Pentagon Perverts Pharma with New Weapons: Liability and Public Image in the Pentagon’s Drug Weapons Research. “The conventional view is that pharmaceutical research develops new ways to treat disease and reduce human suffering; but the Pentagon disagrees. Military weapons developers see the pharmaceutical industry as central to a new generation of anti-personnel weapons. Although it denied such research as recently as the aftermath of the October theater tragedy in Moscow, a Pentagon program has recently released more information that confirms that it wants to make pharmaceutical weapons. And on February 5th, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went a big step further. Rumsfeld, himself a former pharmaceutical industry CEO, announced that the US is making plans for the use of such incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq.” Sunshine Project
Exposing Bush and His Techniques of Deceit:
How Bush lies and what to do when a President lies you into a war. mediawatch.co.nz
Unspeakable Conversations:
Harriet McBryde Johnson meets influential philosopher Peter Singer.
He is the man who wants me dead. No, that’s not at all fair. He wants to legalize the killing of certain babies who might come to be like me if allowed to live. He also says he believes that it should be lawful under some circumstances to kill, at any age, individuals with cognitive impairments so severe that he doesn’t consider them ”persons.” What does it take to be a person? Awareness of your own existence in time. The capacity to harbor preferences as to the future, including the preference for continuing to live.
At this stage of my life, he says, I am a person. However, as an infant, I wasn’t. I, like all humans, was born without self-awareness. And eventually, assuming my brain finally gets so fried that I fall into that wonderland where self and other and present and past and future blur into one boundless, formless all or nothing, then I’ll lose my personhood and therefore my right to life. Then, he says, my family and doctors might put me out of my misery, or out of my bliss or oblivion, and no one count it murder.
I have agreed to two speaking engagements. In the morning, I talk to 150 undergraduates on selective infanticide. In the evening, it is a convivial discussion, over dinner, of assisted suicide. I am the token cripple with an opposing view. NY Times
Small World Competition Gallery
“gives you a glimpse into a world that most have never seen. It is a window into a universe that can only be seen through the lens of a microscope.
For the past 28 years, Nikon has sponsored the Small World Competition, the world’s foremost forum for recognizing excellence in photomicrography. Listed below are links to image galleries featuring photomicrographs from the winners of previous contests.” [via MetaFilter]
Salon warns it may not survive beyond February:
Online magazine publisher Salon Media Group Inc. on Friday warned that it may not survive beyond this month if it can’t raise more money to pay its rent and other bills.
The San Francisco-based company painted a grim financial picture in a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Things are so bad, Salon said, it stopped paying rent for its San Francisco headquarters in December, prompting the landlord to issue a Jan. 29 demand for a $200,000 payment.
To raise money, the company said it may sell its rights to $5.6 million worth of advertising on a Cablevision Systems Corp. subsidiary for as little as $1 million. Miami Herald
The Decline and Fall (cont’d.): As Man Lay Dying, Witnesses Turned Away
D.C. police released a startling surveillance tape yesterday that shows a daylight killing at a Northeast Washington gas station and witnesses doing nothing to report the crime or tend to the victim as he lay bleeding on the concrete. The videotape, from the Hess station in the 500 block of Florida Avenue, shows in gruesome detail the Jan. 31 slaying of Allen E. Price, 43, of the 2100 block of Fourth Street NW. Police said they were shocked by the apathy of those who were there, including one man who continued pumping kerosene after looking briefly at Price’s body. Washington Post
Counterpose this to the same days’ turnout of millions for peace. [Growing up, I lived in the Queens, NY neighborhood which, similarly, turned its deaf ears in 1964 to the murder of Kitty Genovese in the streets below its windows. It is useful to point out that, while I detect in the coverage of the current episode an innuendo that such callous disregard is associated with the lower class minority locale, the Genovese murder took place in a white-collar white neighborhood and the disregard was laid down to middle class complacency. Plus ca change… ]
Pentagon Perverts Pharma with New Weapons: Liability and Public Image in the Pentagon’s Drug Weapons Research. “The conventional view is that pharmaceutical research develops new ways to treat disease and reduce human suffering; but the Pentagon disagrees. Military weapons developers see the pharmaceutical industry as central to a new generation of anti-personnel weapons. Although it denied such research as recently as the aftermath of the October theater tragedy in Moscow, a Pentagon program has recently released more information that confirms that it wants to make pharmaceutical weapons. And on February 5th, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went a big step further. Rumsfeld, himself a former pharmaceutical industry CEO, announced that the US is making plans for the use of such incapacitating biochemical weapons in an invasion of Iraq.” Sunshine Project
Google as Big Brother; The top ten Google privacy problems, e.g.:
6. Google’s toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google’s free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf. Yes, it reads your cookie too, and sends along the last search terms you used in the toolbar. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that’s only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google’s toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you phone home. Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you’d like an updated version. But not Google.
phil ringnalda:
“I need to chew a bit more on Distribution of Choice and Ecosystem of Networks …but it feels to me like there’s something useful in Ross’ discussion of “the strength of 12”, the average number of people with whom you can have a strong relationship (or, that you are willing to be alerted by IM of their every weblog post), and “the magic number 150”, the number of people with whom you can manage a social relationship (or, the number of RSS feeds that you can keep up with).
I’ve been wondering for quite a while now how to rethink how I do a blogroll, and what feels best to me sounds a lot like that: a fairly short list of my tribe, people whose every word I read as soon as I know it’s published, and I’ll assume you’ve read too, and then a longer (much much longer, probably) but less prominent list of “barbarians with whom we can sometimes trade,” people whose feed I read, or whose page I visit fairly regularly, and whom I need to post about more often, because I know damn well you aren’t clicking on them in my blogroll…”
My story idea that no editor has bought,
writes Jim Romenesko: “Have a columnist hang out at divorce court on Valentine’s Day.” The Obscure Store
The Smell of War:
From noted Israeli pacifist and ‘Peace Now!’ leader Uri Avnery: “No wonder that Germany and France oppose the war. It is directed against them…” [from Hanan Levin]
Millions Join World Protests Against Iraq War: ![//us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20030215/amdf209876.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/nm/20030215/amdf209876.jpg "Millions Join World Protests Against Iraq War")
In what Alexander Cockburn referred to as “the largest outcry in history”, “More than six million demonstrators turned out across the world on Saturday in a wave of protest supporting international leaders in urging the United States not to rush into a war against Iraq.
From Canberra to Cape Town, from Karachi to Chicago, people from all walks of life took to the streets to pillory President Bush as a bloodthirsty warmonger in the biggest demonstration of ‘people power’ since the Vietnam War.” Yahoo! News
Related:
“There’s a curious group of Americans demonstrating their opposition to a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
They don’t fit the stereotypes of the 20-something who shuns a privileged home for piercings and tattoos, or the Birkenstock-wearing vegan who hangs out with anti-globalization activists and environmentalists.
Whether they are pacifists or former military commanders, poets or high-powered executives, Psychologists for Social Responsibility or Mothers Acting Up, today’s anti-war movement appears to run through mainstream America.” Sign On San Diego
And — lo and behold — CNN covers the day of anti-war protest in detail.
Waiting for the bombs:
Tense? On alert? Imagine how you would be feeling if you were living in Baghdad. Salon
Kissing the ‘right’ way begins in the womb: “Two thirds of us instinctively tilt our heads to the right when we kiss, reveals a new study timed to coincide with Valentine’s Day. The 2:1 ratio matches our preference for using the right foot, eye and ear. The bias probably has its origins in our tendency to turn our heads to the right in the womb and for up to six months after birth, says the study’s author, Onur Güntürkün.” New Scientist
Plasma breach blamed for shuttle’s destruction:
Investigators now believe super-hot ionised air leaked in through a puncture in the shuttle, melting it from the inside.” New Scientist
R.I.P. Dolly
“Dolly’s birth six-and-a-half years’ ago caused a sensation around the world. But as many sheep live to twice this age, her death will refuel the intense debate over the health and life expectancy of cloned animals.
The type of lung disease Dolly developed is most common in older sheep. And in January 2002, it was revealed that Dolly had developed arthritis prematurely…” New Scientist
U.S. Backs New System for Net, Phone Numbering —
“The U.S. government is supporting a move to a new standard designed to create a single point of contact for telephone and Internet communications. The new electronic numbering system, also known as ENUM, would give consumers a single number for all their telephone numbers, e-mail and instant messaging addresses, fax numbers and mobile phone numbers. ENUM would give each consumer what is being called a “single identifier.” But before the system goes into effect, there will be a review by domestic and global communications security experts on the issues related to consumer data protection.” Internet News
Networks plan war coverage:
“It’s going to be up-close and personal. As the possibility grows that the United States will take action against Iraq, network news divisions are negotiating with the Department of Defense over how many ”embeds” – journalists who will travel with troops – they can have filing stories from the front.” Boston Globe
Washington Advises Against Sealing Doors and Windows:
“The Bush administration tried to calm a jittery public after a week of heightened terrorism warnings.” NY Times
What Symantec Knew But Didn’t Say:
“Security firm Symantec withheld information about at least one big cyberthreat for hours after spotting it, possibly harming millions of Internet users.
Symantec claims to have identified the Slammer worm that ravaged the Internet during the last weekend of January hours before anyone else did. Symantec then shared the information only with select customers, leaving the rest of the global community to get slapped around by Slammer.
In a Feb. 12 press release about its DeepSight Threat Management System, Symantec boasts that the company “discovered the Slammer worm hours before it began rapidly propagating.” Wired News [via Walker]
U.S. finalizing its plans for postwar Iraq:
President George W. Bush’s national security team is assembling final plans for administering and democratizing Iraq after the expected ouster of Saddam Hussein, including a heavy American military presence in the country, military trials of the most senior Iraqi leaders and quick takeover of the nation’s oil fields to pay for reconstruction.
(…) While many elements remain highly classified and some are still being debated, as Bush’s team attempts to allay concerns that the United States seeks to be a colonial power in Iraq, the broad outlines show the complexity of the months ahead and some of the difficulties that would follow even a swift and successful attack.
.
Among the main features are the following… [more] International Herald Tribune
Notably absent from the planning are any representatives of the Iraqi people themselves. It is likely that the post-Saddam Iraqi people, not to mention the rest of the Arab world, will begin to see the U.S. as conquerors rather than liberators. Evidence is that the appropriation of the oilfields to “protect” them will end up a permanent boon to U.S. petrochemical industry cronies of the dysadministration more than anyone else, of course.
“We’ve established a clear link…”:
![[Image 'Reasonable_Link8.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/world.std.com/home/dacha/WWW/emg/public_html/Reasonable_Link8.jpg "We've finally established a clear link")
"The barbarity of exacting mindless vengeance…":
US court orders treatment to ensure killer is sane enough to be executed:
“A US court of appeal has ruled that a death row prisoner be forcibly treated for psychosis which would make him sane enough to be executed.
A series of court rulings has presented convicted murderer Charles Singleton, his lawyers and prison doctors with an agonising choice.
Should he take the medication voluntarily and be condemned to death or refuse them and be condemned to a life of psychosis? Under the US constitution it is illegal to execute an insane person.
In an extraordinary and sharply divided judgment, the court of appeals in St. Louis has ruled that Singleton should be forced to take medication which will make him fit for execution.(…) Singleton, who stabbed a shopworker to death in 1979, believes his prison cell is possessed by demons, that a prison doctor implanted a device in his ear and that he is both God and the supreme court.” Guardian UK
‘Barbarity’ is right; this is truly a monstrous travesty of a decision. This Kafkaesque ruling insists that the court did not have to consider the entirety of consequences of forcing the patient to be medicated and that, on balance, the medications would benefit him; that “eligibility for execution is the only unwanted consequence of the medication”. (In actuality, one of the hallmarks of competent decision-making is a grasp of the many layers of the context in which a decision is being made, so that the potential consequences can be weighed in their entirety. You will find this principle in any of the textbooks about competency assesment.) In most states, one can only be forced to take antipsychotic medication against one’s will if incompetent to make the decision for oneself, whereas Singleton’s reasoning seems to indicate to me the essence of competent dcision-making!
Furthermore, the standard a court is supposed to use if they take over discretion from an incompetent person is that of so-called “substituted judgment” — substitute decision makers are charged to base decisions not on what they want for the individual but their best surmise of what the person themselves would choose were they competent to make their decision. By this standard, it would appear to be an open-and-shut case that the substituted judgment would be to refuse medications. In my opinion as a psychiatrist, any physician acting in good conscience ought to refuse to cooperate with this ruling. In a just world no one would treat Singleton’s psychosis under these circumstances. Unfortunately, we do not appear to live in that world any more than the one in which no physician would be the agent of the state in administering lethal injections to the condemned. Let us hope Singleton pursues this to the Supreme Court, not that one can expect much from the current Court…
Poems Not Fit:
![//www.nion.us/IMAGES/Postcard.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/www.nion.us/IMAGES/Postcard.jpg "Poems Not Fit for the White House")
Sorry;
FmH’s template was temporarily messed up again and many of you found the content hopelessly jumbled. Thanks to all who wrote to alert me. As is sometimes the case, Blogger didn’t let me save any of my template edits so I couldn’t correct it all day. Finally fixed now; please let me know if you are seeing any further formatting problems. If so, please tell me your browser and OS. Also, can someone who reads FmH in an RSS feed tell me if that is working for you, please; if not, what XML reader do you use under what OS?
Release Me:
Mozilla 1.3 beta is out.
China joins calls for expanded Iraq inspections,
NATO divided: “Washington’s effort to build a coalition for war against Iraq hit more resistance Tuesday from NATO and beyond, with allies balking and China adding its voice to calls for bolstered U.N. arms inspections.
The division in the alliance – triggered by France, Germany and Belgium blocking U.S. plans to defend Turkey against a possible new Gulf war – was one of NATO’s worst crises in its 53-year history, even though the 15 other alliance members support the United States.” Nando Times More and more likely the U.S. is going to go rogue, with some toadie states trailing along, and defy the opinion of the world community imminently for the greater glory of Dubya.
The Artist Who Sent Himself Up —
“An unemployed actor posted himself to the Tate Britain gallery in a wooden box.
Dan Shelton, 23, … said that the idea to post himself came from the technique used by inventors, who sealed their plans in a postmarked envelope to prove when they came up with their concept. He had turned himself into living art to explore the way that artists are seen as objects, he added.” Times of London
Vatican Gives Two Thumbs Up to Potter.
“The good vs. evil plot lines of the best-selling books are imbued with Christian morals, the Rev. Don Peter Fleetwood told a Vatican news conference Monday.” Yahoo! News
Dispatch from Sundance:
Death dance for the indie? “Gone are the days of Jim Jarmusch, when the term ‘independent film’ really meant something. Now it’s a label waiting for a vision.” LA Times
What did the Bloomsbury Group ever do for us?
” Arty snobs or creative visionaries? Monied idlers or radical Bohemians? As The Hours approaches, (a) fight over the legacy of the Woolf Pack…” Idependent UK
Trading spaces: There’s a quiet curatorial revolution going on at the Museum of Fine Arts in my city of Boston:
Rogers’ rallying cry was “One Museum,” where curators would work together to display artworks in different media and incorporate work from other cultures and historical periods that served as influences. Paintings, sculpture and decorative arts would be displayed together so that objects could “speak” to each other.
Now Rogers’ revolution is starting to evolve in the galleries.
With the groundbreaking for the new East Wing expected in about a year, curators have been quietly reconfiguring spaces that house the permanent collection to experiment with these ideas. Boston Herald
Monuments and Memories:
What History Can Teach the Architects at Ground Zero: ‘ “The very notion of a modern monument is a contradiction in terms: if it is a monument, it cannot be modern, and if it is modern, it cannot be a monument.” The death of the monument has been proclaimed many times…’ [more] The New Republic
True Grits:
“…(S)cholars increasingly dispute the idea that mass production threatens the existence of particular cultural identities, either abroad or at home. After all, regional cuisines are displaying an unexpected vitality in this age of chain restaurants and global brand-names. Why? Many people, it seems, are content to preserve their local cultures through food that is as processed and mass-produced as a Happy Meal.” Boston Globe
A reader writes:
“Your quote from ‘Song of Myself’ yesterday reminded me of one of my
favorite older web pages – the favorite poems project… (A) Massachusetts construction worker talks about the poem and recites
portions – including the portion you quoted – in his video. It’s really
a wonderful piece. The guy is great and clearly loves the poem. He
recites it while leaning against his backhoe. A little gem, I’ve always
thought.” [thanks]
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you ‘Nobody’ Too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise, you know!How dreary to be Somebody!
How public like a Frog
To tell one’s name the livelong June
To an admiring Bog!— Emily Dickinson
(dedicated to George and Laura Bush as one in a continuing series
honoring ‘banned’ poets of Feb. 12th)
from Epitaph On A Tyrant – W.H. Auden:
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.(thanks Adam; would George and Laura have liked Auden?)
What Is He Thinking?
“Is the Bush budget all about slashing Social Security and Medicare? Yes, says Kent Conrad and ‘it is nuts, stone-cold nuts’.” MSNBC [thanks to Adam]
Errata
A reader asked that I:
get down to it bobbers
And this I did not do.
Another requested:
the body of an american
But Dos Passos or MacGowan, I knew not which, and so I merely sat and mulled my whiskey straight.
And another would very much like please some:
tahitian vanilla…..
But who placed this order I do not know, although I suspect Clarence King.
Yet another informs me:
I spoke to a member of the loyal Naderite opposition in Boulder, and she told me after Allard’s win she’s focusing on her wedding plans, which involve avoiding all traditions of the “wedding-industrial complex.”
And I could have suggested she register at Cut Loose and yet the draw came tardily upon my hand.
Josh Lukin testifies:
I thought of your entry on memorable and moving last lines the other day as I read “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories” by Etgar Keret, who Justine Larbalestier thinks is the Kelly Link of Tel Aviv: “I tried to imagine my mother’s uterus in the middle of a green, dew-covered field, floating in an ocean full of dolphins and tuna.” “Or else, if the broad in the square wouldn’t have had a boyfrined in the army and she’d given Tiran her phone number and we’d called Rabin Shalom, then he would have been run over anyway, but at least nobody would have got clobbered.” A whole book chock full of heartbreaking final lines.
Still, several days hence I have not read Etgar Keret’s prose collection nor even his comic book.
And when a final reader tells me of one who
was trying to remember the name of wealthbondage.com, and came up with “The Cruising Politician.”
I can only wonder at the undeserved bounty of my days and on my head.
� Ray Davis, Bellona Times
Our Galaxy’s Next Supernova?
![//www.sciam.com/media/inline/000B87BC-F8F3-1E3A-82FC809EC5880000_1.jpg' cannot be displayed]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciam.com/media/inline/000B87BC-F8F3-1E3A-82FC809EC5880000_1.jpg "Rho Cassiopeiae")
“Astronomers have identified the best candidate yet for our galaxy’s next supernova explosion, according to a new report. Findings published in the February 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal suggest that Rho Cassiopeiae, located 10,000 light-years away from earth, is most likely to run out of fuel and meet a violent fate in the near future.” Scientific American
Get Ahead in Advertising:
“More universal than television, livelier than billboards — London marketing whiz kids have hit upon a new advertising medium: the human forehead.
In a national British campaign to be rolled out in coming weeks, marketing agency Cunning Stunts said on Friday it was about to start renting advertising space on the foreheads of university students.” Reuters
Beardies say clean shaven men have more stress —
The Beard Liberation Front was reacting to a Bristol University study claiming that men who do not shave regularly have a 70% increase in chances of having a stroke. Ananova
From Song of Myself — Walt Whitman
LII
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
of my gab and my loitering.I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.(for George and Laura Bush as one in a continuing series honoring ‘banned’ poets of Feb. 12th)
Science And Consciousness Review —
Hosted at the Pomona University’s Dept. of Psychology. Interesting articles in the current incarnation of the web page include:
- Why is consciousness lost in generalized seizures?
- Changing or escaping the self: How do we react when seeing ourselves from the outside?
- Atoms of thought – The microstate hypothesis of conscious states
- Are we ever unconscious? Do we dream at all stages of sleep?
- Freely available book in neuropsychology
Creationists’ evolving argument:
Speaking of the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness (a loose association to the item above), here’s Ellen Goodman’s Boston Globe op-ed piece on the Michael Dini case. Am I the last one to hear about this Texas Tech biology professor — as an aside, apparently a devout Catholic — who is being sued and apparently made a cause celebre by the Ashcroft Justice Dept. for religious discrimination by someone he wouldn’t recommend for medical school admission because the student would not ‘ ”truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer” to the question: ”How do you think the human species originated?” ‘ ? Goodman, characterizing this as “the sort of frivolous lawsuit you thought conservatives opposed, but never mind”, notes that
“conservative lawyers are now agile and nervy enough to hijack liberal arguments for their own causes. Kelly Shackleford, the chief counsel, actually compared Dini’s attitude toward a creationist with that of a racist. What if Dini refused to write letters of recommendation to African-Americans? Shackleford asked. ”I can’t imagine the university would say, well, that’s a personal decision of one of our professors and we’re not going to interfere. Discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion is prohibited.”
Needless – or maybe not needless – to say, Dini’s refusal to recommend a creationist for a graduate degree in medicine or science is not like refusing to recommend an African-American. It’s like refusing to recognize someone who doesn’t believe in gravity for a PhD program in physics. But creationists who believe that the origin of species is an open-and-shut book – and the book is the Bible – now accuse evolutionists of being narrow-minded.”
Of course it is specious to make this an issue of intellectual freedom, as Dini’s detractors do. As Goodman concludes with acumen, this is symptomatic of the creationists’ and the dysadministration’s disingenuousness or cognitive difficulty in distniguishing belief from fact:
“If he is convicted of ‘discriminating’ against religion, surely every student can demand that a professor equate beliefs and facts. Next stop, astrology for astronomers? Feng Shui for physicists? Anyone want a recommendation? How about a lawyer instead?”
But there’s even more at stake. Writing references — of which I do alot — trades in the reputation and integrity of the reference-writer. It is a privilege, not a right, to get a good reference. If you don’t know me well enough to know what kind of reference you’re going to get from me, you probably shouldn’t ask me for a reference, because I don’t know you well enough to write a credible one. And, certainly, if you know you disagree with me on a criterion I have for judging your qualifications, I’m the last one you should go to for a recommendation unless you’re deliberately trying to compromise me because of our disagreement. We don’t yet live in a country where there is some ideological means test to qualify for a faculty position.
A message from your friendly Liberal Arts Mafia:
Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality:
A persistent theme among people writing about the social aspects of weblogging is to note (and usually lament) the rise of an A-list, a small set of webloggers who account for a majority of the traffic in the weblog world. This complaint follows a common pattern we’ve seen with MUDs, BBSes, and online communities like Echo and the WELL. A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on.
Prior to recent theoretical work on social networks, the usual explanations invoked individual behaviors: some members of the community had sold out, the spirit of the early days was being diluted by the newcomers, et cetera. We now know that these explanations are wrong, or at least beside the point. What matters is this: Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality.
In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.
Expressing Anger May Protect Against Stroke And Heart Disease.
“Men who outwardly express anger at least some of the time may be doing their health a favor: A new study suggests that occasional anger expression is associated with decreased risk of stroke and coronary heart disease.
Men with moderate levels of anger expression had nearly half the risk of nonfatal heart attacks and a significant reduction in the risk of stroke compared to men with low levels of anger expression. In the case of stroke, the researchers found that the risk decreased in proportion to increasing levels of anger expression.” ScienceDaily Good thing there’s so much to be angry about. Thank you George, for one…
Minims (as contrasted with maxims). Giornale Nuovo
Coyle & Sharpe:
This tribute site by Jim Sharpe’s daughter Jennifer Sharpe (of sharpeworld fame) is getting blinked alot. I wasn’t familiar with this hilarious and irreverent duo who, according to the site, “roved the streets of San Francisco in the sixties looking to ‘terrorize’ people in the interest of humor. Their surreal encounters were captured on tape then broadcast on their nightly radio show, ‘On the Loose’ .”
On San Francisco’s Market Street last week, two somber-faced public-opinion ‘pollsters’ approached a young man, thrust a microphone in his face, and after a few minutes of earnest conversation asked: ‘Would you be interested in helping future generations to fly?’ When the young man said ‘yes,’ the pollsters asked: ‘Well, then, would you let us graft a pair of chicken wings on your forehead?’
BTW, as Jennifer suggests at her site:
embarrassed to be an american right now?
call the white house and tell them:
comment line: 202-456-1111
fax line: 202-456-2461
Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@ —
An interview with the author at 80:
Q: My feeling from talking to readers and friends is that many people are beginning to despair. Do you think that we�ve lost reason to hope?
Vonnegut: I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d�etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka �Christians,� and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or �PPs.�
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete�s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! In These Times
"I Knew Adlai Stevenson and You’re No Adlai Stevenson":
Different Man, Different Moment: ‘ Pundits and officials in Washington have dubbed Secretary of State Colin Powell’s attempt to make a case for war against Iraq in the United Nations Security Council an “Adlai Stevenson moment.”
I couldn’t disagree more. My father was Adlai Stevenson, who in 1962, as President Kennedy’s representative to the United Nations, presented the Security Council with incontrovertible proof that the Soviet Union, a nuclear superpower, was installing missiles in Cuba and threatening to upset the world’s “balance of terror.”
That “moment” had an obvious purpose: containing the Soviet Union and maintaining peace. It worked, and eventually the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight. This moment has a different purpose: war.’ NY Times op-ed
Please Don’t Feed the Prophet:
“What would you do if you got a note from God? Would you sell it on Ebay? Would you call the cops?” Killing the Buddha
Why Won’t You Leave Me Alone?
You and your constant demands:
“Harpies torture suicides in Hell. How is it you torture me on Earth? What wrong have I committed that you hover here – beside me, over me, behind me – gnawing at my ears? ” —Dennis Mahoney, The Morning News
A message from your friendly Liberal Arts Mafia:
Finding Happiness:
Cajole Your Brain to Lean to the Left: “All too many years ago, while I was still a psychology graduate student, I ran an experiment to assess how well meditation might work as an antidote to stress. My professors were skeptical, my measures were weak, and my subjects were mainly college sophomores. Not surprisingly, my results were inconclusive.
But today I feel vindicated.
To be sure, over the years there have been scores of studies that have looked at meditation, some suggesting its powers to alleviate the adverse effects of stress. But only last month did what I see as a definitive study confirm my once-shaky hypothesis, by revealing the brain mechanism that may account for meditation’s singular ability to soothe.” — Dan Goleman, NY Times Another in the series of remarkable findings emerging from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the brain. [I happened to have been Dan Goleman’s research assistant on the study he writes about above, BTW. -FmH]
Germany, France work on plan to avert Iraq war:
‘Germany and France are working on a new initiative to try to avert war in Iraq, a German government spokesman said on Saturday, with a magazine saying they aim to present the plan to the United Nations Security Council.
“I can confirm that there are joint considerations on finding a peaceful alternative to a military solution to the Iraq conflict,” the government spokesman told Reuters.
He declined to provide details.’ ABC.net.au
Spaced Out
Another maudlin, media-crazed moment. But hold the scorn. ” ‘The Columbia is Lost’ story involved large themes, important policies and billions of dollars mixed in with drama, tragedy and heroism too. If not this, then what kind of story should the media go overboard about?” — columnist Jonah Goldberg in WSJ opinionjournal.
A Lesson on Iraq From a Classicist
“If you want a preview of what might occur if the United States were to invade Iraq, Elaine Fantham suggests looking at what happened in 53 B.C. when the Romans marched into the territory that is now Iraq. Ms. Fantham, 69, is National Public Radio’s mischievous, fruity-voiced classics commentator on ‘Weekend Edition,’ and her specialty is drawing parallels between the ancient world and us.” NY Times
Agency Warns Blood Centers to Inspect Bags for Odd Clumps
The mysterious white clumps have been reported in over a hundred units of blood so far, most but not all in transfusion bags from a particular manufacturer. One desperately ill patient has died while receiving a transfusion of the adulterated blood (although officials hasten to say the patient was so ill that the association of the death with the transfusion may have been only coincidental) and there have been six other adverse reactions. NY Times Filters remove the clumps during transfusions, but what is causing them?
World watches first CD recorded completely online:
“Reality takes a new bite at Atlanta area recording studio, The Guest House Live. TGHL, the first on-line recording studio and jam space, is in the midst of recording the first album ever to be completely seen and heard on-line. Anyone can watch and listen to Sonic Whisper, a new pop/rock band, honing their first album just as it happens.” biz ink
Decline and Fall (cont’d.):
Nuke Plants Aging Disgracefully: “Cracks, corrosion and other signs of age at U.S. nuclear power plants have been the root of a growing list of near-miss accidents that experts and environmental activists fear could lead to true disaster.” Wired News
R.I.P. Lou Harrison
Composer, 85, Dies, eulogized by John Rockwell in the New York Times: “Lou Harrison, a distinguished composer in all genres of classical music, founder of the American gamelan movement and a leading exemplar of the marriage of Asian and Western music, died on Sunday evening at a Denny’s restaurant in Lafayette, Ind. He was 85 and lived in Aptos, Calif.”
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