Sopranos mob ready to return: “…Sopranos devotees are probably … miserable considering the nearly 16-month wait they will have had to endure for new episodes of their favorite show. The down time between Sopranos seasons typically has been lengthier than the TV norm, but this one was extended even longer by HBO bigwigs who sought to avoid summer scheduling conflicts with its other popular Sunday-night series, Sex and the City. The show is scheduled to resume Sept. 15.” Offering only the most meager of hints about the direction the show will take, they’ve wrapped up shooting the season, the show’s fifth and, quite possibly its last. David Chase, Sopranos creator, is calling it quits, although he cautions that HBO owns the show and can continue it without him, a prospect none of the cast find palatable however. Contra Costa Times [via randomWalks] [Oh darn; after five years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, Dr Melfi would just be beginning to get somewhere with Tony Soprano! — FmH]

blog.meetup.com is a means of organizing ‘meetups’ of local webloggers in an area; they’ve designated venues in your region (search for the closest by entering your zipcode) and pinned down a time, then local webloggers who are interested have voted on where their local meetup will occur. Currently, “meetups are ready to happen in 540 cities in 22 countries”; 1642 webloggers have enrolled; an RSVP system lets others in your areas know if anyone has confirmed that they’ll be coming to the local meetup so that you won’t be the only one who shows up.

Pfizer to Buy Large Drug Rival in $60 Billion Deal:

“The drug giant Pfizer Inc. has agreed to acquire the Pharmacia Corporation for stock that it valued at about $60 billion, in a deal that would make it by far the most dominant drug maker in the world, the companies announced today….

Drug companies, under intense pressure from politicians, employers and managed care companies to limit price increases, are having a hard time finding breakthrough products that would assure the robust earnings growth investors demand. Pfizer’s acquisition of Pharmacia, resulting in a company that would still control only 11 percent of the global market, is likely to hasten the industry’s continued consolidation.” NY Times

Related: This analysis of pharmaceutical industry research and development woes from The Economist [blink courtesy of David Brake] delves more deeply into one of the strong pressures behind acquisition and merger in the industry, as the New York Times story above suggests.

Essentially: pharmaceutical company shares are falling faster than the Dow. Several drug giants are among the companies whose ‘creative accounting practices’ and anti-competitive behaviors are taking them dangerously close to regulatory discipline if not grand jury scrutiny. As the industry is more concentrated and the profit-and-loss statement relies more and more heavily on one or just a few big-earning medications in a company’s stable, it becomes disastrous to face expiring patents and generic equivalents — as with the ongoing desperation of Eli Lilly to cushion itself over the loss of Prozac profits — or product glitches — such as the recent sea change around HRT or unacceptable side effects found late in a drug’s R&D cycle or even not until post-marketing surveillance. There is thus more and more pressure on drug companies to develop the next new blockbuster, while development costs, especially the costs of necessary clinical trials, are climbing. “(I)t is not that (the pharmaceutical companies) have become much worse at delivering new drugs, but rather that they have not become much better.” One estimate is that each company has to develop roughly three new drugs per year for the balance sheets to remain healthy; current R&D performance is around half that level.

Under such circumstances, I keep saying, prescribing physicians and the drug-consumer public should be alert to the ways in which drug company profitability requires that they shove questionable advances down our throats… literally. Although I would be the first to resist a cost-containment effort that would reduce patient access to a truly superior pharmaceutical, one should always question one’s doctor on the advantages the Next Great Thing s/he’s prescribing has over the tried and true, gold-standard medication with the same purpose.

Eat right to stay bright:

“Elderly rats that eat certain fruits and vegetables stay smarter than rats that don’t, according to two new University of South Florida studies.

While the jury is still out on humans, the studies, to be published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, offer evidence that eating foods high in antioxidants may reverse the cognitive effects of aging.”

St Petersburg Times

And: Crime and Nourishment:

“I was very interested to read the recent British research showing that giving basic nutrients to young offenders significantly reduced their criminal tendencies. The idea that the answer to the youth crime epidemic in the UK may be found on the shelves of our local health food store might seem a little far-fetched, but there is good reason to believe there is some truth in this. It is a plain and simple fact that our mood and behaviour are, to a degree, dependent on the nutrients the brain gets from the diet. No wonder then that more and more research is stacking up to suggest that altering this organ’s fuel supply can take the edge off a tendency towards delinquency.” Guardian UK

Also: His-and-Her Hunger Pangs: Gender affects the brain’s response to food: “Women have higher rates of obesity and eating disorders than men do, but scientists don’t know why. New findings offer clues to the root of sex differences in eating behaviors. The study showed that men’s and women’s brains react differently to hunger, as well as to satiation.” Science News

[thanks to David Walker]

Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics

The use of psychedelic drugs is that dark little secret behind the popular origins of Eastern spirituality in America, but if they really open the mind in the same ways meditative experiences do, why shouldn’t they be legitimated and brought out into the open? In Allan Hunt Badiner and Alex Grey’s Zig Zag Zen authors, artists, priests, and scientists are brought together to discuss this question. Opinions fall on all sides. Ram Dass, for instance, discusses the benefits as well as the limitations. Rick Strassman outlines his work in the first federally funded psychedelic study in two-and-a-half decades. Rick Fields sets the historical scene. China Galland offers a wrenching personal experience. Robert Jesse introduces the varieties of entheogens, drugs that engender mystical states. Lama Surya Das tells of his early drug years. And a roundtable discussion with Ram Dass, Robert Aitken, Richard Baker, and Joan Halifax caps it all.

Interspersed throughout are stunning full-page, full-color images of spiritual art by the likes of Robert Beer, Bernard Maisner, and, of course, Alex Gray. A fascinating look at a complex topic, Zig Zag Zen is worth appreciating and pondering. amazon.com

“Sixty- to 70-story office buildings, stores, cultural centers and a memorial to the dead are included in six alternative proposals for the World Trade Center site that will be released on Tuesday.

Officials familiar with the proposals said that all six would replace the 11 million square feet of office and retail space lost in the Sept. 11 attack with a cluster of buildings much shorter than the 110-story twin towers.” Nando Times

Woman sentenced to 4 years in dog mauling case: “A judge sentenced Marjorie Knoller to the maximum four years in prison Monday for the dog mauling death of her neighbor in their apartment building last year.” Nando Times

D.C. police say 9 motorists hurt, possibly by blowgun darts: “Several drivers in the nation’s capital were hit with sharp projectiles, perhaps darts fired from a blowgun…In three cases, the six-inch long, razor-sharp projectiles had to be surgically removed.” Nando Times

Coulter’s critics descend to her level: ” Ann Coulter’s new book, Slander, is full of egregious jargon and outrageous attempts at deception. Unfortunately, rather than claiming the high ground, several critics on television and in print have descended to her level, attacking Coulter in a manner that only supports some of her most outrageous claims about liberals.” Spinsanity

Justice Dept readies national informant system: “Everywhere in America, a concerned worker can call a toll-free number and be connected directly to a hotline routing calls to the proper law enforcement agency or other responder organizations when appropriate.” When this operation is up and running, the US will have more potential informants than East Germany’s Stasi did at the height of its power.

Israeli military releases another baby photo: I missed my chance to blink to the first one, but I won’t repeat the same mistake twice! Of course, that one was “just a joke”, acording to the family of the infant. CNN

Beware Bush’s summer charm offensive: ‘The American administration has rethought missile defence and plans a fresh drive to sell a new system to “protect friends and allies”. Will this win the critics over?’ Guardian UK

“Humans possess a gene which acts as a defence against infection by HIV, scientists have found.” The gene, CEM15, can stop the HIV virus from replicating if it is not interfered with by a protein, Vif, produced by the virus. This suggests new strategies — either finding the gene product of CEM15, which the article does not hint at, and replicating its function, or finding a way to inactivate Vif’s inactivation of the CEM15 gene — to fight HIV infection.

BBC

Christopher Hitchens writes:

‘…(T)he existence of a vast pedophile ring in the United States in the twenty-first century is something more than an affront to “family values.” And the fact that this ring is operated by named and senior churchmen, who continue to hold high office and to officiate at Sunday ceremonies, is something more than an outrage. Alleged “cultists” in Waco, Texas, who were only suspected of maltreating children inside their compound, were immolated by a bombardment of federal fire. The admitted and confessed enablers and protectors of rapists and child abusers are invited, at the most, only to resign their high offices.’ Free Inquiry

A teetotaler’s guide to social drinking: ‘Giving up alcohol can be addictive. It starts in the most innocuous way. You merely want to lose some weight, or perhaps to gain some health, and you decide to stop drinking, just for a week or so. Before you know it, you are hooked on the regular rushes of well-being brought on by abstinence. You are seduced by your improved appearance, or you crave yet another full night’s sleep, uninterrupted by the nonspecific anxiety that used to wake you at four in the morning. Above all, there is the novelty of having mental clarity by day. You cannot imagine life without it.

The only trouble is that you remember all too well how irritating you used to find it during your own drinking days when some killjoy said, “Not for me, thanks—I’m on mineral water.” Drinkers mind if one among them is not drinking. Like death, drink is a great leveler. Sobriety immediately introduces a hierarchy. ‘ The Atlantic

“A crop of new books assesses why our collective hopes for marital bliss have soured and what might be done about it. Viewed together, they reflect a surprising consensus that has emerged of late between liberals and conservatives over the virtues of, if not the road to, holy matrimony. It’s a consensus that’s been largely overshadowed by recent partisan debates over whether the government should be getting involved in such private decisions as to whether poor people ought to get married. But this new development represents something of a détente in the 30-year culture war over gender roles, family values, and the meaning of tying the knot.” Washington Monthly

“The gene and the quantum were conceived at the same time as Freud conceived the unconscious; yet, although they have led to sophisticated technologies, psychology and psychiatry, by most standards, are failures. More people than ever are on anti-depressants; drug abuse is rampant; psychotherapies don’t work; our jails are fuller than ever.

What happened? Where did it all go wrong? Jerome Kagan, a professor of psychology at Harvard, thinks he has an answer. In his newly published book, Surprise, Uncertainty and Mental Structures, he argues that we have been ignoring what goes on inside our heads.” New Statesman

‘While other fields in biology advance rapidly, behavioral pharmacology is inappropriately stagnant, and animal models now used are fast becoming obselete, today argued a leading expert. But such models are still useful for screening new candidate drugs, others countered.

Psychiatric disorders are defined by changes in behavior, so researchers have used behavioral animal models for preclinical drug development. But with new information in genetics, biochemistry and physiology, “is it still appropriate to emphasize behavior?” asked David Sanger, a researcher at Sanofi-Synthelabo Research in Bagneux, France.’ BioMedNet

Comments on 2156: a discussion about ‘blatant ignorance of the blogging A-list’ on Metafilter: “Is it ever important to be aware of the history of a community, or as the community evolves is the present the only thing that counts?” I once got chastised online for not knowing who Matt Haughey was… And here’s a discussion, starting out between Jason Kottke (“MetaFilter is now neither meta nor filter…”) and Haughey (“Everyday I think about shutting down the site more and more…The site has definitely grown beyond what it was designed for…”) reflecting on the vast influx of new users after September 11th..

Malcolm Muggeridge: Søren Kierkegaard: The Oddest Prophet:

“The prophets, when they appear on our earthly scene, are rarely as expected. A king is awaited, and there is a birth in a manger. The venerable, the bearded, the portentous are usually spurious.

One of the oddest prophets ever was Søren Kierkegaard – a melancholic Dane, a kind of clipperty-clop, ribald Hamlet who from the middle of the last century peered quizzically into this one, dryly noting, before they happened, such tragicomic phenomena of our time as universal suffrage, mass media and affluence abounding.”

Text of an Amnesty International report calling for an end to the suicide bombings [or homicide bombings, as some prefer to emphasize]; and Independent UK

coverage of AI’s denunciation of the bombings as ‘crimes against humanity’. [links courtesy of Also Not Found…]

inspired by warchalking, is a way to improvise region-sensible blog-searching, which might be useful for a variety of reasons (even if you don’t have, as the author of the site does, a burning desire to orchestrate ‘real meetings’ with webloggers who live physically nearby). So I’m adding region-specific information to the keywords for FmH. But, as the site explains, most search engines do not associate the META tag keywords with a page when they index it. So, as suggested, I’m pasting my keywords into a simple post for the indexing pleasure of Google and others:

weblog; blog; edgy; social commentary,

criticism, conjunctions conundrums, outrage; recent scientific, technical healthcare developments; exciting

artistic cultural news; human pathos, whimsy, folly, darkness depravity; blogchalk: English-speaking USA/Boston/Brookline

[What other keywords for FmH should I add to the list? Best contributions will be acknowledged in print.]

News analysis: The Effects of Arming Pilots: “The bill passed by the House of Representatives to give guns to pilots would have effects far beyond the cockpits and cabins of jetliners, legal experts said.

It would drastically limit the legal liability of airlines, for example, shielding them even from negligence not involving guns or terrorism, said some critics of the bill.” NY Times

Andrew Walcoff: Why I’d been looking forward to radiation so eagerly: “When someone from the hospital called me in May to notify me that the radiation treatment would start in early July, I grew excited and began to look forward to it as one might look forward to a vacation. Those considering a career in law may want to consider this before signing up for the LSATs.” Slate

Looks like the New Yorker was wrong and the New Agey gurus were right, writes Mickey Kaus with more than a hint of schadenfreude: “As Slate‘s Emily Yoffe notes, the dramatic recent finding on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for women — it was thought to decrease heart disease and increase breast cancer, but it turns out to increase both — was a victory for the New Agey celebrity Dr. Susan Love, who’s been questioning HRT for years. It was also a victory for the pandering pols who placated the feminist lobby by funding the massive Women’s Health Initiative, which included one of the seemingly decisive HRT studies — and for the politicized Food and Drug Administration, which overruled its own advisory panel and ordered more studies before HRT could be sold as a way to prevent heart trouble. … But there were losers too, and not just Wyeth, the maker of Prempro, a hormone replacement. It also looks as if the estimable Malcolm Gladwell was wrong when he attacked Dr. Love in what seemed at the time a devastating 1997 New Yorker article (available on Gladwell’s Web site) with the subtitle “How Wrong is Dr. Susan Love?” Slate

A Mob Case, and a Scene Straight Out of Hollywood: “Steven Seagal, the action film star cited as a Mafia extortion target, has told investigators that after he stopped working with his longtime producer he was ordered into a car in Brooklyn last year and shuttled to a landmark restaurant where he was threatened by mobsters, according to officials and lawyers involved in the case.

He was so intimidated, he recounted, that he agreed to turn over $700,000, although investigators are still trying to trace the money

…By various opposing accounts, the peculiar tale may shape up as a battle for control over the actor between a Mafia extortion crew, which threatened his life, and Buddhist advisers who voiced concern for his afterlife.” NY Times [thanks, Richard, who asked, “Surely, you are going to include this article in FmH.”] [And I’ll never be able to see a listing for a Seagal film again without a guffaw…]

What (Kind Of) a Doll (Is This?)!: “She looks like a doll and feels like a doll, but Toy Quest’s Cindy

Smart is much, much more. Her 16-bit microprocessor, which allows her

to, among other things, discern colors, sets her apart from the rest.” Wired

‘While other fields in biology advance rapidly, behavioral pharmacology is inappropriately stagnant, and animal models now used are fast becoming obselete, today argued a leading expert. But such models are still useful for screening new candidate drugs, others countered.

Psychiatric disorders are defined by changes in behavior, so researchers have used behavioral animal models for preclinical drug development. But with new information in genetics, biochemistry and physiology, “is it still appropriate to emphasize behavior?” asked David Sanger, a researcher at Sanofi-Synthelabo Research in Bagneux, France.’ BioMedNet

Review of the Olympia Soundbug, a device about which I wrote several months ago that turns any flat surface into a speaker when attached to it by suction cups. Bottom line: as you might expect, the sound quality varies with the characteristics of the surface to which you attach it. Glass is quite good, suggesting you can make the windows of your cars your speaker system — although the sounds will resonate both outward and inward. infoSync

‘With that ominous echo of McCarthyism, Stanley Fish, postmodern provocateur and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, begins his defense of postmodernism in a symposium in the summer issue of The Responsive Community, a quarterly political journal edited by Amitai Etzioni.

Clearly, Mr. Fish continues, no one has yet threatened to treat postmodernists like traitorous Communists, but “it’s only a matter of time,” he says. A new version of “America, love it or leave it!” is in the making, he claims, “and the drumbeat is growing louder.” A “few professors of literature, history, and sociology,” he asserts, are now being told that they are directly responsible for “the weakening of the nation’s moral fiber” and that they are indirectly responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

…Mr. Fish, fearing the growing drumbeat, has mounted a campaign to defend pomo. His views are the focus of the journal’s symposium, “Can Postmodernists Condemn Terrorism?,” in which his often idiosyncratic interpretations are challenged by academic luminaries like Richard Rorty, Benjamin R. Barber and Cass Sunstein. Mr. Fish also raises the pomo flag in “Postmodern Warfare: The Ignorance of Our Warrior Intellectuals,” a cover article in the July issue of Harper’s magazine.’ NY Times

Naturally, Jonah Goldberg, editor of The National Review Online, takes on Fish, arguing essentially that moral relativism is too dangerous an idea to play with under current circumstances:

Alas, when it comes to the world of ideas… — politics, philosophy, cultural criticism, art, and so on — we don’t just merely permit so much as actively encourage people to explore any idea they like. As a society we typically think this is wonderful because we believe in freedom of thought, speech, conscience, etc. And, if you’re going to frame the issue as one of government interference versus my unadulterated right to speak, write, read, and think as I wish, then it is a wonderful thing, on the whole.

But beneath all the clichés, posturing and, breast-beating from “lovers of liberty” and civil libertarians of all parties, there’s an inescapable fact. Some ideas are dangerous. If you are a reasonable person, you will concede this point — even if you disagree with me on which ideas were dangerous. My list includes those notions which constitute the cores of Nazism, Stalinism, communism, postmodernism, Maoism, relativism, scientific socialism, Hale-Boppism, running-with-scissorsism, et al. If you’re on the left you might take a few of those off and add capitalism, conservatism, manifest destiny, whatever.

Believe it or not…

“A prehistoric skull touted as the oldest human remains ever found is probably not the head of the earliest member of the human family but of an ancient female gorilla, a French scientist said on Friday.

Brigitte Senut of the Natural History Museum in Paris said certain aspects of the skull, whose discovery in Chad was announced on Wednesday, were actually sexual characteristics of female gorillas rather than indications of a human character.” Wired

Sesame Street to Introduce HIV-Positive Muppet: “Sesame Street will soon introduce its first HIV-positive Muppet character to children of South Africa, where one in nine people have the virus that can lead to AIDS… (T)alks are under way to introduce an HIV-positive character to U.S. viewers. ” Yahoo! News

In Tough Times, a Company Finds Profits in Terror War: “The Halliburton Company, the oil services company bedeviled lately by an array of accounting issues, is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism.” NY Times

Nicholas Kristof: “When someone expert in bio-warfare mailed anthrax last fall, it may not have been the first time he had struck.” NY Times op-ed

Painting by Vuillard



Two dumpy women with buns were drinking coffee

In a narrow kitchen—at least I think a kitchen

And I think it was whitewashed, in spite of all the shade.

They were flat brown, they were as brown as coffee.

Wearing brown muslin? I really could not tell.

How I loved this painting, they had grown so old

That everything had got less complicated,

Brown clothes and shade in a sunken whitewashed kitchen.



But it’s not like that for me: age is not simpler

Or less enjoyable, not dark, not whitewashed.

The people sitting on the marble steps

Of the national gallery, people in the sunlight,

A party of handsome children eating lunch

And drinking chocolate milk, and a young woman

Whose t-shirt bears the defiant word WHATEVER,

And wrinkled folk with visored hats and cameras

Are vivid, they are not browned, not in the least,

But if they do not look like coffee they look

As pungent and startling as good strong coffee tastes,

Possibly mixed with chicory. And no cream.







—Thom Gunn

Why Pat Buchanan’s new magazine will be a surefire failure

And Raimondo is not the only one trying his hand at far-left/far-right synergy. On the University of California, San Diego, campus, David Duke’s supporters have distributed flyers on “Israeli genocide.” Lefty Pacifica Radio broadcasts right-wingers who rail against elites, including recordings of the late conspiracy theorist Anthony Sutton. Thomas Fleming, the editor of the paleocon Chronicles, told me, “I agree with environmentalists on chain stores, fast food, and the Americanization of Europe. I don’t even bother calling myself a conservative anymore.” Over the course of the ’90s the anti-globalization critique that started on the right with Buchanan’s 1992 and 1996 presidential runs migrated left. And 9/11, which has forever linked opposition to globalization to opposition to the war on terrorism, was the final straw. The Buchananites may not want to admit it, but in the post-9/11 era, as during the cold war, the prominent critiques of American internationalism will come from the left. The New Republic

“An upcoming shuttle mission will carry small columns of sand into space — and will return with valuable lessons for earthquake engineers, farmers and physicists.” NASA

Snakehead Fish Were Dumped Into Pond, Officials Say. ‘…(A)n individual had dumped two northern snakehead fish into a drainage pond behind a suburban shopping center after the creatures got too big for their aquarium. Yesterday, state biologists returned to the pond and caught a half-dozen more baby snakeheads after they electro-shocked the water. All in all, it was not a promising discovery. Two adult snakeheads and several babies have been caught in recent weeks.

“We could very easily be talking about hundreds, if not more, juveniles in the pond,” said Eric Schwaab, head of fisheries for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. ‘ Washington Post

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Evil:

‘ “9-11 resembled cheap, lazy fiction,” says horror author Neil Gaiman, whose slim volume Coraline is already being called the scariest novel of the year, “and because it did, it made it strange for writers to decide what is valid artistically.”

Gaiman’s domain is often looked down upon as hack work, but the attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent social dislocation have dovetailed precisely with the field’s new themes. After a spasm of doubt within the genre, which was just beginning to find new voices and readers at the close of a decade-long downturn, horror is back, freshly relevant and ready for a prime place on the shelves…’ The Village Voice

Blood sculpture may be ruined: Workmen may have melted a Marc Quinn sculpture rendered in frozen human blood by unplugging the freezer while remodelling art collector Charles Saatchi’s kitchen.

‘Saatchi bought the piece for a rumoured £13,000 in 1991 from art dealer Jay Jopling, who said the “very fragile” sculpture “requires quite a bit of commitment on the part of the collector”. ‘

Guardian UK [via Spike Report]

A Palestinian activist was arrested in Cambridge MA because of ‘suspicious’ wires in his car — which he says were to fix his stereo — and leaflets for a legal pro-Palestinian counter-demonstration planned for Boston’s Israel Independence Day celebration. This column about, among other things, the incredible abuses he suffered while in custody in a Massachusetts jail — including four dental extractions without anaesthesia — is by my friend Dennis Fox, a psychology professor turned gadfly journalist in my hometown. It almost didn’t get published because the Brookline Tab editor feared the backlash from vocal anti-Palestinians in this very pro-Israel Jewish community. (The excuse she used was that it was only peripherally Brookline-related.)

“Striking new computer images taken by confocal microscopy capture the brain in action as it builds new synapses. The images reveal the formation of new dendritic spines, a process Swiss investigator Dominique Muller says reflects long term potentiation, widely believed to be the most fundamental molecular basis of learning and memory.” BioMedNet

‘Six months after the fact, the head of National Public Radio apologized for what some lawmakers called a “slanderous” report linking anthrax-laced letters to a Christian conservative organization, according to Fox news.

“We have made mistakes at NPR. One mistake was our report about TVC,” said Kevin Klose, the network’s president and CEO, referring to a story that suggested the Traditional Values Coalition was connected to the anthrax letter.

…Several Republican members implored NPR to apologize for a January news package that suggested that the conservative group, which represents 43,000 member churches, was connected to the anthrax letters sent last fall to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The story suggested that TVC “fit the profile” of groups that might have been responsible for the letters linked to the death of five.

At the time of the broadcast, listeners complained and NPR issued an on-air statement calling the reporting “inappropriate,” but did apologize or issue a retraction.’

“Local prosecutors in Moscow have begun a criminal action against a Russian author who wrote about a fictional homosexual relationship between Stalin and Khrushchev.

Vladimir Sorokin, a surreal novelist who is one of Russia’s rising literary stars, is accused of spreading pornography with his novel Blue Bacon Fat.” BBC

“I thought I was one of the lucky 9/11 relatives: I had the remains of my husband. But then the medical examiner informed me I was grieving over only 40 percent of Eddie’s body.” Salon

Malaysian Addicts Turn to Cow Dung: “Faced with some of the world’s strictest anti-drug laws, some addicts in Malaysia are sniffing fresh cow dung to get high.” AP

El Nino Officially Here, but Weak Reuters

Will the future really look like Minority Report? “Two of Spielberg’s experts explain how they invented 2054.”

Underkoffler: …. I’m a huge fan of all of Dick’s writings. It’s a very compact little piece with a fascinating central idea that very much competes with all his other stuff. As with the rest of his writings, he recognizes that social science fiction is more interesting than pure science fiction. He was one of the few guys back in the ’50s who knew the truth about technology. Everyone else wanted shiny ray guns and perfect societies floating around in anti-gravity space stations and who knows what. Dick knew that technology mostly doesn’t work or complicates things in unforeseen ways. And so, in Dick’s books and stories, you always have doors that won’t let you through ’cause you have to give them a quarter and you have to argue with them because you don’t have any spare change. In general, with him, it’s the intersection of high-end science with other more human elements: individual psychologies, larger-scale sociology or politics. That’s what makes him continue to be relevant where other authors of the same era … their shiny spaceships and ray guns look a little tarnished right now. Salon

Whatever you might say about the plotting, it certainly had a distinctive look. It joins Blade Runner, also from a PKD story of course, as an original and meticulously executed vision of the future. No matter what else, it ought to get the production design Oscar. Only a couple of things didn’t really work for me. For one, the vertical highways; maybe 150 years, but surely not 50. And, while much has been made of the gestural computer interface Cruise uses (“like conducting an orchestra”), I would imagine a way would have to be found for the control movements to be more subtle, less sweeping and dramatic (less cinematographic?); otherwise computer use would be exhausting!

And then there’re all the egregious product placements.

House Approves Bill to Arm Pilots:

“The bill was passed after months of aggressive lobbying by pilot unions, which said their members want to carry guns because loopholes remain in airport security.

…The Bush administration opposed the bill, which was approved 310 to 113. A similar bill has stalled in the Senate, but supporters said yesterday that they hoped to build on the unexpectedly strong support for the House bill.” Washington Post

IMHO, quite a bad idea, as I’ve written about previously, for a number of reasons. Evidence people are still reacting to 9-11 with their testosterone instead of their heads.

U.S. Backs Off Court Immunity Demand: “Facing worldwide opposition, the United States has retreated from its demand that American peacekeepers be permanently immune from the new war crimes tribunal. U.S. diplomats are instead proposing a yearlong ban on any investigation.

The compromise proposal made Wednesday marked a significant change in the Bush administration’s campaign to shield Americans from frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions by the new International Criminal Court.” AP

“Israel has shut down the office of Dr Sari Nusseibeh, the leading voice of moderation among Palestinians, accusing him of undermining Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem by serving as an agent of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

Dr Nusseibeh, an Oxford and Harvard-educated intellectual, has been a driving force among Palestinians who have signed a statement urging their compatriots to abandon suicide bombings.” The Age

Review of Bakari Kitwana’s The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture: “A spokesman for the new generation of African-Americans says hip-hop can ignite a fresh wave of black activism — but first the civil rights veterans have to get out of the way.” Salon

“Nigeria’s Supreme Court clears Mohammed Abacha of ordering the murder of the wife of opposition leader Moshood Abiola.”

BBC World. [Good; now he’s free to keep sending me those emails seeking my assistance in smuggling out of the country the money he embezzled during his father’s reign.]

“Scientists assemble a virus from scratch from the genetic blueprint for polio – and then infect and kill mice with it.”

BBC World

Casting a Cool Eye on Cryonics: ‘Sometimes art, like hitting, is all in the timing.

A case in point is “Dying Is Not Good for You,” a exhibition of photographs by a British artist, Jason Oddy, which opened last night at the Frederieke Taylor gallery in Chelsea.

What makes this exhibition topical is its subject: an inside look at two of the nation’s cryonic centers, one of which, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., now holds the body of the Hall of Fame hitter Ted Williams, who died last week at 83.

That development, and a family battle over the handling of Williams’s remains, has suddenly given front-page status to cryonics, whose proponents advocate deep-freezing the dead in the hopes that medical advances will make it possible to resurrect them.’ NY Times

Experts Explore Sadism, But Answers Remain Elusive: “What type of people become sadists and what makes them tick? Some forensic authorities who have had firsthand experience with sadists provide some answers.” Psychiatric News

“News that hormone replacement therapy might do more harm than good offers a lesson in how marketing and a desire for medical miracles can propel use of a drug far beyond that justified by scientific data.” NY Times editorial

Polyphasic Sleep Experiment: aka. Uberman sleep

Welcome. This blog was created to keep a running journal/diary of an experiment with alternative sleep methods. In particular, a small group of us are attempting to adjust to the Uberman Sleep Schedule, more technically described as a polyphasic sleep schedule.

The essence of it is a short 3 hour core sleep time in the early morning, and several 20 minute naps (every 4 hours) spaced throughout the day.

Why are we doing this? We’ll one reason is just to see if its possible. Yes, we’re freaks. But curious ones. But the main compelling reason is that we will get extra hours in the day. With a 3 hour core sleep and four 20 minute naps, we are sleeping only 4 hours and 20 minutes a day. On a full blown Uberman Schedule, you only have six 20 minutes naps, which means you are sleeping only 2 hours a day. That equals 6 extra hours a day! Time to catch up on reading, start a new hobby, learn a musical instrument, train for a new career.

U.S. Rep Hooted Off AIDS Stage: “About 50 AIDS activists shouted, whistled and booed their way though a speech Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of Health Tommy Thompson, who delivered the entire, inaudible address shielded by nearly a dozen Secret Service and other security agents.” Wired

I love my Scott eVest. It’s got dozens of pockets for the PDA, cellphone, music box, Leatherman etc. I carry around with me all the time, and conduits between the pockets to pass wires inside the vest to headsets etc. (Isn’t Bluetooth supposed to make the need for this passé?) Recently Scott has come under fire for using a Playboy Bunny in its ads. Interesting to read their defensive justification , which doesn’t make all that much sense to me.

Nightmare scenario of antibiotic resistance has arrived, experts say.

“Medical experts have long described it as the nightmare scenario of antibiotic resistance: the day when staphylococcus aureus, cause of some of the most common and troublesome infections to afflict man, becomes resistant to the antibiotic arsenal’s weapon of last resort, vancomycin.

The nightmare scenario has arrived. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has announced the first confirmed case of vancomycin-resistant staph aureus – known in the medical world as VRSA – found last month in a Michigan man …

The news leaves experts… bleakly contemplating a future in which common staph aureus infections won’t be treatable with any antibiotics – which was the case before the discovery of penicillin changed modern medicine. Prior to penicillin, many surgical procedures which now routinely save lives would have been too dangerous because of the risk of infection.

Penicillin is now nearly useless against staph aureus; overuse of the drug fuelled resistance, a process in which the rapidly evolving bug simply learns how to evade the drug’s fire power.” National Post (Toronto) [via David Brake]

Do Firefighters Like to Set Fires?

Arson, an environmentalist in the Northwest declared confidently in newspaper accounts after the arrests, is wildfire fighters’ “dirtiest little secret.”

A former fire department engineer in Arizona told a reporter that most arson fires were started by active or retired firefighters — a fact he said he had learned in his training.

But forensic experts who study arsonists say there is no evidence to support the idea that firefighters are any more prone to sparking fires than anyone else. NY Times

Government approves marketing of new artificial sweetener:

“Neotame, a nonnutritive sweetener said to be 7,000 to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar, has been approved for marketing as an additive in candies, soft drinks and some other products, the Food and Drug Administration ( news – web sites) announced Friday…

FDA officials said it has “negligible if any calories,” but it is unknown if it will meet the agency’s technical requirements to be labeled, as is aspartame, was having zero calories.” Yahoo! News

Light turns into glowing liquid: ‘Light can be turned into a glowing stream of liquid that splits into droplets and splatters off surfaces just like water. The researchers who’ve worked out how to do this say “liquid light” would be the ideal lifeblood for optical computing, where chips send light around optical “circuits” to process data.’ New Scientist

A kinder, gentler militia?: “In the aftermath of Sept. 11, fringe militia organizations are recasting themselves as neighborhood watch groups. But old ways die hard.” Salon

Readers of FmH may recall I was very interested in the reactions of the paramilitary Right to the 9-11 events. Early coverage focused almost exclusively on the impact on recruitment.

Myers as Moon?: “Austin Powers star Mike Myers is in talks to star in a biopic about legendary Who drummer Keith Moon.

Myers and Who frontman Roger Daltrey have discussed plans for a forthcoming movie. The comic actor says he hopes it will come off.

Notorious hellraiser Moon died of an drug overdose in 1978 at the age of 32.” This is London

China embarrassed as Falun Gong hijacks satellite: “Embarrassed Chinese officials last night called on the international community for support in condemning recent hijackings by the Falun Gong movement of one of the China’s main television and radio satellites.” The Age

Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid  by Robert J. Sternberg, reviewed:

Only a few questions can be called basic to the human condition — such as “What can we eat?” or “Who created us?” — and lots of very smart people have been working on them for millennia. The “eating” thing, for instance, has been minutely parsed by agriculture, economics and the culinary arts (among other fields), while the question of origins has given us religion and several branches of the hard sciences. But there’s at least one question — as basic as any other in its topical relevance and its grounding in the ancient — that human inquiry has only recently begun seriously to address. It was asked in caves, by people clad in mastodon-hide shifts, and chances are it crossed your mind this very day. “How,” it goes, “can people be so stupid?” And who knows the answer, really? I don’t — do you? Salon

‘The trial begins of a mixed race US man and his partner accused of plotting to blow up Jewish and black landmarks to ignite “racial holy war”.’

BBC

Give me $1 bn, I’ll give you peace: Maharishi Yogi:

“Maharishi said that with $1 billion he could train 40,000 expert meditators, or “Vedic Pandits”, who would generate enough good vibes to save the world. His press office said $85 million toward that goal had already been raised.” The Times of India

Trailer for non-existent film is really car advert:

“A car firm has made a trailer for a film which doesn’t really exist.

The trailer directed by Michael Mann and starring Benicio Del Toro is supposedly for a movie called Lucky Star.

But it is actually part of an advertising campaign for a new Mercedes-Benz range of SL-Class sports cars.” Ananova

Bin Laden plans fresh terror for September:

“Terrorists are planning a series of spectacular attacks on American, British and Israeli targets to coincide with the anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Centre on 11 September last year.

Intelligence agencies in the UK, southern Asia and the Middle East are detecting an increased volume of communications between suspected al-Qaeda cells as the organisation, led by the fugitive Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, accelerates efforts to pull off a major operation in the days around the anniversary of the New York and Washington attacks.” Guardian UK

Globalization Has Helped Poor, Study Says: “Far from creating poverty as critics claim, rapid globalization of the world economy has sliced the proportion of abject poor across the planet, according to a controversial new study released on Monday.

It says that freer commerce, epitomized by the cutting of tariffs and the lifting of trade barriers, has boosted economic growth and lifted the incomes of rich and poor alike.” Reuters This may miss the point of the anti-globalization movement, which is only partly about the material costs to the world’s poor of the spread of Western-multinational-dominated capitalism. How about the spiritual impoverishment of the growth of homogeneous consumerism and the growing global reach of corporations to rape the environment and the biosphere? It also seems absurd to dismiss the relevance of evidence that the gap between the world’s richest and poorest is growing by suggesting that it is ‘only’ Africa that lags behind. Blaming the victim: “Whether the disastrous African performance is due to insufficient globalization on the continent or whether Africa’s weak governance, low education levels and fragmented civil society put the opportunities of globalization out of reach is almost impossible to tell,”says the report.

Quebec forest fires blanket eastern United States with smoke, apparently as far south as Washington DC. Yahoo News

Here in Boston, I haven’t yet noticed.

Al Qaeda Figure Hidden by U.K. Intelligence. Abu Qatada is described by some as “the spiritual leader and possible puppet master of al Qaeda’s European networks” This is interesting; the British fear arresting or deporting him for fear of terrorist reprisals, so British intelligence confines him and his family at a safe house out of the ken of official government channels. He loses contact with his network and is effectively immobilized with little risk to Britain … at least until Time magazine broke the story of this subterfuge, I guess. Reuters

“Could a modern evolutionary algorithm and a huge input samplediscover a better (keyboard) arrangement?” The result ends up looking remarkably like Dvorak. [via Robot Wisdom]

SpamAssassin gets raves from users. Now its developers are apparently working on a Windows product based on the SpamAssassin engine, they say.

Tom Cruise says his children will be raised far from the States. ‘ “I think the U.S. is terrifying and it saddens me,” he told the British paper the Daily Express. “You only have to look at the state of affairs in America.” ‘ FOXNews Others who have linked to this story have accused Cruise of hypocrisy, noting how terrifying they find Scientology, of which Cruise is a devotee, to be. I’ll refrain; I’m not sure we know enough about his childrearing practices to determine if his participation in the sect is more of a threat to them than raising them in the US would be.

Court backs Danish paper’s linking ban:

Challenging the World Wide Web’s fundamental premise of linking, a Danish court ordered an Internet news service to stop linking to Web sites of Danish newspapers.

Copenhagen’s lower bailiff’s court ruled Friday that Newsbooster.com was in direct competition with the newspapers and that the links it provided to specific news articles damaged the value of the newspapers’ advertisements.Washington Post

The Danish Newspaper Publishers’ Association brought the suit on behalf of its twenty constituent newspapers, links to all of which were removed by Newsbooster when the ruling was handed down. Here, for your surfing pleasure, is the trade organization’s page of links to the involved newspapers.

Dispute arises over Ted Williams’ remains. His son wants his body cryogenically preserved and Alcor Life Extension has taken possession of his remains. Others, led by his estranged daughter, want to respect his wish to be cremated. She suggests her half-brother’s motive may be to sell the baseball great’s DNA, or cloning rights, at some time in the future. “I will rescue my father’s body,” she vows. Salon

Study: Beer Builds Strong Bones:

“Scientists have kept the secret to strong bones bottled up for years. Now, a new study has raised the bar on the list of nutrients that could have benefits. …(T)he good news is pouring out — beer builds bones.”

Yahoo! News OTOH:

Drinking Too Much Water Can Kill You: Report: “A new review of three deaths of US military recruits highlights the dangers of drinking too much water. Yahoo! News

Garrett Vreeland says:

“just caught this, at windows versiontracker: ephoto. a knockoff of apple’s iphoto, but it does visual searches. sketch a drawing of what you’re looking for, and it’ll try to match it. intriguing. oh, it also runs on os x …”

dangerousmeta!

The Crumbs: A Family of Artists: Members of the Crumb family — R. Crumb, his older brother, his daughter, and her mother — will be featured in five exhibits in Manhattan in upcoming months. NY Times

Related: Here’s the Crumb Museum; a Salon portrait from last year, asking whether “the bull-goose legend of underground comix the Brueghel of our time or the purveyor of an arrested juvenile vision?”; the Crumb Products outlet, run by R. Crumb’s son Jesse and offering “original art,

autographed underground comics and books,

limited edition figurines,

prints and posters”; the Lambiek Gallery’s Crumb site; the Toonopedia Crumb pages; and (!) a limited-edition Crumb collaboration with Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch

and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship:

Any collaboration between Charles Bukowski and R. Crumb is a notable event. Each man is a consummate example of the anti-establishment artist who calls society to task for its foibles and failures. With humor and scathing satire Bukowski and Crumb have exemplified this important tradition.

These unpublished last journals by Bukowski candidly detail the events of his daily life, which R. Crumb has brilliantly illustrated with five full color hand printed serigraphs and six full page black-and-white illustrations.