Tom Ridge’s school daze: ‘Rarely is there any good news for the benighted czar of the “homeland,” Tom Ridge. His difficult job is made no easier by widespread doubts about his competence in the Capitol. Lately , however, the worst news for Ridge is emanating from his own homeland of Pennsylvania. The national press hasn’t caught onto this story yet, but the Philadelphia papers are strongly suggesting that the former governor left behind a festering scandal when he departed for Washington last fall.’ Salon

“Actuality Systems has gazed into the future, and what it has seen looks more like a crystal ball…, a type of 3D display with a basketball-size glass dome that connects to an ordinary workstation to display 3D models and animations.

On Tuesday the company announced its first customer, the Adelphi, Md.-based U.S. Army Research Laboratory, which carries out research for the Army, the Department of Defense, NASA and other government bodies.” ZDNet

President Renames Month After Himself:

“Turkmenistan’s flamboyant President Saparmurat Niyazov, after whom cities, airports and even a meteorite have been named, has proposed a new honor for himself — the month of January will now bear his name.” Yahoo! News

Professional Hermit for Cave-Dwelling Duty

“More than 200 years after they went out of fashion in Britain, professional hermits are back in the job market.”

Yahoo! News

Environmental Groups Sue over Navy Sonar Plans:

“A coalition of groups led by the Natural Resources Defense Council said it would file suit on Wednesday to block the U.S. Navy from using a powerful new sonar that scientists say could injure whales and other marine mammals.”

Fearful Death Scene of Addicts:

“Norway, which is first in the world in income, health care, life expectancy and education, is also home to Europe’s drug overdose capital.”

Amidst the dramatic and spectacular examples of people’s inhumanity, the quiet but insistent plight of Southern Africaattracts little of the attention such a massive human emergency should.

“The World Health Organisation has issued a warning that the situation in southern Africa is deteriorating, with a severe shortage of food, drought and a dramatic decrease in the standard of sanitary conditions, affecting between 12 and 14 million people.

Degraded public services, AIDS, drought and flood cycles have all wreaked havoc with the social tissue of southern African countries such as Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland. Gro Brudtland, the Director-General of the WHO, has issued figures which indicate that the maternal mortality rate in child-birth has deteriorated by 50%, while tuberculosis, acute respiratory infections and malaria are expected to provoke 300,000 deaths over the next six months.

Apart from the well-known scourge of AIDS, which has seen life expectancy figures plummeting to the thirties in many regions, there is also a pandemic of cholera, which sweeping through Mozambique and Malawi, where it has claimed hundreds of lives.” Pravda

‘They got sharks in there bigger than me’ CNN

Flying Snake Aerodynamics Explained: “Study results published today in the journal Nature reveal how.” Scientific American

Andrea Dworkin:

“There are good reasons for women suicide bombers, and anyone who knows what’s happening to women in the Middle East can’t be surprised…

The female suicide bombers are idealists who crave committing a pure act, one that will wipe away the stigma of being female. The Palestinian community is not sacrificing low women, women of no accomplishment, women with no future. Instead, the women suicide bombers are the society’s best in terms of human resources, a perverted example of the best and the brightest. ” Feminista!

Bob builds a lead over Barney: “Bob the Builder has stolen Barney’s spotlight.

The English construction worker, armed with his signature tool belt and hard hat, has hammered his way past the purple dinosaur and into the hearts of children around the world.” But, uh oh: “While Barney’s popularity has declined, he’s not giving up without a fight.” Boston Globe

Board says surgery halted for bank trip: ” The patient was on his stomach, anesthetized, with an open incision in his back. Six hours into spinal surgery, according to the state medical board, the surgeon told the operating staff at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge that he needed to ‘step out…’ ” Boston Globe … to cash a check.

“The Lesbian Baby Boom Is Also a Baby Boy Boom. How Are These Lads Being Raised?” Village Voice

Jonathan Chait: “Is President Bush too incompetent to be immoral?” The New Republic

The Memory Hole:

Paul Krugman: “Every government tries to make excuses for its past errors, but I don’t think any previous U.S. administration has been this brazen about rewriting history to make itself look good.” NY Times op-ed

Irreconcilable Differences: “Al Gore has had it with Joe Lieberman. Why is Lieberman so pleased?” The New Republic

Awful thought — Lieberman as the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

In an Ancient Game, Computing’s Future: “Deceptively easy to learn, either for a computer or a human, it is a game of such depth and complexity that it can take years for a person to become a strong player. To date, no computer has been able to achieve a skill level beyond that of the casual player.” NY Times

Soldier toy disarmed at airport:

‘A doll caused a security alert at an American airport because its two-inch plastic gun was considered a dangerous weapon.

Judy Powell, 55, from Walton on the Hill, Surrey, bought the GI Joe toy in Las Vegas and packed it in her hand luggage.

But security staff at Los Angeles International Airport refused to let Mrs Powell on board the plane with the replica rifle.

Mrs Powell had to put the gift – minus the rifle – in her suitcase so it could go in the aircraft’s hold.

Mrs Powell said: “I was simply stunned when I realised they were serious.

“Security examined the toy as if it was going to shoot them and looked at the rifle…’ BBC

“A $300,000 con shows how easy it is to manipulate the system. Is eBay coming clean about fraud?” Business 2.0

Motorist plans ‘hatless attendant’ parking fine appeal: “A motorist given a parking ticket in Brighton may escape the fine if he can prove the attendant wasn’t wearing a hat.” Ananova

“A drug normally used to treat an adult form of leukemia may be able to restore color to gray hair, a team of puzzled French doctors reported on Wednesday.

Of the 133 people they treated with the drug, sold under the brand name Gleevec by Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG, five men and four women who started out with gray hair ended up with their old color back.” Reuters

Fans plot to be the first readers of a reclusive writer’s long-awaited new blockbuster:

“On Mother’s Day in 1964 a boy of nine is found hanging from a tree. This mysterious killing changes everything for his family. It is also the mysterious killing at the heart of the most jealously guarded second novel in publishing history: Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend.

Tartt’s first book, published 10 years ago when she was 28, was a literary sensation. The Secret History told the suspenseful story of a privileged band of classics scholars who attended an elite American college. A potent mix of murder, adolescent sexual tension and ancient Greek ritual, it sold more than a million copies in the United States alone, and has been translated into 23 languages.

Now the long wait for Tartt’s next book is almost over. Simultaneous publication of The Little Friend in the United States and in Britain is set for the end of October. For the enigmatic author’s devoted fans, however, a few more weeks of patience is proving hard to muster. Some are prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to be first to buy a copy.” Guardian UK

Inconstant Speed of Light May Debunk Einstein:

“A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics — Einstein’s theory of relativity.”

Yahoo! News

A Palestinian Green Light for an Israeli Pullback Deal:

“The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday tentatively accepted Israel’s terms for withdrawing from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as Israeli forces pressed their offensive.”

New York Times

“Libya says it is willing in principle to pay compensation for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988.”



BBC World. And:

Gaddafi re-emerges



BBC World. And:

US welcomes Libya’s ‘Lockerbie offer’

BBC World

U.S. Defies Judge on Enemy Combatant:

“The Justice Department yesterday defied a federal judge’s order to provide him with documents that would have supported the government’s classification of a man captured in Afghanistan and being held in a Navy brig in Norfolk as an ‘enemy combatant.'”

Washington Post

As the WoT® widens, does the definition of ‘enemy combatant’ become more and more arbitrary and privileged? Am I an ‘enemy combatant’ ?

N.Z. Bear’s vision of the future — horrifying and considerably this side of implausible; doesn’t even require suspension of disblief. Try it on for size… [via 12 frogs]

“Something strange has a grip on the sidewalks of Camden and it’s not letting go.

Scores of half dollar-sized globs of a dark, tar-like substance have been popping up on sidewalks in a South Camden neighborhood near the Delaware River, worrying neighbors and puzzling state and county officials.

Like a scene from a low-budget horror movie, they have invaded a sidewalk in front of a Chinese take-out restaurant, turning it into a polka-dotted maze of mystery goo.

The Camden blobs are smeared evenly into some sidewalks, making it tough to scoop up, even with a spatula. Stranger still, the waxy stuff does not stick to cars and residents say it seems only to materialize during the wee hours of the morning…” Newark Star-Ledger [via Obscure Store]

Review by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick: The Death of the Subject Explained, by James Heartfield, Sheffield Hallam University Press, 2002: ” ‘While this book is philosophical in its basic tenor, it is first and foremost an engaged political intervention, addressing the burning question of how we are to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of globalised capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal-democratic multiculturalism.’

Though this is how the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek describes his own book, The Ticklish Subject, it serves even better as a characterisation of James Heartfield’s work.” sp!ked

“Aren’t you familiar with the TV program ‘America’s Most Wanted’?” she asked patiently. “We’ve been asked to take the FBI’s TIPS calls for them.” Salon

“Spirit Airlines is offering Free airline tickets on all flights that originate on September 11, 2002. Spirit provides service to tlantic City, N.J., Chicago/O’Hare, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Myrtle Beach, S.C., New York/LaGuardia, Oakland, Calif., San Juan, Puerto Rico and the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach. Flights must be booked online by 9/8/02. As you can imagine, the Spirit Website is operating extremely slow as of this post.” DealsOnTheWeb [via boing boing]

“Broadcasters are scheduled to begin delivering digital TV signals in 2006, giving consumers better picture and sound quality in their homes. However, Hollywood is threatening to withhold its movies unless cable companies are given the right to prohibit taping of shows.” Wired

After Economic Collapse, Deep Poverty Makes Dignity a Casualty: “Word spread fast through the vast urban slums ringing Rosario. There was food on the freeway — and it was still alive.” I agree with Richard Homonoff, who pointed me to this blink. Almost unbearably painful to read. Washington Post

Portage: Stuff Worth Saving is a weblog I just learned of because it apparently claims FmH as a ‘parent’ (sort of like an ‘inspiration’) in the blog geneology project BlogTree

. I like it; I’m flattered!

Thanks to Mitchell Sprague for sending me to this massive collection of remixed propaganda posters. Almost too much to take in at one time. This appears to be the original source of the ‘amphetamine pilot’ poster from Blowback… Perpetual War Log at dack

“A medical center whose handling of cadavers is being investigated by the F.B.I. said today that it was recalling body parts sent to research institutions around the country because they might carry the AIDS virus or other infections.

The center, the University of Texas Medical Branch, ordered the recall because the unpreserved remains might not have been properly tested for hepatitis and H.I.V. before they were shipped.” NY Times

Why is this corporate criminal smiling? And why is he hiding from us?

Check out the droll agitprop poster from Blowback: “Pilots! Too Many Missions? Can’t Stay Awake in the Air? Take Amphetamines! Watch out Canadians! Here Comes the USAF!”

Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies:

A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

“The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader,” stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

“Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies,” said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East. Washington Post

The conclusions about Saudi Arabia’s role are not surprising. What is astounding, however, is that this view “… has growing currency within the Bush administration — especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership — and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers.” Apparently, the feeling in these circles is that toppling Saddam Hussein is more urgent because a friendly successor regime in oil-rich Iraq will reduce US dependence on Saudi oil and permit the US to confront the Saudis for their support of terrorism. Hard to see how this perspective will take hold — Administration comments are derisive — since the implication is that, as long as Bush’s handlers don’t have the oil supply problem licked yet, we’re shown for the moral relativists we are in the WoT®.

“The bombing of Hiroshima was a great crime. That the United States of America has yet to confront it as such not only leaves the past with unfinished business, but undercuts the possibility of present moral clarity about the exercise of American power and leaves the earth’s future tied to a fuse that we set burning 57 years ago today.” — James Carroll, Boston Globe op-ed Carroll’s argument is essentially that the debate about the strategic necessity of the atomic bombings to the war effort is far from settled; many consider Japan’s back to have been broken already and the argument about how many American lives were saved by unleashing the Holy Fire to be fatuous and self-serving. Although of course such momentous decisions are not based on a single factor, positioning the US in the postwar struggle with the Soviet Union may have been the more important reason to incinerate two Japanese cities. Having unleashed such a quantum leap in the potential for mass destruction on the world — and relying on terror every day since to prop up our superpower status — what moral standing do we have to make war on Iraq on the basis of its similar attempts to use WMD to jockey for geopolitical power? Unless you deny that there is a thread of moral continuity to US responsibility extending back as far as WWII (which continuity those claiming US moral superiority as the saviors of the free world, the “greatest generation” etc., rely upon), it is a compelling argument…

Alan Sondheim:

INTERNET TEXT is a meditation on the philosophy, psychology, political economy,

and psychoanalytics of Internet (computer) communication. It focuses on virtual subjectivity,

sexuality, community, and all aspects of computer interfacing…

The text consists of hundreds of sections written over a period of ten years,

a continuous meditation on cyberspace, emphasizing issues of interiority, subjectivity,

body, and language. The extended range of topics includes Net applications, as well as occasional

reference to the underlying architecture and protocols of telecommunications; this is the

materialist “gristle” that can’t be discarded in analysis.

The subject matter is in the form of “short-waves, long-waves.” The former are

the individual sections, written in a variety of styles. These texts are completely interrelated; on occasion

“characters” appear – these are _actants_ possessing philosophical or psychological

import. They also create and problematize narrative sub-structures within the work as

a whole…

The long-waves are fuzzy topoi on such issues as death, love, virtual embodiment,

the granularity of the real, and physical reality, which criss-cross the texts.

The resulting fragments and coagulations emerge from code and codework, surface and substrate.

The writing encompasses, past and present, but wagers the future as well;

the emphasis is on extended virtuality.

Read in any order, any direction. The text is resonant.

A reporting source sent this to Declan McCullagh’s Politech mailing list. TIPS, you will recall, is the administration plan to have us become informants on one another’s suspicious activities to assist the WoT®, Eastern-European style:

Teamsters President James Hoffa, Jr. is preparing to endorse the Bush administration’s TIPS plan, according to Washington sources close to the labor union. Teamsters is the largest union in the U.S. and its members include United Parcel Service (UPS) workers. The decision of the Teamsters to back TIPS is solely Hoffa’s, and no union vote was taken, or is planned, the source said. Many Teamsters are more left-of-center and are unhappy with Hoffa’s close relationship with Republicans and the Bush White House and view his pending endorsement of TIPS as an attempt to win favor with Bush, the source said.

Related: The Societal Costs of Surveillance

:

So the recent brainstorm by the Justice Department to enlist couriers, meter readers, cable installers and telephone repairmen to snoop on people’s private lives for anything “suspicious” dredged a cold and until now forgotten feeling from the pit of my stomach. Many have objected that such a program would violate civil liberties and basic American principles. But stoking people’s fear to set neighbor upon neighbor, service worker upon client, those who belong against those who don’t, does something more: it erodes the soul of the watcher and the watched, replacing healthy national pride with mute suspicion, breeding insular individuals more concerned with self-preservation than with society at large. Ultimately it creates a climate that is inherently antithetical to security. NY Times

Game Theory for Real People: ” ‘Our simple models are no longer sufficient,’ said an eminent game

theorist, who is calling for human passions and quirks to be taken into

account, too.” Wired

Thanks to Walker, I’m fed a steady diet of the virulent Dr. Dalrymple. Here’s the latest:

I had dinner with a medical school dean last week. A virologist of distinction, he told me that there recently had been an outbreak of Muslim fundamentalism in his medical school.

Female Muslim medical students had suddenly started to appear at classes clad in a full veil, with only a narrow slit for the eyes. Alarmed, the medical school authorities consulted the General Medical Council, the official body that supervises medical education in Britain. Fortunately, a pre-existing rule that the whole of a student’s or doctor’s face must be visible to patients undergoing examination allowed the school authorities to tell the veiled students that they must remove their veils or cease to study medicine.

They complied; and it subsequently emerged that they had never wanted to veil themselves in the first place but were pressured—or blackmailed—into adopting the custom by male Muslim medical students, among whom was a cleric. They were susceptible to blackmail because, just as intellectuals were once afraid to appear insufficiently left-wing (pas d’ennemis sur la gauche), so Muslims now fear appearing insufficiently rigorous and orthodox in their observance… [more] City Journal

I discovered this after a chance comment from a co-worker about some of the ingredients in pet food led me to some online research, and it floored me. Pay particular attention to the explanation of “digest of chicken by-products” in the first paragraph, and the explanation of why in the world you find the barbiturate sedative sodium pentabarbital in measurable amounts in cat food, in the third paragraph. The article is only for those with a strong stomach and an expansive capacity for outrage and revulsion. Then, if you’re a pet owner, find out how your chosen brand of pet food rates here

.

‘Technology Review magazine plans to announce a new service today that enables users to download an exact replica of the magazine to read at their leisure, placing the magazine among a fast-growing crowd of publications using this form of online distribution.

Compared with typical Web publishing, which uses formats designed specifically for reading on a computer screen, Technology Review and other publishers are transmitting electronic copies of their printed pages. Publishers see this service — variously called digital delivery, digital replicas or electronic editions — as a way to build both advertising and circulation revenue when few companies have been performing well in either category. And since digital delivery incurs negligible additional costs beyond the print version, publishers are greeting this new technology with an attitude of “why not?” ‘ NY Times

Hip Hop Confronts War:

Since Sept. 11 corporate media have regurgitated the government’s mindless pro-war propaganda. It’s not just CNN and NBC, though: big money rappers have fallen in line to rally ’round the flag, from Mystikal to R. Kelly to Wu-Tang Clan to MC Hammer.

…But luckily, underground hip hop is speaking out against the “war on terrorism,” operating, as Africa says, as town criers. WarTimes

George and Dick’s Amazing Corporate Misadventures: “A cheat sheet for President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s

alleged corporate malfeasance, from their days as corporate

executives at Harken and Halliburton.” AlterNet

Thomas Friedman:

‘Watching the pathetic, mealy-mouthed response of President Bush and his State Department to Egypt’s decision to sentence the leading Egyptian democracy advocate to seven years in prison leaves one wondering whether the whole Bush foreign policy team isn’t just a big bunch of phonies. Shame on all of them.

… This ties in with a larger concern that human rights activists share toward America today — a concern that post-9/11 America is not interested anymore in law and order, just order, and it’s not interested in peace and quiet, but just quiet. I am struck by how many Sri Lankans, who are as pro-American as they come, have made some version of this observation to me: America as an idea, as a source of optimism and as a beacon of liberty is critical to the world — but you Americans seem to have forgotten that since 9/11. You’ve stopped talking about who you are, and are only talking now about who you’re going to invade, oust or sanction.

These days, said Mrs. Coomaraswamy, “none of us in the human rights community would think of appealing to the U.S. for support for upholding a human rights case — maybe to Canada, to Norway or to Sweden — but not to the U.S. Before there were always three faces of America out in the world — the face of the Peace Corps, the America that helps others, the face of multinationals and the face of American military power.” ‘ NY Times op-ed [thanks to Richard Homonoff]

“Thoughts on my sister-in-law’s suicide” by film critic David Thomson. Salon

Higgy hasn’t been putting much up at his page lately, and I hadn’t noticed this piece sooner. Seizing on my delight at the Atlantic

piece on OuLiPian language antics, he gifts us with a pointer to a 1997 Wordways piece by Ross Eckler

which asks, is it is possible to “characterize in an objective way the relative difficulty of different sorts of constraint? Which ones should be cultivated more widely?” Thanks, higgy!

“Scott Ritter, the former head of the UN weapons inspectorate in Iraq, insists that the British and American people are being frog-marched towards an unnecessary war. He spoke to Mark Seddon.”

Ritter was head of the United Nations weapons inspectorate in Iraq from 1991 until 1998.

That makes this former American marine and CIA agent uniquely placed to assess the extent of the threat Iraq currently poses as George Bush continues to wage his “war on terrorism”.

I met the straight-talking Ritter when he was in London recently and he insisted that Saddam Hussein is largely a busted flush.

So Ritter represents a problem for the hawks in the Pentagon because American sabre-rattling indicates that another war against Iraq is likely.

However, the best that the US dirty tricks department can pin on Ritter – a veteran of the first Gulf War – is that he received funds for a documentary on Iraq from an American of Iraqi extraction. The Tribune

And: The writing on the wall:

“Civilisation began 8,000 years ago in what we now call Iraq. Since then have come glorious cultures, cruel tyrants, invasions. How do Iraqis regard the latest threat of war? Jonathan Glancey finds fatalism, a fearful loyalty to their warrior king, Saddam – and a sense of betrayal by Britain.” Guardian UK

IBM to enable Honda drivers to talk to cars SJ Mercury News [via Red Rock Eaters]

The Wacky World of Japanese Ice Cream: “Having succeeded globally with cars, electronics and even fashion, it was only natural the Japanese turned their hand to trying to surpass the West with one of its favorite culinary delights – ice cream.” Mainichi Daily News [via Red Rock Eaters]

Has to be mostly for export, as Westerners who have lived there assure me ice cream is not big in Japan, possibly because of the high prevalence of lactose-intolerance among the Japanese people. Several people independently have described to me their addiction to the exquisite shaved ice concoctions the Japanese appear to prefer.

“Newly released documents show that George W. Bush’s campaign paid for operatives who staged a riot in Miami that disrupted the counting of votes in November 2000. The new information is contained in hundreds of pages of financial records that the Bush campaign grudgingly released to the Internal Revenue Service 19 months after the Florida recount battle ended.” The Consortium

“In their explorations of artificial life, … Media Lab researchers have created what they call ‘Public Anemone,’ a sea creature that responds to stimuli like touch, motion and light. Near the tentacle creature are clumps of fiber optic wires that pull in if you touch them, just like an ordinary sea anemone.

Is this good artificial intelligence or good programming? ‘Is there a difference?’ responds Scott Senften, chair of Siggraph’s Emerging Technologies Exhibition.

This year’s exhibition was a meditation on human-machine interaction, as researchers from around the world demonstrated three kinds of projects: robots, machines that enhanced one or more of the five senses, and explorations of virtual reality.” Wired

“If traditional concert performances leave you sighing for more, you can look forward to an opera where musicians squeeze squishy embroidered balls, play soundless violins and bang on glowing bugs with antennae.

These hyper-instruments were developed by Tod Machover of MIT’s Media Lab in an attempt to break free of conventional musical instrument design. Building on technologies developed for Machover’s groundbreaking Brain Opera, these music toys enable children to engage in sophisticated listening, performing and composing activities normally accessible only after years of study.” Wired

If you use Outlook for email and have installed the security patch, you’ll discover that all of a sudden you are unable to receive any executable files as email attachments. Yes, I know they can propagate malicious code, but there are still reasons you might want to receive an executable from a trusted source. I discovered this in attempting to send code from one of my email accounts to another. The security update also blocks me from receiving .url files linking to webpages. Here’s a discussion of possible remedies, which range from simply changing the extension of the attachment before sending it; compressing your attachment into a zip file; using any of several downloadable utilities to restore control over which types of files you are willing to receive; to a registry edit that disables the “level 1” security fix on a per-filetype basis. Opening Attachments Blocked by the Microsoft Outlook E-mail Security Update:

‘The Outlook E-Mail Security Update (included in Office 2000 Service Pack 2) and Outlook 2002 block access to .exe, .com and other “dangerous” files. See Attachment Security for a list of the affected file types. You cannot open these files from Outlook, nor can you use Outlook to save them to your system. If you try to forward a message containing an .exe file, Outlook does not include the attachment in the forwarded message.

So what do you do when you receive an .exe file and must find a way to open it? There are several methods, depending on your version of Outlook.’

Frequently asked questions on the Seven Deadly Sins University of Leicester History of Art Dept. [via nonharmful

]

“It doesn’t look pretty: The United States ranks last among the world’s 28 top foreign aid donor countries, and its foreign assistance levels have dropped dramatically over the past 10 years, according to a United Nations report released this week.

The United Nations Human Development Report 2002, a wide-ranging report that includes both fascinating country statistics and a questionable development ranking of 137 nations, puts the United States well below Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan and even Spain and Portugal on the list of the biggest foreign aid donor countries relative to the size of their economies.” Miami Herald [thanks to Julie Ferguson]

“Not to suspect that a dirty little word lies at the center of the controversy spawned by the most recent Bush administration document on climate change. In the June EPA policy paper “Climate Action Report 2002,” the government admitted that climate change is not only real but getting worse, that human activities are the most likely cause, and that the negative consequences are real and dangerous, a clear and present threat. This dirty little word may have been the reason conservative leaders have privately pressed to have EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman fired from her position—for producing a document that provides the most realistic, scientifically accurate picture of the problem available from current research. This dirty little word may be the main reason President Bush is eternally trying to distance himself from this itchy environmental problem, this foreign cause touted by Russians, Europeans, and Japanese. The word: liability.

In terms of scale, the climate change issue will make any sort of environmental liability lawsuit filed in national or international courts to date seem like tarts and gingerbread.” Village Voice

“Thanks to the military’s Global Positioning System, border disputes — common in the nation’s frontier days — are making a comeback. The system, launched in the 1980s, is a cluster of 24 satellites, designed for targeting weapons and tracking troops. But in recent years it has revolutionized land surveys, making it easier and cheaper for even the smallest municipalities to pinpoint their boundaries.” MSNBC

If you use Outlook for email and have installed the security patch, you’ll discover that all of a sudden you are unable to receive any executable files as email attachments. Yes, I know they can propagate malicious code, but there are still reasons you might want to receive an executable from a trusted source. I discovered this in attempting to send code from one of my email accounts to another. The security update also blocks me from receiving .url files linking to webpages. Here’s a discussion of possible remedies, which range from simply changing the extension of the attachment before sending it; compressing your attachment into a zip file; using any of several downloadable utilities to restore control over which types of files you are willing to receive; to a registry edit that disables the “level 1” security fix on a per-filetype basis. Opening Attachments Blocked by the Microsoft Outlook E-mail Security Update:

‘The Outlook E-Mail Security Update (included in Office 2000 Service Pack 2) and Outlook 2002 block access to .exe, .com and other “dangerous” files. See Attachment Security for a list of the affected file types. You cannot open these files from Outlook, nor can you use Outlook to save them to your system. If you try to forward a message containing an .exe file, Outlook does not include the attachment in the forwarded message.

So what do you do when you receive an .exe file and must find a way to open it? There are several methods, depending on your version of Outlook.’

Intriguing thought from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing:

‘This week’s Onion is out, and I’ve created a bookmark file for Mozilla that will load every page in the new ish in its own tab. If you’ve got Moz, right-click/control-click [this link

] and select “Save Link Target As…” Save the file, then select Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks… Once the bookmarks window is open, select Tools –> Import… and choose the file. You’ll have a new bookmark, called “The Onion Aug 1 2002.” Select it and your Moz window will open up with all the pages of the new Onion in it.

Why do this? I dunno. I have an idea that there could be an RSS aggregator or similar that outputted Moz tab-bookmark files. Wouldn’t it be cool if every morning, you sat down to your browser and had a tab-file that would load up all the day’s news stories (say, every link from the previous day’s Boing Boing or Wired News or Slashdot) — click it before you take your shower, and by the time you’re done, voila, tabbed newspaper!’

What, you don’t use Mozilla?? Worth it for the nifty tabbed browsing interface alone, as well as the fact it’s not Micro$oft. And BloggerPro supports it well…

Bush ready to declare war. Considerable evidence of the requisite military buildup…

…including the building up of strategic oil reserves in the US to insulate the economy against an expected hike in oil prices that would follow the opening of hostilities.

Discreet inquiries have also been made about the availability of the oil tankers that would be needed to transport aviation and other fuel to the Gulf for use by US forces.

In a further indication that America is readying itself for war, large numbers of US Army military trucks have undergone rapid servicing by the Oshkosh Truck Corporation and have been seen being delivered by rail back to their bases painted in tan desert camouflage.

(British PM Tony) Blair yesterday faced new demands from all sides to publish the now notorious dossier of information on Saddam’s nuclear, biological and chemical armoury that he has been promising to unveil since spring… The long delay in publication has prompted suspicions that the dossier, which relies heavily on satellite pictures, is embarrassingly thin. Guardian UK

In bombing and invading Iraq, the US will abandon its age-old practice of no first strike. Of course, since the Bush team has kept up the unceasing, absurd rhetoric about there being a War on Terrorism® against a global threat (and of Iraqi complicity with al Qaeda, even though doubted by both the FBI and CIA in a rare showing of agreement… LA Times), they have a ready-made case that this is not a preemptive strike but rather a reactive one. And, of course, we do have a time-honored tradition of taking down regimes we find unfriendly with covert action. Doing it overtly — look at the military appropriation Bush asked for (and received almost everything he had asked for) last month — of course instead justifies a massive shot in the arm for the failing economy that is otherwise likely to be Bush’s lasting historical legacy, and a giveaway to boot to some of the Administration’s military-contractor best friends… and to the coffin-makers as well.

And the fact that no one is immune from danger of a first strike from the World’s Only Superpower® (and World’s Primary Rogue State) will probably stimulate, not discourage, the development of weapons of mass destruction with hoped-for deterrent value by all the other rogue states.

But real benefit to long-range US security doesn’t matter, as long as the image is right and the voters can finally see Bush as having some success. In the face of a double dip recession and his failure to otherwise deliver on his grandiose WoT® “vision”, and especially if he can finish Daddy’s War for him (with an administration made up largely of his Daddy’s old warhorses), it is (as the most hackneyed line in the media speculation about this war goes) not a question of if but only of when…

“What drugs have not destroyed, the war on them has”: ‘David Simon, creator of the searing new HBO series “The Wire,” on why even the best cop shows are phony and our anti-drug mania amounts to a permanent war against the underclass… HBO’s new series “The Wire” is as much a polemic against the drug war as it is an indictment against traditional cop-show conventions.’

What’s behind the basic plot of “The Wire”?

It’s very loosely based on the experiences of my co-writer, Ed Burns, who was a 20-year veteran of the police department here in Baltimore. He did a lot of these protracted investigations, often of more than a year’s time, into violent drug traffickers. It was largely based on his experiences and his frustrations in the department. And then it was also based on my experiences at my newspaper, which became a sort of hellish, futile bureaucracy. And then while we were writing the scripts, Enron was happening. And the Catholic Church. It became more of a treatise about institutions and individuals than a straight cop show.

Like “The Corner,” “The Wire” deals with the drug epidemic in Baltimore. Why do you keep coming back to this subject and this city?

I’ve lived in Baltimore coming up on 20 years. I know it. I actually went to the mayor and told him, “This is gonna be a pretty bleak show. If you’re sick of this shit, we’ll take our business elsewhere.” But to his credit, he said, Do it. Baltimore is one of the most drug-involved cities in the country. It has been for years. The police department we’re portraying is not particularly exaggerated for the late ’80s, early ’90s. It was that dysfunctional. [More] Salon

U.S. Challenged To Define Role In Afghanistan: “The lull in the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan has Afghans and Americans alike demanding that the U.S. military make clear what it is doing here and how much longer it plans to keep doing it.” Washington Post And: Special Forces take over hunt for al-Qaeda: “US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has ordered the head of US Special Forces to take over the hunt for senior al-Qaeda leaders following frustration in the Bush administration that the war on terror has run out of steam.” Guardian UK

“Overfishing of shark prey in the Atlantic Ocean means sharks are coming closer to shore to find food and may mistake swimmers for a meal, according to new research by United States oceanographers.” CNN

‘Reach out and touch the consumer advertising’:

“Next time a good-looking young couple asks you to take their picture, beware — they might work for the maker of the camera.

Cell phone maker Sony Ericsson has hired 120 actors and actresses across the country to play tourists and ask passers-by to take their picture with the company’s new T68i cell phone and an add-on digital camera.” CNN

Krugman: “On the surface, the sharp drop in the economy’s growth is disheartening. Under the surface, it’s quite a lot worse.” NY Times op-ed

“When you gaze at a bowl of fruit, why don’t some of the bananas look red, some of the apples look purple and some of the grapes look yellow?

This question isn’t as nonsensical as it may sound. When your brain processes the information coming from your eyes, it stores the information about an object’s shape in one place and information about its color in another. So it’s something of a miracle that the shapes and colors of each fruit are combined seamlessly into distinct objects when you look at them.”

Simson Garfinkel has more to say on the Yale-Princeton database-hacking controversy than the usual chuckles, head-wags and tongue-clucks it provokes — specifically, its implications for database design. “To provide even better security, Yale and Princeton could have used what’s called a translucent database, a term coined by author and cryptographer Peter Wayner in his new book by the same title.”

I’ve been enjoying Warblogger Watch, another of those compendium weblogs, probably because the worldview of the contributors fits mine so well. Cognitively, that should be a cause for concern, which is precisely what this post from July 29 discusses. Igor Boog means to lambast the warbloggers but we ‘peacebloggers’ should be chastened as well:

Douglas Adams in one of his books describes a program that allows the user to specify a conclusion in advance, and then constructs a plausible series of logical-sounding steps out of a collection of facts, to support this conclusion. (In Adams’ book, the program is sold exclusively to the Pentagon, for obvious reasons.)

Probably most people’s brains work like this fictional program, more or less. People have a certain worldview (in the broadest sense of the word), and information that supports or seems to support their particular view is “processed” easier and faster. Information that doesn’t “fit” and should make people scrutinize or even reconsider their worldview and conclusions is often repressed, the people who present this information are often attacked, vilified. [thanks, Adam!]

BTW, perhaps the most thoughtful warblogger-watch contributor of late, along with Boog, is Grady Oliver, in a refreshing change from his contributions to Like Father, Like Sun, a little too densely laden with one-issue contempt for the New York Sun as it appears to be.

In another of FmH’s famous loose associations, the cognitive issue issue Boog discusses above is really similar to the ‘epistemology of epidemiology’ [grin] problem discussed in this piece from the British Medical Journal:

Author conclusions in clinical trials funded by for profit organisations are more likely to favour experimental intervention than trials funded by not for profit organisations reveals a study in this week’s BMJ.

As the BMJ is one of a few journals which requires authors to declare funding and competing interests, the researchers used 159 trials published in the journal between 1997 and 2001 as the basis for their study. Each study was examined for a link between any competing interests and the author’s conclusions.

For the purpose of the trial the author’s conclusion was defined as ‘the interpretation of extent to which overall results favoured experimental intervention’. [via EurekAlert]

Keep in mind that “clinical trials funded by for profit organisations” is a euphemism for “…funded by drug companies” and that “favour(ing) experimental interventions” means that the study found favorable results from using that drug company’s product.

In my psychiatric work, I find one of the most urgent, painful and underemphasized issues is the stigmatization my patients and their families face and the impact that has on their quality of life and stability. This paper from BioMedNet [requires free registration] is a nice discussion of the issues and the impact of new genetic paradigms in understanding mental illness. Genetic bases of mental illness – a cure for stigma?

An increased emphasis on biological causes of mental illness has been viewed as having the potential to significantly reduce stigma. From this perspective, the current genetics revolution can be seen as a source of hope. However, some have argued that biological attributions could increase stigma, for example by making the ill person seem ‘defective’ or ‘physically distinct’ – ‘almost a different species’. In this paper, I use a multicomponent conceptualization of stigma as a guide in forming hypotheses about the likely impact of genetic attributions on the stigma of mental illness.

As recently emphasized by the US Surgeon General, people with mental illnesses suffer not only from their disorders, but also from the stigma and discrimination that accompany them. Mental illness is associated in the public mind with an astoundingly broad range of negative attributes – for example, being dangerous, dirty, cold, worthless, bad, weak and ignorant. The consequences of these stereotypes range from direct and obvious ones, such as discrimination in employment and housing, to informal social ostracization and more subtle expressions, such as television programs that portray people with mental illness as being inadequate, unlikable and dangerous. Family members also suffer from stigma, through blame for causing the illness, having their own mental health status questioned, rejection by friends and other relatives, and so on.

Here’s a gallery of amateur photographers’ lovely aurora photographs from around North America, as far south as Des Moines, Iowa, last week. “On August 1st, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) near Earth suddenly turned south–a condition that renders Earth’s magnetosphere vulnerable to solar wind gusts. A G2-class geomagnetic storm began soon after. Sky watchers in Canada and parts of the United States saw colorful auroras.”

My son has just undergone that crucial rite of passage in an English-speaking childhood — becoming aware of “antidisestablishmentarianism”. The word, that is, not the movement. As a topic, it is very difficult to use in conversation, and my experience of bemused frustration at Noah’s asking me what the word means in the real world suddenly explains the pained looks I recall on my father’s and mother’s faces at analogous moments in my own childhood. Here, Dan Hartung actually manages to find a way to reference antidisestablishmentarianism in a meaningful (?) way in a weblog. Anyone know of any earlier reasonable weblog examples? The word does have a weighty web presence, as this Google search shows. Some of the usages are even in earnest…

The front page of the Boston Globe is dismal today:

• With heart attack victim aboard, T train stops twice: “A man suffering a heart attack yesterday morning was kept aboard an MBTA commuter train that made two scheduled stops before reaching waiting paramedics at Back Bay Station in Boston as horrified passengers implored the crew to bypass the stations.” [Addendum: this link does not seem to be available anymore at the Boston Globe website.]
• The beached whales return to shore; many die despite rescuers’ futile efforts, to the horror of throngs of vacationing onlookers. [And to think I was jubilant yesterday…]
• Massachusetts is cutting reimbursement rates for “MassHealth” (Medicaid) prescriptions, prompting the three pharmacy chains that together account for the bulk of Massachusetts prescription fulfillment to threaten to stop filling MassHealth patients’ prescriptions. The Speaker of the House sneers that the “taxpayers” have had enough of subsidizing the poor in this way. Admittedly, MassHealth expenditures are growing at around 10% a year and are already the single largest expenditure line in the state budget, but if Medicaid recipients can’t fill their prescriptions in their neighborhoods, thousands will go without medications, literally consigning some to death.

  Instead of squeezing Medicaid recipients between the rock and hard place of the “taxpayers” and the profit margin of the retail pharmacy chains, Massachusetts (which was one of the states that was most adamant about going after Big Tobacco when Scott Harshbarger was attorney general), ought to go to the source — this is largely a problem of the rapacity of the pharmaceutical manufacturers. Putting pharmacies out of business, gouging ‘bottomless’ entitlement programs, and using poor medication-dependent patients as life-and-death pawns are just business as usual, until pricing policy for Medicaid patients’ drugs is made an issue just as the pricing of AIDS drugs for Africa has been.

By Attacking Bush, Kerry Sets Himself Apart: “For many Democrats, the war on terrorism has made that kind of frontal assault on Bush foreign policy seem risky, if not politically suicidal. But not for Mr. Kerry. A decorated Vietnam veteran and potential presidential candidate, he has lustily attacked the administration on policies like trans-Atlantic relations, Pentagon spending, Middle East negotiations and even Mr. Bush’s greatest triumph, Afghanistan.” NY Times

PhotoshopContest.com: “Here you can take a pre-chosen image, alter it how ever you like and post it for others to view, vote, comment and submit their own versions. The images that we select for editing can come from anywhere, such as news, sports, a random keyword search, anything!”

After Treatment for Mental Illness, Fight for Insurance Often Follows:

“The social stigma surrounding mental illness may have eased, but many insurers are still reluctant to issue individual policies to people with a psychiatric history — be it depression, anxiety or more serious conditions like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

A record of treatment for any of those conditions can make a person ineligible for long-term disability insurance and complicate efforts to obtain health insurance. Though life insurers rarely decline people with psychiatric problems, they may refuse to offer the low-cost “preferred” rates intended for healthy nonsmokers.” NY Times

A Protected Space, Where Art Comes Calling:

If Dr. Janos Marton ran the world, there would be protected spaces everywhere for people with mental illness to create paintings and sculptures, drawings and lithographs, installations, murals and collages, poetry and novels, songs and symphonies.

The abandoned buildings on the grounds of old state hospitals would be turned into sheltered workshops.

Warehouses in urban centers, where the mentally ill pace the streets and scrounge meals from garbage cans, would become safe harbors, working studios filled with color and form.

Delusion and hallucination, pain and sorrow, fear and manic exuberance would find their outlet in something quite simple, the creation of works of art.

Dr. Marton’s vision is hardly an idle one. At the Living Museum, housed in Building 75 of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, the state hospital’s former main kitchen and dining areas, he is the director of just such an “art asylum,” a refuge where in the 19 years since the museum opened more than 800 men and women have shed their identities as psychiatric patients and bloomed instead as artists…

In a recent interview, Dr. Marton discussed the museum’s goals and the relationship between art and mental illness… NY Times

Detailed Images of Nerves, Other Soft Tissues: “A new technology that allows physicians and researchers to make detailed, three-dimensional maps of nerve pathways in the brain, heart muscle fibers, and other soft tissues has been licensed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The new imaging technology, called Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DT-MRI) was invented by researchers now at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). DT-MRI may allow physicians and researchers to better understand and diagnose a wide range of medical conditions such as stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), multiple sclerosis (MS), autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD), and schizophrenia.” National Institutes of Health press release

NPR’s The Connection considers Andropause: “If you’re over forty and a man, it could be coming to your body soon. Andropause, or male menopause. Symptoms include fatigue, moodiness, and decreased sex-drive.

But wait, from the industry that can lift you up, calm you down, re-grow your hair, even give Bob Dole back his sex life, comes the latest effort to medicalize the living.

Death and taxes may be certain, but not middle age, if you believe the hype from the makers of testosterone replacement therapies. Take “T” and regain the form and function of a twenty year-old.” A discussion between Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical School, who authored a New Yorker article, “Hormones for Men”, which is apparently no longer online; and geriatric endocrinologist Dr. John Morley of St. Louis University. [Listen].

An American Terrorist: “He’s an assassin who fled the country. Could he help Washington now?” The New Yorker

Look at that Asteroid: “Relax, there’s no danger of a collision, but it will be close enough to see through binoculars: a big space rock, not far from Earth.” NASA

… of Being Colin Powell: “Colin Powell has lost virtually every major policy battle to the

most reckless, single-minded members of the administration. So

why does he stay? ” AlterNet

Several Stranded Whales Die at Cape Cod Beach: “More than 50 pilot whales beached themselves on a stretch of Cape Cod sand Monday and nine of them died before vacationers and other volunteers could push the animals back out to deeper water in a feverish rescue effort.” NY Times The headline should have emphasized that the vacationers and volunteers had saved 41 of the 50.

8 Years After Invasion, Haiti Squalor Worsens: “A decision by the U.S. and European countries to block some $500 million in Haitian aid in order to encourage greater democracy has deepened Haiti’s poverty, critics say.” NY Times

“Military officials confirm that two F-16 jets from Andrews Air Force Base were scrambled early yesterday after radar detected an unknown aircraft in area airspace. But they scoff at the idea that the jets were chasing a strange and speedy, blue unidentified flying object.

…At the same time, military officials say they do not know just what the jets were chasing, because whatever it was disappeared. “There are any number of scenarios, but we don’t know what it was,” said Maj. Barry Venable, another spokesman for NORAD.

… Radar detected a low, slow-flying aircraft about 1 a.m. yesterday, according to a military official. Controllers were unable to establish radio communication with the unidentified aircraft, and NORAD was notified. When the F-16s carrying air-to-air missiles were launched from Andrews, the unidentified aircraft’s track faded from the radar, the military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

… (One observer) remains convinced that what he saw was not routine. “It looked like a shooting star with no trailing mist,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”Washington Post

Let’s see, it appeared on radar, so it wasn’t an optical illusion. The civilian’s observation that it looked like a ‘shooting star with no trailing mist’ suggests it may indeed have been a meteor, which disappeared when it vaporized. At least it’s probably not Al Qaeda [although of course if you’re not with us you’re against us].

“Saudi Arabia is

teetering on the brink of collapse, fuelling Foreign Office fears of an extremist takeover of one of the West’s key allies in the war on terror.

Anti-government demonstrations have swept the desert kingdom in the past months in protest at the pro-American stance of the de facto ruler, Prince Abdullah.

At the same time, Whitehall officials are concerned that Abdullah could face a palace coup from elements within the royal family sympathetic to al-Qaeda.

Saudi sources said the Pentagon had recently sponsored a secret conference to look at options if the royal family fell.” Guardian UK

Daniel Kurtzman, San Francisco writer and former Washington political correspondent: Bush channels George Orwell: “Here’s a question for constitutional scholars: Can a sitting president be charged with plagiarism?

As President Bush wages his war against terrorism and moves to create a huge homeland security apparatus, he appears to be borrowing heavily, if not ripping off ideas outright, from George Orwell. The work in question is “1984, ” the prophetic novel about a government that controls the masses by spreading propaganda, cracking down on subversive thought and altering history to suit its needs. It was intended to be read as a warning about the evils of totalitarianism — not a how-to manual.” SF Chronicle

William Safire’s take on “Blog” in his On Language column in the Sunday New York Times. Nothing special here, except that it took him so long to notice.

I was disappointed that he hasn’t caught wind of my use of blink, originally suggested to me by my friend Abby shortly after I started FmH. It is probably time for my annual reexplanation for FmH readers who may puzzle over this idiosyncratic usage of mine — which as far as I can tell has only caught on with one other weblogger. Blink: Just as a blog is a weblog, a blink is a web link. Continuing the wordplay, just as “we_blog” (instead of logging), “we_blink” (instead of simply linking).

Does your weblog own you?

A ‘bloody stupid idea’?:

“Among the the cream of Britain’s bloggers is one who will not be taking part.

Tom Coates, the current holder of the European Blogger of the Year award for plasticbag.org, has announced on his site that the competition is a “bloody stupid idea”, and that he will be boycotting it.” Guardian UK

Containment seen less risky than attack: “Despite President Bush’s repeated bellicose statements about Iraq, many senior U.S. military officers contend that President Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat and that the United States should continue its policy of containment rather than invade Iraq to force a change of leadership in Baghdad.” Washington Post

Pesticide-free, non-genetically modified food is a big, global business now. But, ironically, small farmers are getting the shaft. Salon

What does Mozart mean now? Guardian UK

Scott Anderson: “Bush’s bioethics czar Leon Kass wants to criminalize lifesaving medical research as violating the natural order of things. Would he have opposed wiping out smallpox?” Salon

Martin Amis on the relevance of fiction after 9-11:

‘After September 11, then, writers faced quantitative change, but not qualitative change. In the following days and weeks, the voices coming from their rooms were very quiet; still, they were individual voices, and playfully rational, all espousing the ideology of no ideology. They stood in eternal opposition to the voice of the lonely crowd, which, with its yearning for both power and effacement, is the most desolate sound you will ever hear. “Desolate”: “giving an impression of bleak and dismal emptiness… from L. desolat-, desolare ‘abandon’, from de- ‘thoroughly’ solus ‘alone’.” ‘ Guardian UK

Elephant feet made for talking?: ‘Elephants may be listening to and communicating with each other through their feet.

Recent research by US scientists supports previous claims that elephants can interpret slight vibrations they pick up in the ground.

Speaking to BBC World Service, Stanford University biologist Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell, said: “For people who have spent time studying elephants, this is a relief.

“They finally understand some strange things that were happening with elephants and they really are excited about it.’ BBC [via RobotWisdom]

Via loose association, a piece about someone who doesn’t have his ear to the ground:

The Rogue Elephant: Bush Jr.’s Nuclear Sabre-Rattling — Francis Boyle on his contempt for international law. Counterpunch [also via RobotWisdom]