‘Celebrities mobilized against a possible war in Iraq on Tuesday, gathering to publicize a letter urging President Bush to avoid military action.

More than 100 entertainers signed the missive, which says a war with Iraq will “increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks, damage the economy and undermine our moral standing in the world.” ‘ Salon

No Problem: “Since the creation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check, or NICS, administered by the FBI to screen firearm sales, 10,000 people forbidden from owning guns have obtained them despite FBI screenings, according to the Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms.

The poor quality of criminal records maintained by states is the main reason the NICS system fails to identify individuals prohibited from acquiring guns, said Jim Kessler, policy director of the Americans for Gun Safety foundation.” Wired

Arctic Ice Melting at Record Rate: “More ice melted from the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet this year than ever before recorded, report scientists from the University of Colorado. The same team found that the extent of Arctic sea ice reached the lowest level in the satellite record in 2002, offering further evidence that climate change is already altering the Arctic.” Environmental News Service Along with the erosion of domestic civil liberties, the impending devastation of Iraq, and the gutting of the arms control infrastructure, surely one of the most execrable legacies the Bush dysadministration will leave the generation to come will be having failed to address global warming or, indeed, acknowledge that it is even a real phenomenon, while we still could.

Named one of the most influential figures in modern art: “Since the East End has become the fashionable district for London’s young artists, the Golden Heart pub in Spitalfields has become its hub.

For her role as a homely mother confessor to the angry generation of British conceptual artists, Sandra Esquilant has won the improbable reward of 80th place in a list of the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art.” Telegraph UK

Damage reports trickle in after concert hall deluge: “…(D)uring a Philadelphia Orchestra rehearsal, a sprinkler system began discharging dirty water over musicians and incoming music director Christoph Eschenbach… A second Steinway grand piano was damaged in Tuesday morning’s deluge at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, some warping has begun to appear in the floor of Verizon Hall, and 11 orchestra musicians are reporting damaged instruments.” Philadelphia Inquirer

Parents Panic In Pursuit Of Toys: “With little more than two weeks until Christmas, parents are scrambling to find the FurReal robotic cat, Bratz doll play sets and other hot toys that are already scarce on store shelves.” CBS News

Third time ‘lucky’ for bad sex winner:

Author Wendy Perriam has won one of the least coveted prizes in literature – the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

And it was third time “lucky” for the author who has the misfortune of being nominated three times in row.

Some of the biggest names in literature had been nominated for the title, including Will Self and Nicholas Coleridge. BBC

“The Dialect Survey uses a series of questions, including rhyming word pairs and vocabulary words, to explore words and sounds in the English language. There are no right or wrong answers; by answering each question with what you really say and not what you think is “right”, you can help contribute to an accurate picture of how English is used in your community.

The test is designed for speakers of North American English, but speakers of all varieties of English are welcome to take the test.”

My Bloginality is INTP

The music of the spheres turns out to be a mixture of whistles, chirrups, howls, static and something that sounds like chattering voices. Oh, and a string quartet and a choir.

The string quartet and the choir were not Don Gurnett’s idea. The mind of an astrophysicist tends to favour the hard evidence. But it was Gurnett who built the devices that captured the whistles and chirrups as Nasa’s Voyager probes hurtled past Saturn, Uranus and Neptune on their 25-year journey into deep space, and he was there to share a standing ovation when they formed part of Sun Rings, an hour-long piece written by Terry Riley for the Kronos Quartet and a 60-voice choir, given its world premiere at the University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium recently.” Guardian UK

Jazz liberates an autistic 10-year-old Jerusalem Report

“Fantasy films now exert a stranglehold on the world’s cinemas in a way no genre has ever done before… War movies are too brutal, the Wild West permanently tarnished: it’s fantasy that is now setting box offices ablaze.” Telegraph UK

“A man who made a remark about a “burning Bush” during the president’s March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison.

Richard Humphreys of Portland, Oregon was convicted in September of threatening to kill or harm the president and said he plans to appeal. He has said the comment was a prophecy protected under his right to free speech.

Humphreys said he got into a barroom discussion in nearby Watertown with a truck driver. A bartender who overheard the conversation realized the president was to visit Sioux Falls the next day and told police Humphreys talked about a “burning Bush” and the possibility of someone pouring a flammable liquid on Bush and lighting it.

“I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush,” Humphreys testified during his trial. “I had said that before and I thought it was funny.” ‘ CNN

“…(F)ederal and local police agencies are looking for systematic, high-tech ways to root out terrorists before they strike. …(O)fficials are hatching elaborate plans for dumping gigabytes of delicate information into big computers, where it would be blended with public records and stirred with sophisticated software.

In recent days, federal law enforcement officials have spoken ambitiously and often about their plans to remake the F.B.I. as a domestic counterterrorism agency. But the spy story has been unfolding, quietly and sometimes haltingly, for more than a year now, since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Some people in law enforcement remain unconvinced that all these new tools are needed, and some experts are skeptical that high-tech data mining will bring much of value to light.” New York Times

The Biological Basis of the Placebo Effect — Imaging technologies bring empirical rigor to the study of a mysterious medical phenomenon. “What we’re getting,” says Harvard Medical School’s Ted Kaptchuk, “is good preliminary evidence that describes the hardwiring of the placebo effect–that is, the impact of symbolic treatment, and how it’s mediated through the neurobiology of the brain to produce physical effects in illnesses.” The Scientist

GOP Senate Leader Hails Colleague’s Run As Segregationist: “Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi has provoked criticism by saying the United States would have been better off if then-segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948.

Speaking Thursday at a 100th birthday party and retirement celebration for Sen. Thurmond (R-S.C.) in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Lott said, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.” Washington Post [with apologies to Pynchon…]

Please — if you’re linking to Follow Me Here, there are four or five different URLs that will get your readers here. But the best one is the “alias”, http://gelwan.com/followme.html. If it’s easy, could you take a moment and edit the link to me in your blogroll so it reads that way? Or, if you maintain your links through blogrolling.com, just click here to blogroll me.

That way, not only will the link not get broken if I migrate, but I’ll be better able to aggregate ‘reverse links’ such as these, which point to me in a variety of ways (for all of which I’m grateful, BTW!):

Please — if you’re linking to Follow Me Here, there are four or five different URLs that will get your readers here. But the best one is the “alias”, http://gelwan.com/followme.html. If it’s easy, could you take a moment and edit the link to me in your blogroll so it reads that way? Or, if you maintain your links through blogrolling.com, just click here to blogroll me.

That way, not only will the link not get broken if I migrate, but I’ll be better able to aggregate ‘reverse links’ such as these, which point to me in a variety of ways (for all of which I’m grateful, BTW!):

Please — if you’re linking to Follow Me Here, there are four or five different URLs that will get your readers here. But the best one is the “alias”, http://gelwan.com/followme.html. If it’s easy, could you take a moment and edit the link to me in your blogroll so it reads that way? Or, if you maintain your links through blogrolling.com, just click here to blogroll me.

That way, not only will the link not get broken if I migrate, but I’ll be better able to aggregate ‘reverse links’ such as these, which point to me in a variety of ways (for all of which I’m grateful, BTW!):

Please — if you’re linking to Follow Me Here, there are four or five different URLs that will get your readers here. But the best one is the “alias”, http://gelwan.com/followme.html. If it’s easy, could you take a moment and edit the link to me in your blogroll so it reads that way? Or, if you maintain your links through blogrolling.com, just click here to blogroll me.

That way, not only will the link not get broken if I migrate, but I’ll be better able to aggregate ‘reverse links’ such as these, which point to me in a variety of ways (for all of which I’m grateful, BTW!):

Lovable trickster created a monster with Bigfoot hoax:

‘Ray L. Wallace was Bigfoot. The reality is, Bigfoot just died,” said Michael Wallace about his father, who died of heart failure Nov. 26 in a Centralia nursing facility. He was 84.

The truth can finally be told, according to Mr. Wallace’s family members. He orchestrated the prank that created Bigfoot in 1958.

Some experts suspected Mr. Wallace had planted the footprints that launched the term “Bigfoot.” But Mr. Wallace and his family had never publicly admitted the 1958 deed until now.’ Seattle Times

How Global Publics View: Their Lives, Their Countries, The World, America The Pew Research Center

An Animal’s Place: Thanks to rebecca for pointing to this. I’ve had no interest in absolutist vegetarianism for several decades, but a more mindful and ethical take on my meat-eating is appealing, even overdue:

“For my own part, I’ve discovered that if you’re willing to make the effort, it’s entirely possible to limit the meat you eat to nonindustrial animals. I’m tempted to think that we need a new dietary category, to go with the vegan and lactovegetarian and piscatorian. I don’t have a catchy name for it yet (humanocarnivore?), but this is the only sort of meat eating I feel comfortable with these days. I’ve become the sort of shopper who looks for labels indicating that his meat and eggs have been humanely grown (the American Humane Association’s new ”Free Farmed” label seems to be catching on), who visits the farms where his chicken and pork come from and who asks kinky-sounding questions about touring slaughterhouses. I’ve actually found a couple of small processing plants willing to let a customer onto the kill floor, including one, in Cannon Falls, Minn., with a glass abattoir.” New York Times Magazine

Eyeballing Total Information Awareness:

<a href=”http://sfweekly.com/issues/2002-11-27/smith.html/1/index.html

“>The SF Weekly‘s column by Matt Smith in the Dec 3 issue points out that there may be some information that John M. and Linda Poindexter of 10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850, may be missing in their pursuit of total information awareness. He suggests that people with information to offer should phone 1 301 424 6613 to speak with that corrupt official and his wife. Neighbors Thomas E. Maxwell, 67, at 8 Barringon Fare ( 1 301 251 1326), James F. Galvin, 56, at 12 ( 1 301 424 0089), and Sherrill V. Stant (nee Knight) at 6, may also lack some information that would be valuable to them in making decisions — decisions that could affect the basic civil rights of every American. cryptome

Bush anything but moronic, according to author. When Mark Crispin Miller began the Dyslexicon, compiling Dubya’s burgeoning catalogue of verbal blunders and malapropisms, he thought he was just out for the entertainment value. But he ended up noticing something far more sinister.

“Bush is not an imbecile. He’s not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he’s incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he’s a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss.”

…Miller’s rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush’s various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.

“He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he’s speaking punitively, when he’s talking about violence, when he’s talking about revenge.

“When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine,” Miller said. “It’s only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes.” The Star (Ontario)

(yeah, that’s right, he said it): I was also sent here from the null device (I really should check in there more often!)

I know you’ve been thinking it. And if you haven’t, you probably haven’t been paying attention. The art we once called hip hop has been dead for some time now. But because its rotting carcass has been draped in platinum and propped against a Gucci print car, many of us have missed its demise.

I think the time has come to bid a farewell to the last black arts movement. It’s had a good run but it no longer serves the community that spawned it. Innovation has been replaced with mediocrity and originality replaced with recycled nostalgia for the ghost of hip hop past, leaving nothing to look forward to. Honestly when was the last time you heard something (mainstream) that made you want to run around in circles and write down every word. When was the last time you didn’t feel guilty nodding your head to a song that had a ‘hot beat’ after realizing the lyrical content made you cringe. applesauce

This site about the horrible babynaming practices committed in the name of misguided ‘uniqueness’ is getting much airplay. I was pointed to it from the null device, where you’ll find speculation about a rule of inverse proportion between the uniqueness of a child’s name (or a tortured [mis-]spelling) and the intelligence of her/his parents.

Rafe Colburn at rc3 writes about the double life of the weblogger who has a non-virtual life as well as her/his online presence. While some of my boundaries are abit different — Rafe not only doesn’t mention his boss or talk about competing products, as he notes, but does not appear to mention his work at all (I’m a casual reader; I can’t swear to the fact that a scholarly study of rc3 wouldn’t provide clues as to what he does…), whereas my being a psychiatrist is one of the things for which I think some people read FmH — I agree with his conclusion that confessional weblogs are only pseudo-intimacy. I’ve never met anyone in the ‘real world’ who had previously known me only from my site, whereas Rafe seems to do so with some frequency (why?), but it would probably freak me out far less than it would were I publishing an online diary. For example, you don’t want to know (and I feel no compulsion that you should) what just happened to me at work…

Rafe also points to this definition of bikeshed discussions, which, I agree, is a very useful metaphor I will file away for appropriate future use, although I further agree that (it’s a pity) no one will know what the hell I’m talking about when I make the reference.

Surprisingly compelling reasons to make Legos the U.S. national currency defective yeti

The Rightward Press: This is one of my pet peeves about the crybaby Right. Washington Post columnist EJ Dionne nails it: “The fat is in the fire on the issue of media bias, and that is a good thing. It’s time to revisit a matter on which the conventional wisdom is, roughly, 180 degrees off.

You hear the conventional wisdom all the time from shrewd conservative commentators who understand that political pressure, relentlessly applied, usually achieves its purposes. They have sold the view that the media are dominated by liberals and that the news is skewed against conservatives.

This belief fueled the construction of a large network of conservative institutions — especially on radio and cable television — that provides conservative viewpoints close to 24 hours a day. Conservatives argued that hopelessly left-wing establishment news sources needed to be balanced by brave, relentless voices from the right.

But the continuing attacks on mainstream journalists have another effect. Because the drumbeat of conservative press criticism has been so steady, the establishment press has internalized it. Editors and network executives are far more likely to hear complaints from the right than from the left.

To the extent that there has been a bias in the establishment media, it has been less a liberal tilt than a preference for the values of the educated, professional class — which, surprise, surprise, is roughly the class position of most journalists.”

Israel ‘killed unarmed civilians’: “A UN official says eight of 10 Palestinians killed during an Israeli incursion into Gaza were civilians – but the Israelis are denying it.” BBC World

And:

Israel’s assassination strategy

BBC World

Falling arches: “McDonald’s is under fire all over the world — literally. With restaurant bombings and shutdowns on the rise, can the fast-food conglomerate withstand the heat of global anti-Americanism?” The icon is readily transmuted into a target of the various species of contempt for what it signifies; ubiquitous brand recognition has its costs.

“In many parts of the world if people can’t reach the embassy, there’s always a McDonald’s,” says James L. Watson, a Harvard professor of anthropology who studies McDonald’s, particularly its function as a “worldwide political target.”

Fast-food bombings began after the Cold War, when opposition political groups — whether it was Chilean splinter group FPMR/D or the Greek Fighting Guerrilla Formation — started to focus more on the sources of “cultural power,” Watson says: “to questions of cultural imperialism as opposed to rather old-fashioned forms of military imperialism.” Salon

Starbucks beware…

Related:

• Bomb in Indonesian McDonald’s kills three AP
• Razor found in McDonald’s pie AP
• McDonald’s chairman to retire soon AP [via Salon]

Beth Israel Deaconess copes with a massive computer crash: “The crisis began on a Wednesday afternoon, Nov. 13, and lasted nearly four days. Before it was over, the hospital would revert to the paper systems that governed patient care in the 1970s, in some cases reverting to forms printed ”Beth Israel Hospital,” from before its 1996 merger. Hundreds of employees, from lab technicians to chief executive officer Paul Levy, would work overtime running a quarter-million sheets of paper from one end of the campus to the other.” Boston Globe

The Defining Moments in Digital Culture: “Film and TV have had them, as have music and books. What we’re talking about are those moments that have defined and redefined a genre, whether it’s a line, character, lyric, scene, or performance. The internet, though very much in its infancy compared to other mass mediums, has still managed to have many of its own seminal moments.” Shift [via Walker]

Also: Modern Humorist’s Top Ten Funniest Moments of the Past Ten Years: ” A laughably arbitrary and idiosyncratic list by John Aboud”.

Research reveals a cellular basis : “Men, as well as women, have a reproductive clock that ticks down with age.” EurekAlert!

A Look at Asperger Syndrome: “It was an exciting moment for me — and, I imagine, for other parents of children with the baffling neurological disorder called Asperger syndrome — when The New York Times Magazine published Lawrence Osborne’s “Little Professor Syndrome” in June 2000.

The title may have been condescending, but the article itself was terrific, perhaps the best yet about Asperger’s in a mainstream publication: a 4,500-word exploration, in remarkably vivid and sympathetic language, of a world that few readers had visited.

So it was doubly exciting when Mr. Osborne, a widely published health and science journalist, expanded the article into a book, American Normal, published last month.” NY Times

Plague of pimples blamed on bread:

Eating too much refined bread and cereal, rather than chocolate and greasy foods, may be the culprit behind the pimples that plague many a youngster.

That is the theory of a team led by Loren Cordain, an evolutionary biologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Highly processed breads and cereals are easily digested. The resulting flood of sugars makes the body produce high levels of insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1).

This in turn leads to an excess of male hormones. These encourage pores in the skin to ooze large amounts of sebum, the greasy goop that acne-promoting bacteria love. IGF-1 also encourages skin cells called keratinocytes to multiply, a hallmark of acne, the team say in a paper that will appear in the December issue of Archives of Dermatology.

An Australian team will soon test the theory by putting 60 teenage boys with acne on a low-carbohydrate diet for three months to see if it makes a difference. New Scientist

Radioactive patients set off subway alarms: “Americans undergoing radioactive medical treatments risk setting off anti-terrorism sensors in public places, and subsequent strip searches by police, warn doctors at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

A 34-year-old patient who had been treated with radioactive iodine for Graves disease, a thyroid disorder, returned to their clinic three weeks later complaining he had been strip-searched twice in Manhattan subway stations. Christopher Buettner and Martin Surks report the case in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association.” New Scientist

…with smart email addresses: “Software that generates a unique email address for every message sent could help cut down spam, a US computer scientist believes.

This is because hidden in the address are encrypted rules determining who is permitted to reply to the address, as well as how many replies can be sent and when.” New Scientist

Interracial Intimacy: “White-black dating, marriage, and adoption are on the rise. This development, however, is being met with resistance—more vocally by blacks than by whites.” — Randall Kennedy, The Atlantic

A white writer has a different take on the development:

In a world brimming with bad news, here’s one of the happiest trends: Instead of preying on people of different races, young Americans are falling in love with them.

Whites and blacks can be found strolling together as couples even at the University of Mississippi, once the symbol of racial confrontation.

“I will say that they are always given a second glance,” acknowledges C. J. Rhodes, a black student at Ole Miss. He adds that there are still misgivings about interracial dating, particularly among black women and a formidable number of “white Southerners who view this race-mixing as abnormal, frozen by fear to see Sara Beth bring home a brotha.”

Mixed-race marriages in the U.S. now number 1.5 million and are roughly doubling each decade. About 40 percent of Asian-Americans and 6 percent of blacks have married whites in recent years. — Nicholas Kristof, NY Times

“Man’s best friend has been around longer than anyone thought. The great Dane, pit bull and Pekinese are all descended from a few far-eastern wolves that befriended humans at least 15,000 years ago.

Even the new world canines – such as Alaskan huskies and Chesapeake Bay retrievers – have DNA sequences which make them indistinguishable from European dogs, geneticists report in Science today.” Guardian UK

The Cultural Politics of the Sociobiology Debate — Abstract:

The sociobiology debate, in the final quarter of the twentieth century, featured many of the same issues disputed in the culture war in the humanities during this same time period. This is evident from a study of the writings of Edward O. Wilson, the best known of the sociobiologists, and from an examination of both the minutes of the meetings of the Sociobiology Study Group (SSG) and the writings of Stephen Jay Gould, the SSG’s most prominent member. Many critics of sociobiology, frequently radical scientists who were attached to the lineage of the New Left, argued for the same multicultural values promoted by radical humanities professors in this period. Conversely, liberal sociobiologists defended the universalist values of the liberals in the humanities. Journal of the History of Biology

With a link to a PDF of the full article.

“People who get ill at the weekend or while on holiday may be suffering from a ‘new’ medical condition.

Researchers in the Netherlands say a significant proportion of the population is suffering from so-called leisure sickness.

They have found 3% of people become ill with a variety of different complaints as soon as they stop working and try to relax.

Symptoms like fatigue, muscular pains and nausea are most common at weekends.” BBC

Seven tenths incorrect: Heterogeneity and change in the waist-to-hip ratios of Playboy centerfold models and Miss America pageant winners:

We seek to correct what appears to be an emerging “academic urban legend” (Tooby & Cosmides, 2000) regarding the stability and precision of what heterosexual males find sexually attractive. The academic urban legend in question is that there has been a remarkable consistency in the waist-to-hip ratios (WHR) of both Playboy centerfolds and winners of the Miss America pageant. Because these women are taken as representative icons of venerated beauty standards, this supposed consistency has been taken by some authors as prima facie evidence of an evolved basis for this very specific preference, although that claim would seem to be refuted by studies that have failed to find the preference in societies whose conditions resemble those of our Pleistocene ancestors far more closely than our own. There is also dispute about the validity of the arguments that have been made for why such a preference would have been adaptive in the environments of our evolutionary past. We do not pursue these points here; what we dispute are the empirical assertions that have been made about the WHR of these supposed twin pillars of American beauty: Playboy Playmates and Miss Americas. The data presented below demonstrates both that the WHR has been more variable than others have suggested and that the average WHR has in fact changed in what seems to us to be a consistent fashion over time. Journal of Sex Research

“A university professor wants to create a catalog of human ideas. Not

just a few choice ideas, but all of them. He believes this ‘mental map’

will help bridge the gaps between the world’s cultures.” Wired News

Shoot Back, Record the Lens That Records You

Ronald Deibert, a University of Toronto associate professor of political science, wants people to grab their cameras and hit the shopping malls Dec. 24 and participate in World Sousveillance Day. Surveillance means “to view from above.” Sousveillance means “to view from below.”

On the day before Christmas, at noon, local time, all over the world, Deibert wants citizens to “shoot back” at surveillance cameras — not with guns, but with cameras of their own. Participants are to head out, in disguise, to their favorite malls and public spaces, and photograph all the security cameras they find. Wired News

Vampire Population Dynamics: Brian Thomas, a PhD candidate in ecology at Stanford University in California, considers Vampire Ecology, population dynamics and models of predator-prey relationships:

We are gathered here today to ponder the ways in which the humans and vampires of Sunnydale interact. Specifically, Betsy asked:

“Ooh, Brian, can you help us work out the vampire carrying capacity of a typical population? I’m assuming a typical vampire accounts for, say, 150-200 humans a year. So how big does a town have to be to support Sunnydale’s apparently limitless supply of vampires? Are there human warrens in the catacombs somewhere, used only for feeding purposes?”

The term “carrying capacity” isn’t often applied to predator population dynamics. Instead, ecologists generally estimate stable predator populations by first coming to grips with the prey’s population dynamics, including its carrying capacity. Actually, in a lot of different cases, the prey’s carrying capacity ultimately determines how well the predator does.

Thanks to Walker for pointing me to this O’Reilly Network article on How to Validate an E-mail Address which contains the following tidbit:

“Yes, e-mail addresses can contain comments. I tested them too – and they work. A comment is (to the best of my knowledge) any text placed in parentheses anywhere in the email address. For example, my e-mail can be:

* kevin@kbedell.com, or

* kev(you da man!)in@kbedell.com, or

* kevin@k(evin)bedell.com

All these work – I tried them.”

Caveat: Don’t assume, however, that the comment is necessarily private, should you have the burning desire to list your boss in your contact list as, e.g., “john(that_fool)@company.com“, or something even less printable in a family medium. Walker cautions that the comment may be appended to the email address when mail is sent. (David, thanks, how did you know I’d be tempted?) Addendum: when I set up “mailto” URLs for the commented email addresses and click on them in my browser, the comment is extracted and prepended to the email address in the “To:” line. For example, “mailto:john(that_fool)@company.com” would become “To: that_fool john@company.com”.

Mineral ‘cells’ may have incubated first life: “Life on Earth may have begun in rocks on the ocean floor. More than 4 billion years ago, tiny cavities in minerals may have served as the first cells, two biologists are proposing1. Other researchers argue that the idea leaves many questions unanswered.” Nature

Kenan Malik’s review essay on The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker and Straw Dogs by John Gray: “The psychologist Geoff Miller has called it a ‘paradigm shift’: the restoration of human nature into discussions of human behaviour, political policy and social organisation. Where once the idea of human nature was treated with suspicion and ridicule, today there is barely a human activity for which someone does not have an evolutionary account.” Also: David Lodge and psychologist Kenan Malik discuss what the novel — and science — have to tell us about human consciousness. BBC [Real Audio]

Chronic Wasting Disease and You Milwaukee Magazine

Thurmond Celebrates Century Mark Washington Post Will veneration for this ‘achievement’ outweigh sobering reflection on his virulence or relief at his enfeeblement?

The New York Times Books Feature — Ted Hughes: ” A retrospective on the career of the late poet laureate of England includes Times reviews and articles and excerpts from Hughes’s poetry.”

The God of new things: ‘Indeed, there was no such thing as ”Hinduism” before the British invented the catch-all category in the early 19th century and made India seem the home of a ”world religion” that was as organized and theologically coherent as Christianity and Islam. The word ”Hindu” itself was first used by the ancient Persians to refer to the people living near the river Indus (”Sindhu” in Sanskrit). It later became a convenient shorthand for those who weren’t Muslims or Christians.’ Boston Globe

Administration seeks repeal of family leave pay.  ”Labor Department officials, citing poor economic conditions, said they are acting to repeal the Birth and Adoption Unemployment Compensation Rule to protect states’ unemployment insurance trust funds for laid-off workers, even though no state has chosen to pay for leave with those funds.” AP via Salon

“Some companies have repeatedly disseminated misleading advertisements for prescription drugs, even after being cited for violations, and millions of people see the deceptive commercials before the government tries to halt them, Congressional investigators said today.” NY Times

Are increased numbers of people seeking psychotherapy responding to recent media characterizations?

”A depiction of anything in popular culture can help make participation in that thing spike,” said Robert Thompson, head of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television. After Fonzie got a library card on ”Happy Days” in the 1970s, Thompson noted, thousands of Americans followed suit.

Psychiatry has been a theme of TV shows from ”Newhart” to ”Frasier,” but seldom has it been so central to a show as on ”The Sopranos.” Major plot twists are reheated in Melfi’s office; mob hits are attributed to Tony’s ”impulse control problem.” In one episode, three characters paid visits to three different therapists. Even Tony’s therapist sees a therapist. Boston Globe [thanks, Spike!]

I wonder if this isn’t putting the cart before the horse. Stonger cultural forces — growing social anomie, the effort to medicalize a growing range of distresses, the increasing suborning of the psychiatric profession by the powerful marketing forces of the pharmaceutical giants — shape our depictions when filtered through the scriptwriters’ (often neurotic?) vision. It’s different than running out to get a library card on whim because you were inspired by a TV character. Finding Tony Soprano’s struggles sympathetic is a far cry from breaking down the considerable barriers to investing the time, money and demanding effort in a mental health consultation. And let’s not think for a moment, despite this columnist’s suggestion, that it is the macho, acting-out, impulse-ridden types who are coming to see therapists un droves. Not to mention that there is, especially in the current Sopranos season, a more complicated depiction of the therapist and the therapy process as flawed and sometimes ludicrous, some would say deeply so, rather than the unconditional positive regard which would demystify and inspire viewers to emulate Tony as suggested. Those who follow The Sopranos will know that in the season’s 11th episode last week he ditched his therapy after four years, perhaps partly because he is sinking to new lows he cannot examine but perhaps as much because Dr. Melfi’s clumsiness has failed him. It is likely, on the other hand, that the relationship with Dr. Melfi will resume. given that the show will return for a fifth season…

In other organized crime news:

Mobster, wife indicted in sperm smuggling

One of five New York mobsters believed to have smuggled their sperm out of a Pennsylvania prison to impregnate their wives has been indicted, along with his wife, on a charge of criminal conspiracy.

Kevin Granato, a convicted hit man for the Colombo crime family, came under suspicion four years ago after he was seen in the visitation room at the Allenwood Federal Prison showing off a toddler he called his child, even though he had been in jail since 1988.

Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Granato, 42, and his wife, Regina Granato, on two counts of criminal conspiracy. Regina Granato, who lives in New York, is also charged with one count of providing a prohibited object — a cryogenic sperm kit — to an inmate. Salon

Mozilla 1.2.1 is out. IMHO, this browser, at least for the Windows platform, so far outweighs M$IE that it hurts. If this is news to you, start by considering the memory-resident stub that makes for instant loading, the skinnability, bulletproof blockade of popup windows, and tabbed browsing interface.

“After just two films, the Harry Potter franchise is in trouble. The third movie will be late, the fourth book is proving unadaptable, the director is burned out and the boy wizard is facing a greater enemy than Voldemort – the march of time.” Get a load of who has been tapped to direct the next one. Telegraph UK

Joe Conason: Will he explain his job for Unocal when the oil giant was cozying up to the Taliban?

‘As a New Yorker who wants a full, fair and unsparing probe of 9/11, I’m not moving on just yet from the absurd appointment of Henry Kissinger to chair the new “independent commission.” Neither is the New York Times editorial board, whose latest salvo described Kissinger’s insouciance about his conflict of interests as “quaint.”

Quaint must be the polite way to say stunningly arrogant. But the wily Kissinger is probably quite right to brush off the halfhearted gnawing of the press corps, whose appetite for scandal has diminished markedly since the advent of the Bush administration. They’re already ignoring information about Kissinger that probably merits further exploration.’ Salon

Village Voice ‘meta-coverage’ calls newly-released film Adaptation ‘the brainiest film of the year’; they devote five articles to it. The trailer for it is the most arresting thing I’ve seen during the coming attractions in a long time. The Heart of the Meta

“I’m a walking cliché,” begins Charlie Kaufman’s breathy voice-over over a blank page in Adaptation, a pop-surrealist manifesto that works at every turn to confound the meaning of these words. Directed by Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich cohort Spike Jonze, Adaptation (in theaters Friday) looks into the horrific abyss experienced by all self-conscious writers who aspire to art—how do I create something original when everything has been done before?—and responds, as many self-conscious writers have, by writing about the process of its own creation: The movie’s neurotic, overweight, balding protagonist shares the name (and, we assume, the nebbish identity) of its Oscar-nominated screenwriter.

Adaptation is ostensibly the story of Kaufman’s own crackup after being hired to turn Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief into a big-budget screenplay. Following many tortured attempts to adapt Orlean’s book, a nonfictional exploration of the passion generated by the testicular flower, Kaufman (in the hefty form of Nicolas Cage) responds with the ultimate challenge to both commercial Hollywood and its novocained cousin, director-centric auteurism: He writes himself into the script. Charlie’s “twin brother” Donald plays the foil to his torment, his natural screenwriting skills blossoming thanks to plot-workshop guru Robert McKee. Village Voice

“A French author who suggests that the Sept. 11 attacks were concocted by a faction of the U.S. military is planning to promote his book on a tour that will begin in New York City.

The English title of Thierry Meyssan’s book is 9-11, The Big Lie, which also suggests that the Pentagon was hit by an American missile, and not American Airlines Flight 77. ” NY Daily News

“A biology professor in northern British Columbia has spotted a clover field crawling with spiders.

Brian Thair of the College of New Caledonia in Prince George said he saw a silky, white web stretching 60 acres across a field.

“When you see horror movies with spider web festooned from this place to that place and so on, it comes nowhere near approaching what occurred in this field,” Thair told CBC Radio’s As It Happens.” CBC News With links to a spider web photo gallery.

“Google is taking snapshots of its users’ minds and aggregating them. Like a flipbook that emerges when successive images are strung together, the logged data tell a story.

So what is the world thinking about? (…) Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the world is spending much of its time thinking about the same things.” New York Times

“Death row inmates in Texas are often assigned incompetent or unqualified state appellate lawyers who do not raise legitimate constitutional arguments and who fail to unearth facts that could prove the innocence of their clients, according to a new study by an advocacy group for capital defendants.” NY Times …But you knew that already.

Controversy over Venice winner: ‘Scottish film director Peter Mullan has defended his film as based on “true events” in the face of strong criticism after winning the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice film festival.

The Magdalene Sisters follows four promiscuous girls who were used as labourers by the Catholic church in Ireland in the 1960s and shows them being abused by nuns in the notorious asylums.’ BBC

“A group of researchers have identified two seismic events that they think provide the first evidence of a previously undetected form of matter passing through the Earth. The so-called strange quark matter is so dense that a piece the size of a human cell would weigh a tonne. The two events under study both took place in 1993.” Even those scientists who are dubious concede they have no alternate explanations for the seismic events. BBC

Christopher Hitchens asks, “Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation?” Slate

“The U.S. Army has some imaginative ways to annihilate the Saddams of the future.

As the U.S. Army prepares for war in Iraq (and beyond), it has been moving fast to transform itself from a Cold War relic into a deadly, rapidly deployable force. The last two major U.S. conflicts, Desert Storm and Kosovo, were largely won by the U.S. Air Force before the Army’s lumbering tanks ever got there. The Army used to be a sledgehammer; now it needs to be a cordless drill.” Forbes

White House Decries Ex-Aide’s Criticism

President Bush’s spokesman dismissed as “baseless and groundless” a former aides’ criticism that the White House values politics over domestic policy and has failed to produce the president’s promised “compassionate conservative” agenda.

John J. DiIulio Jr., who quit his White House domestic policy post in August 2001, said in an interview with Esquire magazine: “There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: complete lack of a policy apparatus.

“What you’ve got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavelli’s,” he was quoted as saying. Washington Post

“U.S. astronomers are gathering terabytes of data into a worldwide ‘virtual observatory’ that will be accessible to scientists and laymen alike.” Technology Review

A man was arrested in Concord NH for the murder of a California police officer nine days earlier after, bizarrely, making a confession in an online chatroom at the San Francisco Indymedia site. More bizarrely, he reportedly claimed it was a blow against corporate irresponsibility; indeed, he incorporated before doing the deed and therefore says he is not personally responsible for what is just one more corporate crime. Perhaps most bizarrely — while considering the possibility that the suspect is “a tasteless, publicity-seeking prankster who’s trying to use an unsolved murder to promote his cause”, The Register‘s reporter also wonders if the story might be “a psyops operation to discredit the burgeoning anti-globalization movement…”

Teachers’ chatroom death threats: ‘Teachers using an online “virtual staffroom” have been making death threats against the children in their care.

One fantasised about using “a large handgun … to blow the head off of the first pupil who has failed to shut up/do homework/sit properly at their desk/speak politely to me.”

Another wrote of her satisfaction at having “vengefully” reduced a six-year-old child to tears.’ BBC

“Face transplants will be technically possible within six to nine months – now the public must decide whether the procedure is ethically acceptable, says a leading UK plastic surgeon.

The issue will be debated during a meeting of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons starting on Wednesday. Peter Butler of the Royal Free Hospital in London will argue that face transplantation will be the only effective way of treating some severely disfigured patients, such as those who have suffered extensive burns or facial cancer.” New Scientist

…Here’s How to Set It Straight: ‘Many consumers appreciate having computers delve into their hearts and heads. But some say it gives them the willies, because the machines either know them too well or make cocksure assumptions about them that are way off base. That’s why even TiVo lovers are tempted to hoodwink it — a phenomenon that was also spoofed this year on another TV show, HBO’s “The Mind of the Married Man.” ‘ Wall Street Journal

Growing Peace Movement’s Ranks Include Some Unlikely Allies Washington Post

Patch Raises New Hope for Beating Depression

It was the first type of antidepressant, and for many people the monamine oxidase, or MAO, inhibitor remains the best hope for relief from major depression.

The trouble is that the side effects can be so serious that MAO inhibitors are rarely prescribed. When taken with certain foods, for example, they may bring on sudden and severe hypertension.

The problems, however, may soon be resolved.

A study reported in November in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that by administering the MAO inhibitor selegiline in patch form, patients can receive the antidepressant benefits of the drug without the usual side effects. NY Times

Even without the patch formulation, the MAO inhibitors remain a woefully neglected powerful class of antidepressants. Both clinical lore and my own experience suggest they are useful for types of depression (more ingrained or severe; with ‘atypical’ features or comorbid with other conditions) which have not responded to more ‘modern’ (post-Prozac) agents. The risk of hypertensive reaction is highly overrated if the medication is given to patients who are competent to understand and motivated to comply with the dietary restrictions, and these restrictions (the so-called “MAO Inhibitor Diet“) are less draconian than the hysterics usually make them out to be.

True, a medication that involves “active” participation by prescriber and recipient will be inconvenient to some in comparison with the SSRIs (Prozac etc.), which have supplanted all other antidepressants due to the marketing claims that prescribing them requires “no muss, no fuss.” As readers of FmH know (because I hammer this point home whenever I have the opportunity), the well-publicized complications of rampant SSRI use (including successful litigation against the manufacturers for acts of violence, suicidality and discontinuation syndromes about which I’ve written here) result in large measure from the illusion that they are so easy to prescribe that they require no art to manage and thus may be given with less supervision than previous antidepressants, and often by nonpsychiatric prescribers. A further consequence of the ascendency of the SSRI and post-SSRI antidepressants may be an overall decrease in antidepressant effectiveness, both because of the lax supervision of their use; and (as readers of FmH may recall I and other psychiatrists suspect) because they are probably “watered-down” antidepressants which do not attack the ‘core symptoms’ of a depressive disorder but rather make sufferers feel better by controlling ‘downstream’ epiphenomena, symptoms which accompany depression. I don’t mean to be a psychopharmacological Calvinist, but sometimes I wonder if that isn’t precisely why they are so much easier to give. They have fewer side effects than older, more robust antidepressants because there is no free lunch, you get what you pay for.

My viewpoint may be jaundiced because, as a consulting psychopharmacologist and a hospital-based psychiatrist, I see the most truly ill of the depressed patients, the patients in whom I am concerned about the reduced efficacy of the SSRIs, rather than the ‘walking wounded’ who form so much of the modern market for antidepressants for whom an SSRI may be effective enough. (At one extreme, this latter class, of course, blend into those for whom psychopharmacology has famously been called “cosmetic” rather than therapeutic; another consequence of the scourge of the SSRIs.) So, in a number of senses — increased efficacy, mindful prescribing, the participation and responsibility of the recipient, filtering of recipients, etc. — the return of the MAOI is a welcome development, if the patch facilitates it. For technical reasons, however, selegiline, the MAOI about which they are talking here, is not the only one upon which I believe we should focus, however. Other, perhaps better, MAOIs go by the names of tranylcypromine (Parnate), phenelzine (Nardil), and isocarboxazid (Marplan). Selegiline, however, as the newest MAOI, still ‘belongs’ to a pharmaceutical company and generates profits, whereas the other, older agents are in the public domain and nobody’s cash cow. So industry interest in further promoting them is not as likely. Trivia: while this is still an unresolved point, (weak) MAO inhibition may in fact be the mechanism of action for St. John’s Wort‘s putative antidepressant effects.

Al Qaeda claims responsibility for Kenyan attack. “An announcement attributed to al-Qaeda, in which the organization claims responsibility for last week’s terror attacks in Kenya, was released yesterday on the Internet. The announcement is signed in the name of Tanzim Qa’adat al Jihad – the political bureau of Osama bin Laden’s organization.

Experts in analyzing and assessing Internet messages said the announcement includes expressions, nicknames and definitions characteristic of the dialogue that has been conducted in recent months in the name of al-Qaeda.” Ha’aretz Police Close In on Owner of Terrorist Vehicle. “A Kenyan woman owned the Mitsubishi Pajero which was used by suicide bombers in the attack on Mombasa’s Paradise Hotel.

This revelation was made in the wake of intensified investigations that have brought together detectives from the Kenyan police and the military, Israel and the US.” East African Standard, Mombasa ” Kenya Police yesterday denied that there was a dispute between them and Israel detectives investigating the bombing of Mombasa Paradise Hotel.” East African Standard, Mombasa “Kenya’s security agencies were warned four times of an impending bombing a clear eight months before last week’s suicide attack near Mombasa, it can be revealed today.” The Nation, Nairobi Rafael ready to install anti-missile protection on civilian airliners: ‘Following the launching of Strella anti-aircraft missiles at an Arkia airliner taking off from Mombasa, Kenya, on Thursday, Rafael, the Israeli Armament Development Authority, has gone into emergency production of an anti-missile system for civilian aircraft. “We can fit aircraft with this system within months,” company officials said.’ Israel Insider

Ideal for turning into a pamphlet to raise public awareness, as the site suggests. truthout

[via Walker]

“Shift‘s profile of The Smoking Gun mentioned a number of great scoops the guys have put together over the years, but they’re only a taste of what the site has to offer — mere appetizers to fuel your hunger for dishes marinated in eau de political scandal and smothered in creamy, steamy celebrity hypocrisy sauces. So just in case you haven’t been logging on to The Smoking Gun on a near-daily basis like all of us in the Shift office, here’s a collection of the best stories from the past year.” [Be sure to browse through no. 3, the collected concert contract riders and mug shots of the stars.] [thanks, Walker]

“Richard Milhous Nixon set an infamous standard for spying on Americans and abusing the powers of the Presidency. But Nixon wouldn’t have dared dream of the sweeping authority being claimed by George W. Bush.

Now, the Bush administration has on the drawing board at a top Pentagon research agency plans that would open America to an Orwellian future. Bush, who sees those not with him as with the terrorists, will soon have the means, motive and opportunity to make the domestic spying of the Nixon era look quaint.” The Consortium

“Bush administration mulls resuming nuclear testing and developing tactical warheads to deal with threats like Iraq.” Christian Science Monitor

Trapped by the USA

When the United States attacks Iraq, Israel will be the country most immediately placed under direct threat, not the USA. Already, the Israeli minister of security has informed Israeli citizens that, in case of war, “we are expected to be the victims.” Israeli newspapers report plans to evacuate the metropolitan area of Tel Aviv, and to transform parks and stadiums into temporary mass graves.

Yet, Israelis seem unable to express their vital interest against a war with Iraq. Why have Israelis adopted a passive mood of “expected catastrophe”? Why do many Israelis believe that the violent policies the United States is practicing in the Middle East will actually reduce the dangers to Israel in the future, instead of increase them? Tikkun

Marge Piercy:

 Tonight I light the first candle

on the chanukiya by the window

and then a second in the bathtub,

the yahrzeit candle for your death. [more] 

Tikkun

…Happy Chanukah to you and yours.

The art of spinning discs will finally be consigned to BBC history as Radio 1 DJs become “hardware controllers” in a technological revolution.

The tricky business of cueing up “poptastic” sounds while engaging in banter will no longer trouble the station’s presenters as, from next year, all its music will be stored on a digital hard disk.

Does this indicate that British usage reflects a consensus about the distinction between ‘discs’ and ‘disks’ all readers will appreciate? In any case, here comes perhaps the saddest aspect of this change:

But the high-tech revolution will remove once and for all the possibility of a DJ placing a favourite track on continuous repeat or smashing an offensive record on air. Times of London

I wonder whether this would be news at all in the US or if it is a foregone development given the greater penetration of homogenized corporate playlists in US radio.

“Richard Milhous Nixon set an infamous standard for spying on Americans and abusing the powers of the Presidency. But Nixon wouldn’t have dared dream of the sweeping authority being claimed by George W. Bush.

Now, the Bush administration has on the drawing board at a top Pentagon research agency plans that would open America to an Orwellian future. Bush, who sees those not with him as with the terrorists, will soon have the means, motive and opportunity to make the domestic spying of the Nixon era look quaint.” The Consortium

Oh, well, back to the drawing boards. Restored the old template.

On a different note, I won’t be near a computer for the next week or so. I wish everyone a joyous Thanksgiving. See you in December.

‘An offhand comment by a senior member of the Chrétien government may have a lasting effect on relations between Ottawa and Washington. A top aide to the prime minister has been quoted as referring to U.S. President George W. Bush as “a moron.”

The disparaging comment from Chrétien’s inner circle has shaken the Prime Minister’s Office. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was forced to say on Thursday that President Bush is “a friend of mine. He’s not a moron at all.” ‘ CBC

Take Action: “CSPI has asked McDonald’s to change its current chicken-buying practices that contribute to the unnecessary use of millions of pounds of antibiotics each year. McDonald’s has not taken a stand. Urge McDonald’s CEO Jack Greenberg to protect the public’s health and to stop selling chicken McAntibiotics!” Center for Science in the Public Interest

Is FmH loading faster tonight? Is it laid out all right? I did a rewrite of the template and almost, almost, succeeded in table-less CSS-based layout. It worked fine in Mozilla but, on the off-chance, I checked with IE6 (both under WinXP) and my header layout didn’t work. So there’s one little table up there until I can tweak it further. Of course, I’d prefer if you would all switch to Mozilla for me instead… Please let me know if the page doesn’t sit right in whatever browser you’re using, especially if you’re operating under a different OS. Any CSS gurus care to look at my template and offer any tweaks?

“Gov. George Ryan of Illinois will end his tenure on a high note if he issues a blanket commutation of the sentences of everyone on death row.” NY Times editorial

“Two giant black holes have been found at the center of a galaxy born from the joining of two smaller galaxies and are drifting toward a cataclysmic collision that will send ripples throughout the universe many millions of years from now, scientists said today.” NY Times

“The rate of life-threatening heart rhythms more than doubled among cardiac patients in the New York area in the month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, according to a new study that sheds light on the role of elevated stress in heart disease.” NY Times

“Scientists are reporting today that they have created the first vaccine that appears able to prevent cervical cancer. The vaccine works by making people immune to a sexually transmitted virus that causes many cases of the disease.

The vaccine is experimental and will not be available to the public for several years.” NY Times

The Action Coalition for Media Education:

ACME is a coalition of teachers, scholars, students, journalists, public health advocates and community organizers who believe that today’s media system is profoundly undemocratic.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution gave special privileges and protections to the media—via subsidies and free speech laws—due to the media’s critical role in maintaining an open and robust democratic culture.

Many citizens—including journalists and media professionals—believe that today’s media system is failing our democracy in numerous ways:

• With the media owned by some of the world’s most powerful corporations, independent and in-depth coverage of how power is exercised is rare (e.g., the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the digital spectrum give-away). With a truly democratic media, in-depth coverage of how power is exercised would be the norm, not the exception.
• Sound-bite journalism and over-reliance on ‘official sources’ ensure that only a very narrow range of voices and perspectives is heard. These practices thus ensure that the interests of economic and political elites are largely unexamined and unchallenged. (e.g. the absence of Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower, labor voices, etc)
• A media system dominated by advertising revenue pays attention to audiences favored by advertisers. As a result, poor and working-class citizens are largely ignored, unless they are subjects of crime or catastrophe.
• A media system dominated by entertainment values trivializes achievement by its focus on celebrity, the sensational, and the superficial.
• A media system obsessed with high-consumption lifestyles promotes behaviors that are harmful to the public health and to the health of the planet.

These weaknesses are understood consciously or intuitively by many citizens. The goal of ACME is to raise this growing awareness to a threshold of action in order to bring about democratic media reforms, including the creation of alternative media that are non-commercial, locally-controlled and locally-accountable.

“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I

suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an

up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual

freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would

sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.”

Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964 [via Dave Farber’s IP mailing list]

“The killing of Jam Master Jay and other recent incidents have polarized the hip-hop community from the rest of the nation. Erik Parker reports on