blogger’s postdating feature. Because I was already away at that time, it never happened, because it turns out that postdated items do not get published until the next manual publish occurs, of which there were none until I noticed the problem today. Thank you to those concerned readers who, seeing no posts since the 22nd and no explanation, wrote to ask if everything was all right with me. It was, emphatically! — FmH]

“A senior US government official has laid out detailed plans for the timing and form of US government issued biometric passports.

Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary for Passport Services, presented his organisation’s plans to evolve to a new, more secure ‘intelligent document’ from today’s paper-based passports at the Smart Card Alliance’s Government Conference and Expo conference last week.

‘Our goal is to begin production by October 26, 2004,’ Moss announced.” The Register

This, from Cory Doctorow, sounds interesting and important enough to repost in its entirety. First, the part about his terrific-sounding experience at the retreat, which I envy and hope will result in some wonderful new ‘product’ from him; next, the plug for Schneier’s book, especially as Ashcroft debuts his dog-and-pony show defending the USA Patriot Act (to which, following the lead of some of its critics, I will stop referring in that offensive way and just call by its acronym UPA from now on) in truly Orwellian overtones:

“I’ve spent the past week at a writers’ retreat in an undisclosed location (I’m still here!). It’s been insanely productive. I’ve written a 21,000-word novella, rewritten two partial novels, worked on my latest collaboration with Charlie Stross, critiqued about 20 stories, read a friend’s book and critiqued it, and caught up on some reading (and I’ve still got three days left, and still to come: nonfiction book proposal, rewrite the new novella, and catch up on other projects and projectlets).

One of the books I’m delighted to have had the chance to read here is Bruce Schneier’s latest, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. I reviewed three or four drafts of this while Bruce was working on it, and I am completely delighted with how it turned out.

In Beyond Fear, Schneier has utterly demystified the idea of security with a text aimed squarely at nontechnical individuals. He takes his legendary skill at applying common sense and lucidity to information-security problems and applies it to all the bogeymen of the post-9/11 world, and asks the vital question: What are we getting in exchange for the liberties that the Ashcroftian authorities have taken away from us in the name of security?

This is possibly the most important question of this decade, and that makes Schenier’s book one of the most important texts of the decade. This should be required reading for every American, and the world would be a better place if anyone venturing an opinion on electronic voting, airline security, roving wiretaps, or any other modern horror absorbed this book’s lessons first.”

The Gender Genie: “Inspired by an article in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more about the algorithm at nature.com.”

I pasted some FmH passages of significant length into the algorithm; sometimes it gets my gender right but at times it tells me I “write like a girl.” The algorithm’s authors say it ought to be able to predict the gender of the author of a passage 80% of the time but Genie is candid enough to tell us that her cumulative accuracy is only 50.77% as of when I write this. [I don’t have to tell you that’s about as close to random as you can come in the real world…]

The algorithm depends on the difference between so-called ‘informational’ (categorizing) and ‘involved’ (personalizing) modes, essentially, which are thought of as quintessentially male and female, respectively (they are also thought of as quintessentially ‘nonfictional’ and ‘fictional’, which makes sense). It does a weighted count of what it considers “male keywords” (articles, “some”, numbers, and “it”) vs. “female keywords” (possessive pronouns and ” ‘s”, “for”, and “not” and “n’t”) and gives the passage a “male” or “female” score. Why would the online Gender Genie have break-even success when the original scientific paper gives the algorithm on which it is based an 80% success rate (when tried on over 500 English-language texts in a variety of genres)? Perhaps someone is messing with Genie’s mind (giving incorrect feedback) and/or the passages submitted so far are highly atypical. If it is being fed with largely web-based writing rather than text imported from meatspace, the material is probably overwhelmngly nonfiction or ‘informational’. Moreover perhaps even female writers on the web, being in general more technically and technologically adept, are more ‘informational’ than the norm. Having read more about the algorithm, I can now spot passages in my own writing it is more likely to think ‘girlish’. Try it out yourself.

“This makes Sobig.F the fastest growing virus ever, surpassing the infamous LoveBug, Klez and Kournikova viruses. All initial copies originated from the United States, where the virus is currently most prevalent. As Sobig.F continues its rapid spread today businesses are also advised to be on high-level alert. Sobig.F, first detected on 18th August, is the sixth variant issued in the Sobig virus series and appears to be the most sophisticated to date. Since the first Sobig virus was issued on January 9th 2003, MessageLabs has intercepted almost three million copies of Sobig variants.

‘Yesterday marked an unprecedented new level in virus propagation and demonstrated the growing ability of virus writers to disrupt business around the globe,’ said Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer at MessageLabs. ‘The Sobig virus writer’s use of an inbuilt expiry date indicates that he is committed to inventing new and improved versions. Each variant released so far has exceeded the previous one in growth and impact during the critical initial window of vulnerability.”

Sobig is a mass-emailing virus that can spoof the sender’s address, fooling the user into believing the email is from a legitimate source and then opening the email. The email often contains the following header: “Subject: Re:details” and the text “Please see the attached file for details”. The attachment names may include: your_document.pif, details.pif, your_details.pif, thank_you.pif, movie0045.pifm, document_Fall.pif, application.pif, docment_9446.pif.

Once the virus has infected your machine it attempts to connect to a website to download a backdoor Trojan, leaving your computer vulnerable to security breaches by hackers or other viruses. The current Sobig virus to email ratio is approximately 1 in 17 and the virus is spreading at such a rate it is expected to continue to stay at high-level status for the next few weeks. However, like past Sobig viruses, the Sobig.F virus has an expiry date and is set to deactivate on September 10th, which will effectively stop this variant from spreading further after that date. ” MessageLabs

I was aware of the news that the virus had an inborn expiration date and wondered about the significance of that. Now I know it has ominous implications. By now, I’m sure you have received emails with the virus. Symantec has a downloadable removal tool which scans your hard drive for traces of Sobig.F and expunges them.

She who must be obeyed: “the words are enough to send a shiver down the spine of many a married man.

Now museum curators have discovered that it was a Scots adventurer’s awe-struck account of a powerful American Indian ‘chieftainess’ that gave birth to the iconic image of a domineering woman.

Hardened 19th-century explorer Robert Campbell – the first westerner to explore the vast wilderness of Canada’s Yukon Territory – told how he owed his life to the woman when she furiously confronted members of her tribe as they prepared to shoot him and his companion, a man called McLeod.

Campbell’s friend, the writer Rider Haggard, was so impressed by the story he wrote the book She, which was made into a 1965 film starring Ursula Andress. Haggard’s description of his African queen as ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ became a byword for the wives of under-the-thumb husbands.

But Campbell was nothing but grateful after his encounter with the Tahltan Indian woman, whose name is not known, on the shores of Dease Lake in northern British Columbia while on a fur trading mission in the 1880s. ” Scotland on Sunday

Jessica Stern: “Yesterday’s bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad was the latest evidence that America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one.

Of course, we should be glad that the Iraq war was swifter than even its proponents had expected, and that a vicious tyrant was removed from power. But the aftermath has been another story. America has created — not through malevolence but through negligence — precisely the situation the Bush administration has described as a breeding ground for terrorists: a state unable to control its borders or provide for its citizens’ rudimentary needs.” NY Times op-ed

Try Better Bait. I’ve been working my way through Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips and Tools, by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest, and finding it very worthwhile. This article is in a way a précis of its more relevant strategies for improving your searches. NY Times [thanks to Richard Homonoff]

We ignored world opinion calling for a UN mandate for our invasion of Iraq. Now that we are bogged down and it is conspicuously clear how much it would cost (in lives and dollars) to ‘nation-build’, we are talking out of the other side of our mouths NY Times and trying to bulldoze UN members into joining the effort they have previously opposed. It is not getting much of a reception, especially because it is clear we are crassly capitalizing on the anguish and frustration over the bombing of the UN’s Baghdad compound to rally the troops, and, furthermore, we are of course insisting that the efforts remain under ‘coalition’ command.

“A mandate which will force local agencies that receive federal funds to register and track homeless people has been called too invasive by privacy and community activists.

In an attempt to grasp the scope of the United States’ homeless problem, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is requiring local government and nonprofit organizations receiving grants for homeless programs to keep detailed files on their clientele. Data to be tracked ranges from Social Security numbers to HIV statuses to mental health histories.” Wired News

“As part of the What The World Thinks of America programme, 11,000 people in the UK, France, Russia, Indonesia, South Korea, Jordan, Australia, Canada, Israel, Brazil and the US responded to a poll asking their views and opinions on America.

The respondents were asked about their general attitudes towards America and US President George Bush.

The poll also posed a range of other questions on America’s foreign policy, military power, cultural influences and economic might.

Click on the links to view a comprehensive series of graphs illustrating the findings of the poll.” BBC News Drill down through the graphs and indulge yourself. Readers here probably won’t find many surprises. The respondents in the US have an overblown sense of our value and desirability to the rest of the world. Disaffection with the US in the political, military, economic and cultural spheres cuts across the world, including Eurocentric, Muslim and non-Muslim developing countries. The depth of the world’s contempt for George Bush and concern over the destabilizing, dangerous influence of American military might are dramatic.

Christopher Robin and the Milnes: “On this day in 1920 Christopher Robin Milne was born, an only child to A. A. Milne. Christopher also wrote, his first two books, Enchanted Places and The Path Through the Trees, being memoirs of his growing up and out from under the shadow of the fictional Christopher Robin. The first of these, written after both parents had died, has partly the tone of setting-the-record-straight, partly that of settling-the-score. Each day of writing, Milne said, was ‘like a session on the analyst’s couch’ in an effort to look both his father and Christopher Robin in the eye.” Today in Literature

“A new study published in the August 11 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine demonstrates a possible link between unexplained chronic fatigue and sinusitis, two conditions previously not associated with each other. Also newly noted was a relationship between sinusitis and unexplained body pain. These findings offer new hope to patients lacking a diagnosis and treatment for fatigue and pain.” ScienceDaily.

This brings to mind the saga of perhaps the most famous act of malpractice in medical history, that of Freud’s young German physician friend, Wilhelm Fleiss, who had a theory linking nasal pathology and psychopathology a century ago. Fleiss almost killed a young patient named Emma Eckstein whom Freud had referred to him to attempt to treat her excessive masturbation through nasal surgery; he overlooked the removal of a meter of gauze packing from her nasal passages after the procedure, leading to suppuration and mysterious, massive, ongoing hemorrhage. Eckstein’s plight, it transpired, became a formative influence on the origins of psychoanalytic theory.

As Jeffrey Masson describes it in his blistering 1984 exposé The Assault on Truth, Freud blamed Eckstein rather than his friend Fleiss’ dereliction, attributing her continuing bleeding to a wish for attention and affection. Freud’s need to deny that Eckstein’s brush with death had a real cause, Masson and others argue, was a pivotal moment in his renunciation of the sexual seduction theory of his patients’ distress and the inception of the idea that their ‘memories’ of incest were ‘hysterical’ fantasies rather than credible reflections of real events.

And, finally, here is yet another loose association between the nose and the sexual organs, at least figuratively. Guardian-Observer/UK

Beethoven blast too much for homeless: “Stoke-on-Trent City Council in the English Midlands said that four days of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor had driven the car park’s six inhabitants from their ‘home’ but had prompted protests that it was being unsympathetic to their plight.” Sydney Morning Herald. But fans of ‘music therapy’, never fear: SA right-wingers ‘tortured by rap’: “A group of alleged white extremists facing treason charges in South Africa has complained about being forced to listen to “black” music while on remand in prison.” BBC News

How to Tell Friend from Faux space.com

“The dietary supplement creatine – known to improve athletic performance – can also boost memory and intelligence, researchers claim.

The supplement is favoured by some athletes

Creatine is a natural compound found in muscle tissue, and has been popular with athletes looking for ways to increase fitness.

However, experts say that it has a role in maintaining energy levels to the brain, and have the theory that taking more creatine might actually improve mental performance.” BBC

And: Not only intelligence pills but ‘intelligent pills’ The Age

“An ‘epidemic of Alzheimer’s’ over the next few decades could be far worse than previously thought, experts suggest… Their study, based on US Census data, suggested that by the middle of the 21st century, up to 16 million Americans will have Alzheimer’s.” BBC News

A man who killed his brother’s fiancée in a psychotic rage just hours after being released from an overnight stay at a psychiatric hospital for bizarre behavior successfully sued the hospital and the doctor who treated him there for not holding him involuntarily as the law permitted. He had successfully used the insanity defense to gain an acquittal at his murder trial; the judge ruled that the hospital and the doctor’s negligence had substantially contributed to the victim’s death. The man claimed damages because of how horrible the experience of being remanded to jail after his apprehension on the murder charge was. The Australian

Not knowing the details of the case, I don’t know how to assess the finding that the treaters were negligent in not reasonably forseeing or preventing the possibility of harm. But there should be no general principle inferred from this case that treaters are responsible for the harm committed by the psychiatric patients under there care. Negligence is a relatively narrowly defined circumstance the burden of proof for which is on the plaintiff rather than just assumed whenever a harm occurs. Psychiatric violence is usually not forseeable in the short run even if you know (as was probably not the case in this instance, because the article implies that the patient apparently was suffering from a transient acute psychotic episode rather than an exacerbation of a chronic condition) that the patient has a history of or a potential for violence in the abstract… unless you go in for preventive detention (although I realize some would argue that that is exactly what involuntary psychiatric hospitalization is…). I hope this case will not perpetuate the stereotype of the dangerous psychotic patient which is an important contributor to the villification and stigmatization of the psychiatrically ill in our society. Violence among psychiatrically ill individuals is much mreo foten of a more prosaic variety, arising from substance abuse or antisocial traits. The ostracism and scrutiny of the mentally ill as a whole destabilize them further and are an important source of their suffering.

Related? Here’s a disturbing story about the lengths to which the forced drug treatment of psychiatric patients can be taken, predicated on the fact that

China has 70 million bachelors unable to find wives. Men outnumber women as a result of a one-child policy which led to many fetuses of girls, traditionally discriminated against, being aborted. Yahoo!

Why Minds and Technologies Are Made to Merge by Andy Clark (book review) Metapsychology

“At a time when religious and conservative right-wing groups are attempting to dismiss homosexuality as ‘unnatural,’ a leading zoologist has said gay people could be seen as the ‘pinnacle of evolution.’

Speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Clive Bromhall said that humankind’s evolution has resulted in our present state of ‘infantilism,’ in which we break the primate mold by being playful, creative and childlike right into adulthood.”

(…)

“Homosexuals excel as artists, thespians and other playful, mimetic professions. Being playful is at the heart of being human. It’s something that should be celebrated. You could say that homosexuals are at the pinnacle of human evolution.” gay.com news

“The twentieth century produced a bounty of academic racists who openly declared the biological inferiority of black people. Many of them were generously funded by Wickliffe Draper’s Pioneer Fund.” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Herrnstein and Jensen’s genetically-based IQ arguments, about which I wrote last week, are mentioned here, although they are by no means the winners.

Bill Maher: “Now that MTV has made pimping a cool lifestyle, is it surprising that suburban teenagers are turning tricks for mall cash?” Salon

“Grief among Western officials here was intense today and unease widespread. The suicide bombing at the United Nations headquarters… resonated far beyond the palm-lined Baghdad highway where it sits.

For Iraqis, it suggested that their country might already be trapped in a cycle of bloodshed more widespread and cruel than they thought possible after the American invasion.

Many feel helpless. They are not sure whom to blame, pointing the finger alternately at Islamic militant groups and Iraq’s own neighbors, all of whom they believe might have an interest in wrecking efforts to rebuild the country under American guidance.

But they also condemned the Americans, seeing the attack as another sign of the poor job the occupation forces are doing providing security in a country they now nominally control.” NY Times

Diplomat ‘Will Be Acutely Missed’, Says UN’s Annan; he has been considered a possible successor to Annan as Secretary General.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, the senior U.N. diplomat who was killed in today’s truck bombing in Baghdad, was one of the world’s most experienced nation-builders, a major star at the United Nations who ran Kosovo after U.S. air power drove Serbs from the ethnic Albanian enclave in 1999, and delivered East Timor to independence last year.

The Brazilian diplomat, 55, who began his U.N. career as an obscure refugee official, was tapped by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in late May to help Iraq’s transition to self rule. He was due to step down Aug. 27 and return to his regular job in Geneva as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Washington Post

But, with all due respect for his stature, let us remember that he was only one of twenty UN relief workers to die in this tragedy, for which the Bush junta’s arrogance and ineptitude should be held responsible. And that is not to suggest that these deaths are more meaningful than the countless Iraqi civilian casualties of the US invasion, whose numbers US authorities have not even found it important to tally.

News analysis —Chaos as an Anti-American Strategy:

The bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad today provided grisly evidence of a new strategy by anti-American forces to depict the United States as unable to guarantee public order, as well as to frighten away relief organizations rebuilding Iraq.

Military officers and experts on terrorism said the bombing fit a pattern of recent strikes on water and oil pipelines and the Jordanian Embassy, although they emphasized that it was too early to uncover any connections among the attacks.

In recent weeks terrorists have conducted almost daily attacks on the American military. But after the bombing today there is a growing belief that anti-American fighters, whatever their origin and inspiration, have adopted a coherent strategy not only to kill members of allied forces when possible, but also to spread fear by destroying public offices and utilities.

President Bush was defiant today. He said: “Every sign of progress in Iraq adds to the desperation of the terrorists and the remnants of Saddam’s brutal regime. The civilized world will not be intimidated, and these killers will not determine the future of Iraq.” NY Times

There is no such thing as creating the impression of spreading chaos. The 800-lb. gorilla in the room is that the US cannot guarantee public order and is precipitating actual chaos, of course. But the finger will be pointed everywhere but at our own execrable actions.

“It’s brown-black, sticky, comes in a small jar and smells rancid to the untrained nose. More than the royal family (other countries have them), or tea (there are other cultures based around that), Marmite is the quintessential British thing.” Flak Magazine

“The Fox News Network is suing Al Franken, the political satirist, for using the phrase ‘fair and balanced’ in the title of his new book. In claiming trademark violation, Fox sets a noble example for standing firm against whatever.

Unreliable sources report that the Fox suit has inspired Paul Newman, the actor, to file a similar suit in federal court against the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commonly called HUD. Mr. Newman claims piracy of personality and copycat infringement.

In the 1963 film ‘HUD,’ for which Mr. Newman was nominated for an Academy Award, the ad campaign was based on the slogan, ‘Paul Newman is HUD.’ Mr. Newman claims that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, called HUD, is a fair and balanced institution and that some of its decency and respectability has unfairly rubbed off on his movie character, diluting the rotten, self-important, free-trade, corrupt conservative image that Mr. Newman worked so hard to project in the film. His suit claims that this ‘innocence by association’ has hurt his feelings plus residuals.

A coalition of the willing — i.e., the Bratwurst Asphalt Company and the Ypsilanti Hot Dog and Bean Shop — has been pushed forward and is prepared to label its products “fair and balanced,” knowing that Fox News will sue and that its newscasters will be so tied up with subpoenas they will only be able to broadcast from the courtroom, where they will be seen tearing their hair and whining, looking anything but fair and balanced, which would certainly be jolly good sport all around.” NY Times op-ed [via everyone in the world who is linking to this]

Eternal damnation for those you choose.

“Giving subsidies to farmers was a brilliant idea that transformed the food shortages after the second world war into a surplus. But it has grown into an institutionalised nightmare preventing developing countries from fulfilling their potential in one of the few areas where they enjoy a natural advantage – agriculture. Europe and the US are the main culprits. It is economic and social madness for Europe to be growing, for instance, subsidised sugar beet when its average cost of production is more than double that of efficient exporters such as Brazil and Zambia. It is only possible thanks to ludicrous subsidies, including protective tariffs of up to 140%…

There is only one way to deal with this. Make it simple and effective. Abolish all agricultural subsidies so that every proposed reform doesn’t generate new escape routes that negate its primary purpose. To this end, the Guardian is starting a new website today, aimed at kicking into oblivion all agricultural subsidies (http://kickaas.typepad.com). This is one of those rare topics that unites right and left. It is also one of the few remaining free lunches in economics from which practically everyone gains. It would galvanise developing countries’ agriculture while freeing more than $300bn currently being spent by governments – over $200 per capita – every year on subsidies for other purposes. There will inevitably be transitional problems for some western farmers but nothing like the structural change other industries have experienced. And in the long run it will be of benefit to them, too. They will be able to grow crops they are good at rather than those attracting subsidies. All that the developing countries are seeking is a level playing field on which to compete. Is that too much to ask?” Guardian/UK

For his Ph.D. thesis project on weblog writing style, Scott Nowson, a PhD student in Informatics at The University of Edinburgh, is soliciting a month’s worth of blog entries from native-English speaking authors of personal blogs. He has a page on studying blogs and maintains a weblog himself detailing the progress of the project.

[Monday through Friday, Salon will excerpt Joe Conason’s new book, ‘Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth,’ to be published this week by Thomas Dunne Books.] “In the introduction to his new book, Joe Conason explains how the right-wing propaganda machine demonizes liberals and distorts the common-sense politics of America.” Salon

John McWhorter: “Violence, misogyny and lawlessness are nothing to sing about.” City Journal Not a very deep article, and not a very new message even from an African American intellectual (an old-fashioned one who continues to refer to his subjects as “black”). Who is going to read this message? Probably not the artists themselves; more likely only academic apologists for hip hop:

Anyone who sees such behavior as a path to a better future—anyone, like Professor Dyson, who insists that hip-hop is an urgent “critique of a society that produces the need for the thug persona”—should step back and ask himself just where, exactly, the civil rights–era blacks might have gone wrong in lacking a hip-hop revolution. They created the world of equality, striving, and success I live and thrive in.

“Festive and frightening: In history, nocturnal urban darkness was the norm.” National Post