Bob Herbert: Sneak Attack — “Bush administration officials presented a plan as an altruistic attempt to bring more health care benefits to low-income pregnant women. It was actually a guerrilla attack on abortion rights.” NY Times op-ed

GAO to Cheney: ‘You’re Lying”. General Accounting Office chief David Walker is refraining from filing suit yet (to force Cheney to divulge what outsiders he consulted for his energy taks force)

to give the White House time to reconsider some of its statements about the case.

So far, there’s no evidence the White House is interested in doing so. And while Walker says he wants to reach an agreement, he is also ratcheting up the rhetoric in the already-tense case. In an interview with National Review Online, Walker in essence accused Cheney of lying about the GAO’s demands. “There have been material misrepresentations of facts coming out of the White House in recent weeks,” he says. In particular, Walker points to a statement Cheney made in a television interview last Sunday. “They’ve demanded of me that I give Henry Waxman a listing of everybody I meet with,” Cheney told Fox News, “of everything that was discussed, any advice that was received, notes and minutes of those meetings.”

“That was a very critical and highly material misrepresentation,” Walker says. “If we were asking for that, I’d understand where they are coming from. But we are not.” National Review Online

Factional fighting erupts in Afghanistan, 40 killed — “The clashes are seen as a setback for the government of interim leader Hamid Karzai as he attempts to bring peace to the country following more than two decades of war.” Express India [via Red Rock Eaters]

Nomic

is a game, and it is a lot of FUN! Unlike most games, the rules of nomic are not written in stone. In fact, the object of the game is to make changes to the rules of the game. Players start off following some “initial rule-set”, which dictates how the rules can be changed. Once a rule change has been made, players then follow this new rule set. Most importantly, the rules about how rule changes are made can themselves be changed!

This is where it tends to get mystical, because as a result of these rule changes, the game you are playing will change from moment to moment. The nature of the rule changing mechanism might change from democratic to capitalist, to totalitarian, to whatever. Or the ability to change the rules might be removed entirely – perhaps the game will turn into chess, or tag, or snap. The future of the game is entirely in the hands of the players.

You can find an initial rule set here.

New Hope That Kidnapped Journalist Is Alive: “A new communiqué that offered hope that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was apparently kidnapped 10 days ago, might still be alive was e-mailed to several Western and Pakistani news organizations today.

The message asserted that at least some previous messages claiming responsibility for Mr. Pearl’s disappearance had been sent as a prank.” NY Times

Kids, Snapping To Attention A review of “Secret Games” by Wendy Ewald, at the Corcoran in Washington:

More about life than art, this retrospective surveys the career of a pioneering documentary photographer who gave cameras to small groups of disadvantaged children in the United States and developing nations to learn what they were thinking and to encourage them to express themselves. She taught them to look at their own lives, their families, their communities, and to write about and photograph them. She also encouraged them to tap into their dreams and fantasies, and in dirt-poor places like Appalachia and Chiapas, Mexico, she struck creative gold.

Washington Post

Privacy of MP3 fans at risk

A new security hole has been discovered in one of the world’s most popular file-swapping programs which could allow anyone to gain private information about its millions of users.

Security experts have found a way to gain access to the computer hard drives of users of Morpheus, which has taken over from Napster as the leading internet song-swapping service.

It means that the personal details of up to two million people could be exposed to prying eyes. BBC

In related news, Clean Limewire — all the flavors without all the spyware, with a link to a download site. Infoshop News

The Trouble With Self-Esteem. Another of psychotherapist Lauren Slater’s provocative New York Times Magazine pieces. She argues that the central assumption that impaired self-esteem is related to social ills like crime bears reexamining. For example, the assumption that people with antisocial tendencies (“sociopaths”) have a hidden, unconscious sense of defectiveness and shame, which has been a tenet of the psychoanalytic formulation of sociopathy, has not been borne out in close research and clinical examination of antisocial individuals. Perhaps that’s the basis for the longstanding recognition that psychotherapeutic treatment of sociopaths is virtually never successful?

Slater hints at a broader theme — that impaired self-esteem may in fact be in general healthier and more ‘normal’, that inflation of self-esteem may in fact be a root of behavioral and emotional problems. Readers will recall I’ve written before on the notion that depression may be a more realistic way of seeing things, closely akin to this notion. It is not a novel idea; the inventor of modern psychology a century ago knew it too. Witness Freud’s oft-quoted pronouncement that the aim of psychoanalysis was not to turn unhappy people into happy ones, but rather to turn neurotic unhappiness into plain old ordinary unhappiness. In psychotherapeutic work, we get into trouble when we try to preserve our clients’ self-esteem as an end in itself. People are good enough without our help at defending against the painful-self-examination that is necessary for successful change, and I am fond of saying that, in therapy, one must expect to “feel worse in order to do better.”

Slater suggests that

“maybe self-control should replace self-esteem as a primary peg to reach for. I don’t mean to sound Puritanical, but there is something to be said for discipline, which comes from the word ”disciple,” which actually means to comprehend. Ultimately, self-control need not be seen as a constriction; restored to its original meaning, it might be experienced as the kind of practiced prowess an athlete or an artist demonstrates, muscles not tamed but trained, so that the leaps are powerful, the spine supple and the energy harnessed and shaped.”

I heartily agree. I have long written and taught that impulse dyscontrol and disinhibition, with both physiological (“nature”) and psychodynamic (“nurture”) aspects, are the neglected step-children in much psychopathology. Psychiatric and psychological schemas have in general failed to see them as primary problems in their own right, and failed to develop targeted treatment approaches to these problems. The DSM-4 “impulse disorder” diagnoses are largely ignored; even when patients qualify for such diagnoses, their problems with self-control are attributed to other classes of pathology (e.g. depression) instead. We fail to recognize them at our peril, because the conditions of modernity are combining to erode our capacity for self-control both biologically and psychosocially. The emphasis on enhanced self-esteem may be largely a distortion of a narcissistic society with an increasingly pathetic and alarming focus on image and superficiality.

Thomas Friedman: The End of NATO? “The United States has become so much more technologically advanced than any of its NATO allies that America increasingly doesn’t need them to fight a distant war.” And Brussels knows it. “In part this is because European defense industries are not as sophisticated as America’s today. But in part it’s because the Europeans, deep down, don’t feel threatened by America’s enemies, particularly by the ‘axis of evil’ (Iran, Iraq and North Korea) that Mr. Bush identified. Therefore, they don’t want to spend much on defense. If President Bush gets the defense budget increase he asked for in his State of the Union address, U.S. defense spending will equal the defense budgets of the next 15 highest countries — combined.” Since the Cold War, tensions with Western European allies have often revolved around their parting company with our demonization of the enemy-of-the-day (as well, perhaps, as we perfected sanitized war-fighting without endangering American ground forces, as questioning whether we would truly be willing to lose lives over a threat to Europe). Friedman’s column here revolves around his alarm that we may not have European help in fighting wars now that these differences are surfacing, unless we’re sensitive to preserving the alliances. But the real focus ought to be the twin trends of letting a bloated military-industrial complex (a term dating from Eisenhower’s era but more germane now than ever) determine foreign policy and the perennial American lack of insight into the paranoid delusional flavor of our geopolitical analysis.

NY Times op-ed

New Hope That Kidnapped Journalist Is Alive: “A new communiqué that offered hope that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was apparently kidnapped 10 days ago, might still be alive was e-mailed to several Western and Pakistani news organizations today.

The message asserted that at least some previous messages claiming responsibility for Mr. Pearl’s disappearance had been sent as a prank.” NY Times

Bush may be world’s oldest living thing. I had a hard time with this headline when I originally scanned it, associating to the pretzel-choker-in-chief for a moment… Scaramento Bee

Self-styled vampire reveals British link:

A 23-year-old Satanist jailed yesterday in Germany for a gruesome, ritual Satanic killing, said that she became a vampire in London.

In testimony which exposes the bizarre world of Britain’s underground occult groups, Manuela Ruda said that she swapped the “mortal” world for a life of blood-drinking and devil worship after working in a club in London which she said was frequented by “vampires and human beings”. Guardian UK

Fictional theory set to bite the dust

:

Vampires are fact not fiction and they could be living in a street near you.

Jon Downs, of the Exeter Strange Phenomena Group, believes that there are vampires living across the West Country.

‘There are vampiric entities in the South West, although they’re not the sort that Buffy the Vampire Slayer would recognise,’ he said.

Forget the tall, cloaked man with the swept-back hair, Jon believes that the vampires exist in various forms, possibly as animals.

This Is The West Country

Our galaxy – from the outside: “Astronomers obtained this perspective by analysing half a billion stars measured by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS).

It features the Milky Way’s complete disc and its newly discovered central bar of stars.

The new map will help scientists confirm the existence of hitherto only suspected features in our galaxy.” BBC

Mountain ranges suffering severe degradation: “The Alps in Europe and the Himalaya-Karakorum-Hindu Kush mountain range, which spans northern India, Pakistan, Nepal and Afghanistan, are among ten ranges worldwide suffering severe ecosystem degradation, according to a major new report.

Climate change, tourism, deforestation, population growth and migration are causing floods, landslides and famine for people living on their slopes, says the report, which was commissioned by the United Nations University in Japan and written by Jack Ives, of Carleton University in Canada. These disasters are set to become more frequent – and many unique animals and plants will disappear, Ives says.” New Scientist

Scientists surprised at current effects of 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: “We did indeed find quite a lot more oil than we expected to see. Most of the subsurface oil was in the fresh oil category, and by fresh oil I mean chemically, compositionally; it hasn’t really changed very much since late in the summer of 1989.” Animal species are still being affected in Prince William Sound, suffering organ damage, declining birth rates and birth defects. Nando Times

Programme to eliminate leprosy “on target”: “The World Health Organization programme to eradicate leprosy worldwide by 2005 is on target, officials have announced. But leprosy charities say claims are highly optimistic.” New Scientist Especially if you’ve ever had any contact with people with Hanson’s Disease (a more ‘correct’ term, since ‘leper’ is so deeply stigmatizing) — I did, not in my medical training but in my travels in India, where 60% of the world’s leprosy occurs — you’ll know that the eradication of this disfiguring illness could be one of humanity’s more compassionate ministrations toward its afflicted. Who was it who said a society should be judged by how it cares for its most unfortunate? Now, how about third world HIV?

A webring of blogs “that rebel against normal topic, design or structure”:

• outré designs – psychedelic colors, odd artistic endeavours, over-colourful backgrounds, hellish table experiments, et cetera.

• outlaw mentality/topicality – themes centered around things like alternative sexual practises, unpopular politics, drugs, controversial lifestyles, you get the idea.

• unusual infrastructures – anything that causes the page to go beyond the typical “blog” style in some way, or that which subverts the “dominant blog paradigm” in some way. (For example, one blog on this ring has the dates of its entries all in hexadecimal.)

• dadaist tendencies – sheer, complete and utter nonsense babbled into blogform.

I’m not sure there’s any merit to garish color schemes or putting your dates in hexadecimal per se, but the outlaw mentality and the dada might have a certain cachet…

These are pages that Google thinks are “similar” or “related” to Follow Me Here. Some similarities to my own thinking, as you can see from the number of pages that also appear in my sidebar as daily reads (Rebecca, boing boing, BookNotes, UFO Breakfast, Synthetic Zero, etc.). Does anyone know anything about the algorithm they use to determine what’s “related” to what?

This Product Support Services page from Microsoft is going to help you to no end. [via blogjam]

So they just reviewed FmH in The Weblog Review. Very flattering, but am I really the place to get your daily news??

Al-Qaeda in talks with Hezbollah

The al-Qaeda terrorist organisation is trying to transfer its base of operations from Afghanistan to Lebanon, according to intelligence uncovered earlier this month.

A senior operative of Osama bin Laden’s network, a Yemeni national who has the alias of Salah Hajir, is believed to have arrived in Lebanon about two weeks ago and has held meetings in Beirut with leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist group. The Times of London

Iraq, Iran and North Korea dismiss Bush accusations. The countries in question reject Dubya’s idiotic “axis of evil” innuendo.

Iran, Iraq and North Korea on Wednesday rejected an accusation by U.S. President George W. Bush that they form an “axis of evil” developing weapons of mass destruction to threaten America and the world.

Iran said Bush’s remarks smacked of a desire for hegemony, Iraq suggested they presaged a U.S. attack on Baghdad and North Korea saw them as evidence of a “policy of aggression”.

Britain said the U.S. president had made a “powerful case for the coalition’s actions against global terrorism”. France questioned the merits of labelling nations as terrorist. Reuters

The Colder War: “Last week, the US government announced that it was building the biggest-ever war machine. Military spending will rise to $379billion, of which $50billion will pay for its ‘war on terrorism’.

There will be special funding for new, refined weapons of mass slaughter and for ‘military operations’ – invasions of other countries.

Of all the extraordinary news since September 11, this is the most alarming. It is time to break our silence.

That is to say, it is time for other governments to break their silence, especially the Blair government, whose complicity in the American rampage in Afghanistan has not denied its understanding of the Bush administration’s true plans and ambitions.”

U.S. Says Innocents Died in Raid: “U.S. military officials reversed themselves and now believe innocent people were among the estimated 15 killed and 27 captured in a commando raid in Afghanistan last week.” AP

Roiling Israel: ‘More than 100 Israeli Army reservists signed a statement published today saying they would refuse to continue serving in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because Israel’s policies there involved “dominating, expelling, starving and humiliating an entire people.” ‘ NY Times

Top Ten Things You Need to Know About Enron: “What follows is an imaginary conversation, intended as a kind of primer — not only ten things you might want to know about Enron, but ten things that bear repeating about Enron. Enron’s collapse is symptomatic of a deep-seated disease. All of our retirements are at stake.” AlterNet

George W. in the Garden of Gethsemane — unrelenting, well-deserved venom. Read the entire thing; this is just a sample:

The saddest part of this whole affair was the day the scandal was revealed — and you denied that you even knew your good friend, Kenneth Lay. “Ken who?” you said. Oh, he’s just some businessman from Texas. “Heck, he backed my opponent for governor, Ann Richards!” was your way of trying to deflect the truth that was hitting you like a Mack truck. You knew that he, in fact, endorsed YOU and gave you THREE times the money Ann Richards ever saw from him.

I hardly ever talk to the guy, you said. You were like Peter outside the walls of Herod after they grabbed J.C. from the Garden of Gethsemane. Three times he denied he knew Jesus, and three times the cock crowed. But Peter, unlike you, felt shame and wept, and then ran away. [thanks, David]

The Internet Grammar of English: “an academic grammar of English designed and written exclusively for the web.”

This is purportedly the website of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the group which may be responsible for the kidnapping — and perhaps murder — of WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl.

Love Among the Races: ‘… why race continues to matter – usually to the disadvantage of blacks – despite the fact that race should no longer exist. Essentialist definitions of race have long been discredited; civil rights laws enshrine society’s commitment to equality of treatment and opportunity; the merest hint of overt racial prejudice is enough to destroy a politician’s career. But if race has had the scientific and political stuffing knocked out of it, it remains stubbornly persistent as a “social truth” that affects people’s behaviour and life chances.’ Times Literary Supplement

Altered images for brain damage patients

Imagine looking at a dog – and not recognising it as a dog. What if you looked at a sheep or a cow, and didn’t know what it was?

And what if you looked at the pictures above – and thought the “babex” and “bunnyphant” might be real?

That is the situation for some people with visual agnosia.

People with the condition can have trouble recognising animals, faces or objects.

Now a series of films entitled “Eye See” is being planned to allow everyone to see the world as visual aphasics see it. BBC

Give up Enron money, Dubya.

Many of us first heard of Enron last year when the energy company became infamous for extracting billions of dollars from California electricity consumers. For others, it was Enron’s ever-increasing stock value that drew their attention. But now that Enron has imploded in the biggest bankruptcy in U.S history, the rest of us have been given a crash course in the maneuverings of a company that cheated its investors, duped its employees and freely doled out money to politicians addicted to massive campaign contributions. A few of the politicians who received these ill-gotten gains are rushing to return them to funds for the employees. President Bush should follow suit and return every penny of the $550,000 he received from Enron. ActForChange

Stem cells from embryo created without sperm:

“US scientists have isolated stem cells from monkey embryos created using only an egg. They then coaxed these stem cells into taking on the characteristics of neurons, heart muscle and other tissue types.

The embryos were generated through a process called parthenogenesis, in which the egg is never fertilized, but instead duplicates one set of chromosomes. That duplication is lethal, because two maternal sets of chromosomes are incompatible. But the so-called “parthenote” that results still develops far enough so that the equivalent of embryonic stem cells can be harvested from it.” New Scientist

A tale of one man and his blog: The Guardian UK covers the Blogger Pro rollout, interviewing Evan Williams. The interview goes in an interesting direction here:

“What we haven’t done much of, and what I think is desperately needed in the blogging world, are more tools on the browsing side. We have a tremendous amount of content flowing through our system, all in these little chunks that are separate from their sites. It should be easy to index and aggregate and present to people in all kinds of different ways.”

The dangers of this, of course, are obvious: web-hosting companies have quickly run into trouble in the past when they’ve attempted to seize the rights to re-use their customers’ content. And Williams is quick to agree that users would not condone him publishing their work. What he is interested in is tackling the largely unconnected network of weblogs, introducing network publishing to make it easier for the reader to get to things that might be of interest.

Bears further discussion.

New Scientist ‘copylefted’ article about copyleft and the open content movement.

“Have you ever wanted to pretend that you were someone else? Well, now you can! If you want to, you can use me to send someone else an email…”

Did I watch the wrong channel? ‘The media gushed over an “eloquent” and “passionate” State of the Union address many of us didn’t see.’ Salon

wood s lot pointed to this review of Moorcock’s newly-reissued tetralogy that I tried to read several months ago, hailed as a seminal fount of postmodern and cyberpunk sensibility. I was excited, not being a fan of Moorcock’s sword-and-sorcery fantasies but finding the sprawling intricate Mother London a delectable and rewarding read some years ago. Disappointingly, I found the Cornelius novels horribly written and uninteresting to the point of unreadability. This reviewer essentially agrees: “Jerry Cornelius, the protagonist of the quartet of novels that comprise this collection (and others besides), is a perfectly uninteresting antihero, a virtual cipher of a character, and his adventures are prolonged studies in existential action: He is an inconsequential character (despite what he might believe), enacting inconsequential quests, invariably returning his world to a stability that he himself removed it from.” Significant, perhaps, but completely unenjoyable. PopMatters

Stop Bush before he makes Nixon look good.

“At least our 37th president specialized in committing outright political crimes, which by their very clandestine nature were necessarily limited in scope. George W., on the other hand, traffics in legal political vice, which, given the rightward turn in this country since the late 1970s, can be practiced on a widespread scale openly and even boastfully. And legal or not, “vice” is the only way to describe the wholesale political indecency pushed by this White House. Behind virtually every move–whether on the budget, an economic stimulus package, the environment, defense spending, you name it–lies the fundamental motive of padding the pockets of its own socioeconomic class. To hell with others and to hell with the future. There either ain’t no tomorrow, or if it does come, at least those at the top won’t be burdened by today’s consequences.

A jaw-dropping $4 trillion of your money in the form of federal budget surpluses has gone up in smoke, or rather, 41 percent of it into the pockets of W.’s friends.” History News Network

I always liked Chumbawumba, but now even more — “anarchist band sell song to General Motors for $70,000 – but give the money to activists’ campaign against the firm.” Observer UK

“program listings for hundreds of public radio stations around the world. Follow the audio links to hear your favorite programs and discover new ones.” [via Rebecca’s Pocket]

Weblogger and online friend Rebecca Blood’s book, she says, is almost done. It’s due in June and can be preordered.

Using the web as a journalism tool; these powerful resources are useful for non-journalist info junkies as well. Poynter.org

Monkey Moves Computer Cursor by Thoughts Alone

It may seem like science fiction, but scientists say they have developed a technology that enables a monkey to move a cursor on a computer screen simply by thinking about it.

The breakthrough could someday help totally paralyzed, ”locked-in” patients “operate external devices such as a robot arm, or a computer to surf the Internet,” explained researcher Daniella Meeker of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Reuters Health

Race is a fault of science — ‘Race, and the role of science in its identification, focused a passionate debate among researchers of differing political hue before a free, public gathering at the Science Museum in London in remembrance of the Holocaust…’ BioMedNet [requires free registration]

Rumsfeld: Prepare for Surprise Attacks

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday the United States must prepare now for potential surprise attacks “vastly more deadly” than the Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings.

Oh, here’s the real ticket:

In a speech laying out the Bush administration’s justification for proposing a $48 billion increase in the 2003 defense budget [emphasis added -FmH], Rumsfeld said the nation is vulnerable to new forms of terrorism ranging from cyberattacks to attacks on U.S. military bases abroad to ballistic missile attacks on American cities. Washington Post

ID card for air passengers

Trusted-traveler cards would authorize passengers to bypass extensive security screening at airport checkpoints. The Israeli government instituted a trusted-traveler program five years ago in an effort to speed up long lines at airport security checkpoints.

The electronic card would have an encoded biometric description of the owner to ensure that the person using it is the same person identified on the card. Biometrics refers to computerized systems that identify a unique part of each person’s anatomy, such as fingerprints, facial structure or irises. Washington Times

Strikes me as akin to — but of course vastly more insidious than — the ‘trusted shopper’ cards they try to push on me at the supermarket, the chain bookstore (ugh!) and chain pharmacy (is there any other kind anymore??) at which I shop when for a moment I lose the sense that usually steers me toward my local independent merchants. They entice you with promised discounts when the real agenda, of course, is building an extensive profile of your shopping behavior. I always refuse the sales representative’s offer and try to engage them in a dialogue about why I’m refusing. They must be trained specifically in how to deal with this frontal assault — uniformly, no matter what store, they stiffen, become stony, stop making eye contact and offer no response, neither critically nor understandingly.

Israelis consider building ‘Berlin Wall’ in Jerusalem

The police minister, Uzi Landau, who met yesterday with Mr Sharon to discuss ways of boosting security after two devastating Palestinian attacks in the city centre of Jewish West Jerusalem, said that “stone walls and barriers” are to be constructed to keep Palestinians from the West Bank out of outlying Jewish areas of the city.

The walls will be high: they are meant not only to deter Palestinians from crossing, but to make it harder for Palestinian fighters to snipe at Jewish areas or throw petrol bombs. The Scotsman

Reed Irvine: Someone has finally talked

Those who accept the government’s claim that the crash of TWA Flight 800 was caused by a fuel-tank explosion dismiss the evidence that the plane was shot down accidentally by missiles launched in a Navy exercise off the Long Island coast.

They say that such an accident could not have been covered up because a lot of Navy personnel would have known about it, and some of them would have talked. One of them has finally done so. He recently said in an interview that I recorded that he was on the deck of a Navy submarine very close to the crash site and saw TWA 800 shot down. NewsMax

“Sooner or later, Mr Bush, self-styled universal soldier of truth, will have to stop pretending that tragedy gave him a free hand to remake America and the world to fit his simplistic, narrow vision — or risk having voters and US allies end the pretence for him.” — Guardian UK

Bush speech could break international coalition: British press

The Financial Times said that although Bush’s keynote speech “pressed all the right buttons” at home, “there is a danger that his ringing rhetoric about defeating an `axis of evil’ will divide the alliance, rather than seal a common purpose.”

“North Korea and Iran do not belong in the same breath as Iraq. To lump them together is simplistic and will alienate new allies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East,” added the business daily.

Its assessment was shared by The Independent which said Bush’s “forthright views will play well at home. But many outside America are likely to find them distinctly disturbing”.

The broadsheet added: “America is already envied and disliked because of its domination. The danger is that Mr Bush’s speech, with its simple certainties and pronounced unilateralist flavour, will merely fuel that resentment further.”

The harshest criticism of Bush came from the left-of-centre Guardian, which said the US president’s address “unabashedly set out” to “exploit and manipulate the September 11 tragedy for political advantage.

“When Mr Bush speaks of ‘tens of thousands of dangerous killers schooled in the methods of murder … spread throughout the world like ticking bombs,’ he is not only being irresponsibly alarmist; he is also disingenuously justifying the whopping $US48 billion ($A95.16 billion) defence increase he always dreamed of,” it said. TheAge.com.au

Choking on the Enron Pretzel. a/k/a Clueless in Guantanamo: Wideranging rant from Al Martin takes on all the usual suspects — Enron (“what’s the difference between Enron and an offshore Republican slush fund?”), the pretzel-choking incident, the Cuba detainees, the ‘war’. This particularly caught my eye because I’ve been marvelling at the lack of commentary about the number of fatal equipment failures in Afghanistan:

Another US helicopter has crashed in Afghanistan, a CH-53E Super Stallion, the biggest single-rotor helicopter. Two servicemen were killed and five were wounded. It’s interesting to note our material losses in this Afghani campaign now equal the losses of the campaign in Iraq, which were actual combat losses. This latest loss is again being blamed on “mechanical failure due to faulty spares parts and poor maintenance.” It’s the same reason for all previous crashes of both helicopters and fixed wing aircraft in Afghanistan. It’s a pretty sad commentary on the preparedness of US armed forces.

The readiness status of our armed forces during the past ten years from Iraq to Afghanistan has declined enormously. Past GAO reports stated that in Iraq 53% of our fixed wing and helicopter fleets were serviceable. Now this figure has declined to 38%. Part of the problem is that the budgets for normal maintenance procedures have been cut in favor of buying a lot of high tech weaponry systems that don’t work. We rush new weapons systems into production — systems that we know have design flaws because contractors can’t meet their deadlines. They’re built with sub-standard materials because the budget for inspectors has been trimmed back. And there’s no more quality control over the materials being used to make these weapons systems. And there’s the problem with spare parts and mechanical problems, which are all ongoing. The commentator in the media calls these new weapons systems that don’t work — “political gravy weapons.”

The answer, by the way, of course is that there is no difference between Enron and an offshore Republican slush fund…

Asteroid impact hazards “greatly overstated”: ‘If A collision with an asteroid is going to finish us off, it will have to be a lot larger than anyone thought, according to a controversial new study of the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.’ New Scientist

General Accounting Office to Sue White House — ‘The General Accounting Office said today that it would sue the White House to try to force Vice President Dick Cheney to release documents detailing contacts between corporate executives and the administration’s energy task force.’ NY Times

“Telehypnosis, conducted via a videolink, is more effective than face-to-face therapy, a small UK study suggests.” New Scientist

Nuclear tourism: Fed up with the south of France? Tired of Tuscany? Mellowed out by Majorca? Never fear, there’s a travel agency that’s just waiting to give you the hottest holiday of your life.

New Men Travel, in Kiev, Ukraine, is launching tours of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that exploded and spewed radiation all over Europe in 1986. Radiation monitors and protective suits are provided.

The Webby Awards: Call for Entries. As you can see from the blinked page, there’s a fee to nominate your site, except in the People’s Choice category. Was I the only one who hadn’t realized this?

Militants kidnap US journalist:

‘A Pakistani group seeking better conditions for prisoners being held by the US in Cuba says it has kidnapped an American journalist who went missing last week… An accompanying message sent to US news organisations said Mr Pearl was being held in inhuman conditions – similar, it said, to those experienced by al-Qaeda suspects being held at the US base at Guantanamo Bay. ” BBC Human rights advocates don’t want to say ‘I told you so’, just as it was taboo after the 9/11 attacks to suggest that American global neocolonialist swagger had contributed to inviting Muslim fundamentalist wrath, but it is clear that the Administration’s arrogant assertion that the POWs in Guantanamo are not entitled to human dignities and the protections of the Geneva convention has invited this. But then of course it’s in the interest of the Administration to demonstrate that there are still nasty terrorists out there in case the popularity polls begin to show waning enthusiasm, isn’t it?

get your enr on, from the makers of the hilarious get your war on.

William Fields turns the utterly pointless — albeit fun — googlewhacking meme into an intriguingly useful, potentially powerful community-building notion to which he refers as submonitions.

Good to see that Steve Baum is back to his inimitable yarn-spinning at Ethel the Blog again. His Jan. 25 short piece about some new options in peer-to-peer music distribution is intriguing, especially because I’ve (finally) arranged for a broadband ‘net connection instead of the 56K dialup that’s sustained me for so many years (I was an early adopter of the US Robotics Dual Standard modem, back when there were dual standards, and one of the first to upgrade to .v90). By the way, Baum is one of the luminaries who should have been invited to contribute to American Samizdat, IMHO. Dr Menlo??

Bitter Shack, which pointed me to this distortion of Oliver North’s 1987 testimony before the Iran-Cotra hearings circulating on the Internet in the aftermath of 9/11, called it “further evidence that conservatives are dumb.” Urban Legends Reference Pages

Brain Scans Link Two Key Pieces Of Schizophrenia Puzzle: this is big big news in the effort to elucidate the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, which affects around 1-2% of the world’s population. It has long been known that schizophrenic symptoms come from dysfunctions in two brain areas — underactivity in parts of the frontal cortex (which probably underlies the cognitive and ‘negative’ symptoms of the disease) and dopamine overactivity in a deep region called the striatum (probably related to the florid ‘positive’ symptoms — delusions and hallucinations — of the disease). Classical antipsychotic medications block dopamine in the latter areas, thus treating some of the dramatic symptomatic episodes but not more fundamental impoverishment suffered by the schizophrenic patient. The newer ‘atypical’ antipsychotic medications help to modulate, either instead or in addition, the frontal underactivity and thus allow more global restitution of function. But, although I and others have long suspected, it had never been demonstrated until this study by some of the luminaries of NIH (National Institutes of Health) schizophrenia research, that the dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex is primary and that dopamine activity in the striatum is under prefrontal control. The principal investigator comments, “These results provide a long-sought insight into the roots of dopamine dysregulation in schizophrenia. They suggest a possible treatment strategy that targets prefrontal cortex dysfunction, not just excess dopamine.” They may allow the rational, rather than trial-and-error, design of treatment strategies that would get at root causes, rather than slapping bandaids on end manifestations, of the illness. ScienceDaily

Cancer and Folie à Deux

(case report): In this case, the patients delusional system had a grave impact on her ability to make rational healthcare decisions, for which she was deemed incompetent. The first choice for her healthcare surrogate, her husband, was so affected by his sharing of her psychotic condition that he could not fulfill this role. In assessing a suspected case of folie à deux, awareness of several issues the point at which religious overideation becomes delusional, the spectrum of competency, informed consent, and treatment refusal is important.

Yale researchers are able to vaccinate users against the euphoriant effects of cocaine and prevent drug abuse relapse. The inoculations actually stimulate the immune system to produce anti-cocaine antibodies, à la classical immunizations, that inactivate cocaine circulating in the bloodstream. EurekAlert!

They are being dubbed the ‘Binmen’, a burgeoning number of Islamist terror suspects being detained as the UK wakes up to its enemy within. The Observer uncovers al-Qaeda links from Brighton to Bolton to reveal that Muslim extremism is not limited to a few fiery mullahs. Guardian UK

After Green Beret Operation, Townspeople Have Questions About Bound Bodies: Townspeople say the target may have been in error and that people in the compound pleaded for their lives, saying they would surrender. Corpses in the compound were burned after being shot; several were found outside with their hands bound behind their backs with heavy strapping. The bodies have beeen buried and are not available for examination. [If true, file under ‘barbarism.’ -FmH] “The Pentagon defends the raid as an appropriate military action,” reports the New York Times correspondent.

‘With his nomination of Mississippi District Court Judge Charles Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals, President George W. Bush is substantiating fears that he would attempt to turn the federal judiciary into a right-wing monster.’ Detroit Free Press

Wealth spawns corruption. ‘Physicists are explaining how politics can create the super-rich.’ Nature

Anarchist in the Academy: ‘Philosopher Robert Nozick died Wednesday, at the age of 63. Nozick, a Harvard professor from 1969 until his death, wrote on many topics, but he remained best known and most discussed for his first book, the National Book Award-winning Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). This was the first book to make libertarian views on the nature and legitimacy of the state respectable in academia.

Anarchy, State and Utopia set out to prove, in a manner both intellectually rigorous and playful, that the only morally defensible state is one restricted to the minimal functions of adjudication and defense against force and fraud. No welfare state, no industrial policy, no bailouts, no anti-discrimination laws allowed.’ Reason

New technology raises concerns about grocery shoppers’ privacy:

You swipe your savings card against a screen mounted on a supermarket shopping cart. As you move around the store, the screen flashes ads for products you usually buy, notes that you haven’t bought toothpaste in six months, and provides recipes and health information.

All the while, your every move – including which aisles you go down and how long you spend in each department – is tracked for marketing purposes via the savings cards, also known as loyalty cards.

Such technology is in the works and privacy advocates – already concerned about the proliferation of cards that monitor customers’ purchases – are outraged. Fresno Bee

Marijuana’s Effects: More Than Munchies: “Scientists have …learned that the drug, which an estimated 70 million Americans have at least tried, may be highly addictive to a small percentage of those who use it.” NY Times

NASA’s on-again-off-again plans to explore the fringe are — for now — on again. NY Times

Bush Reconsiders Stand on Treating Captives of War. In an execrable display of hubris, Dubya ‘said he was reconsidering whether Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should be protected under the Third Geneva Convention. But he quickly added that they were “killers” who would not be granted the status of prisoners of war.’

NY Times

And: Let Them Be POWs, editorializes Nicholas Kristof.

When I first wrestled with this issue, I thought I was going to wind up endorsing President Bush’s view that the prisoners are, as he put it today, “killers” rather than P.O.W.’s. But as I read the convention and talked to legal experts, it became clear that the administration’s arguments, while initially persuasive, have the disadvantage of being wrong.

To be more precise, they conflict with the letter and spirit of the convention. Moreover, as some in the Pentagon are quietly trying to point out, they set a terrible precedent for our own Special Operations soldiers. NY Times op-ed

Word of the Day: esemplastic (es-em-PLAS-tik) [adjective]:

Having the capability of moulding diverse ideas or things into unity.

[From Greek es- (into) + en, neuter of eis (one) + plastic. Coined by poet

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), apparently after German Ineinsbildung

(forming into one)].

“Here is how Coleridge used the term in his 1817 Biographia Literaria or

Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions. Vol. I, Chapter 13:”

On the imagination, or esemplastic power.

O Adam! one Almighty is, from whom

All things proceed, and up to him return

If not depraved from good: created all

Such to perfection, one first nature all

Indued with various forms, various degrees.

Wordsmith

Latest news, little of it good, on threats to indigenous peoples from the exemplary NGO Survival International. One-click links to take action.

Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, contemplates the possibility that the next theater of operation in the WoT could be Somalia again. Guardian UK

Pentagon Plans New Command For U.S.: “The Pentagon has decided to ask the White House for approval to set up a new four-star command to coordinate federal troops used to defend North America, part of an intensified effort to bolster homeland security, defense officials said.

” Washington Post

And:
another way to make your head disappear.

The definitive guide to ALT texts in IMGs, which grapples with the essential distniction between content and metacontent in HTML. “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon,” as the Buddhist truism goes…

“Don’t we run drug tests on interns?” — Bill Gates Virus Responsible for Gates Security Memo: ‘An embarrassed Bill Gates admitted today that a memo outlining Microsoft’s new focus on security called Trustworthy Computing was sent out in error when an idealistic intern sent him the fanciful, pie in the sky report in a virus infected e-mail.

“I forgot to patch my Outlook Express and it went out to my entire address book,” said Gates. “You would think that if anything were to get us to focus on security in our software that it would be a gaffe like this. To ensure security in all our software, however, would mean dropping half of our product lines and I have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders.” ‘ BBSpot [thanks, David!]

Register as a Patriot Now!

“As part of the Bush Administration’s ongoing efforts to obliterate all traces of terrorism in the United States, the Department of Justice has commenced registration of each and every American Patriot. By registering all non-terrorists within our borders, it is our intention to make use of the process of elimination to identify the evil ones who walk among us. If you are a non-terrorist (American Patriot), your participation is required. Please register below.

– John Ashcroft

United States Attorney General”

Union Spies

Suppose that on Monday, January 7, President George W. Bush had branded hundreds of Justice Department employees as potential security risks because they were union members?

Might we have expected a question or two at next day’s White House press briefing? Would the networks, perhaps, have been at least mildly interested? Or the newspapers?

Apparently not, because on January 7 President Bush did exactly that to some five hundred labor union members who work in United States Attorneys’ offices, Interpol’s U.S. branch, the Criminal Division, the National Drug Intelligence Center, and the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review.

Mr. Bush’s order said that since these offices “have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,” the presence of unionized workers would not be “consistent with national security requirements and considerations.” Bad Attitudes

Human For Sale – How much are you worth? Have you been thinking about putting yourself up for sale lately? Ever wonder how much money you could get on the open human market? HumanForSale.com will attempt to place a value on your life using a variety of criteria in 4 basic facets of life (physical, mental, lifestyle, personality). This is obviously a very subjective matter and is not intended and does not claim to be scientifically accurate. The more honestly you answer the questions, the more realistic the dollar value returned will be.

Addendum: Graham Leuschke writes: “Humans for Sale is almost certainly a data-collecting mechanism – it’s been around since August, and mentioned at the following places (that I know about):

• http://www.leuschke.org/log/archives/00000119.html
  

• http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/9392
  

• http://www.kottke.org/notes/0108.html#010806“

As Leuschke posted, here’s, allegedly, a site that lets you opt-out and get your data expunged after you’ve gotten sucked into this ingenious strategy for harvesting your provate demographic information, as I did.

Vigilante justice at the hands of an angry net-mob Chicago Tribune

John Grohol: Psychology of Weblogs

The most popular weblogs are those spearheaded by strong personalities, by dynamic individuals who have something to say. Not just about some random link, but about an ongoing theme in their lives that is displayed in a dozen different and unique ways every week, or even every day. These individuals (or groups of individuals) have opinions and you are going to hear them. In a social setting, face-to-face, they may be nothing like their online persona. Some are shy, ingratiating. Others are just as anarchic as their online writing is. But they gain a following for taking a stand, for sharing their innermost thoughts, not because they always take a popular stand or point of view, but because they take a point of view at all. They take one, over and over, day in and day out. The more controversial a person is, the more noteworthy (and often famous) they become. Look at Howard Stern, Dr. Laura, or Jerry Springer in the offline world.

The best weblogs and online journals, however, are not always the most popular. The most popular fall into the same trap as nearly anything driven by popularity – the need to outdo oneself, to remain on top. That pressure affects the writing, and it affects the mission of the person’s site (or in offline terms, the quality of their show). For proof of this, just look into the archives of any old popular weblog or online journal and see how the writing has changed. The subjects that were once original and thought-provoking often become stale, dry, and overwrought. The authors turn to commenting on the mundane, or take up meaningless causes, or rattle on about any old thing in their lives. They become more melodramatic in their writing, and start talking back to their foes. Instead of originality, they become self-referencing, circular, and ultimately, boring.

Sounds like he’s got a grudge against some popular webloggers… Grohol, by the way, is a Psy.D., not an MD, to whose online persona I long ago took an instant dislike after observing that he always insists on referring to himself in print as “Dr John Grohol”. Sure, Ph.D. and Psy.D. psychologists have earned a doctorate, but in a medical environment someone’s claim that by referring to themselves as a doctor they didn’t intend to create the misconception that they were a medical doctor is pure disingenuousness. He’s jockeyed for position as the world’s leading cyberpsychologist for at least a decade, but his Mental Health Page does have some merit. His online biography lets us know, among other things, what car he drives, the name of his pet, and (because he’s sure his readers are passionately interested?) his marital status.

Grohol’s name struck a chord with another weblogger who sent me this pointer to a search of references to him on MetaFilter, especially this thread, the gist of which relate to the fact that he was probably the anonymous author of deadat32, a pathetic attention-getting web project to which I paid little attention, as did few others, in which the writer wrote of his conviction that he would be, yes, dead at 32. (He pulled the plug before his 33rd birthday scheduled for September, 2001.) Grohol denied, rather unconvincingly in the face of a cabal of MetaFilter websleuths, that he was the deadat32 guy.

Fascinating little glimpse of web sociology and individual dynamics seemingly by a guy who studies them in others, and if true a warning to us all about the sordid little axes people grind in private behind their public faces.

How to tell if your ass is too small

Googlewhacking: The Search for The One. Can you find a Google query that’ll return only one result? Opine Bovine (“just another silly cow with an opinion about everything”), I noticed, has come up with a few, e.g “uvula + television” and “faux + beverage”. What does it all mean that these things generate any hits at all??

Fairvue Central >> Features >> Second Annual Weblog Awards: time to vote. One of the new treasures I discovered browsing the nominees is Dollarshort. Among other things, this is a visually understated and gorgeous Movable Type weblog.

Arafat: ‘I’m Like George Washington’

“Did you ever accept the British occupation of the United States,” Arafat asked. “Didn’t George Washington fight, along with his people, until they freed the United States?”

Arafat made his statements one day after the Palestinian cabinet called on all Palestinian factions to abide by the PA’s cease-fire orders of December 16.

Arafat’s vow yesterday to continue the “struggle until victory” was no contradiction to the cabinet’s call for a cease-fire, and was not in defiance of the American demand that he do more, Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to the Palestinian leader told The Jerusalem Post. The Jerusalem Post

Apparently, Arafat has been encouraging this simile for awhile now. It provoked this response in December from Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley:

Incredibly, when the tide began shifting last week, some in our community attempted to rally support by comparing Arafat and his suicide bombers to George Washington and the heroes of the American Revolution. Nice try.

Washington raised an army of patriots willing to die for liberty and used conventional military tactics to defeat a superior foe. Arafat fights with pitiful fanatics who are brainwashed into believing that by murdering innocents they’ll gain a greater heavenly reward.

Washington was a freedom fighter. Arafat is a terrorist.

(…)

It took three months longer than it should have, but the moral equivalency argument was at last blown to pieces in the suicide bombings that killed 26 Israeli civilians last weekend.

The Bush administration finally understands there is no equating the intentional slaughter of children on a family outing with the occupation of Palestinian territories, or the accidental deaths that result from subduing terrorism.

The only moral equivalency that can be drawn today is between the death and destruction inflicted on the United States on Sept. 11 and the daily torment suffered by Israelis.

If only George W. Bush had seen that sooner. Perhaps the dozens of Israelis murdered in recent months might have been spared.

The similarlties, however, may be more apt than his detractors would acknowledge — but turned on their head. Couldn’t you imagine the Founding Fathers targeting British civilians for terrorist attacks if they had had access?

“Don’t we run drug tests on interns?” — Bill Gates Virus Responsible for Gates Security Memo: ‘An embarrassed Bill Gates admitted today that a memo outlining Microsoft’s new focus on security called Trustworthy Computing was sent out in error when an idealistic intern sent him the fanciful, pie in the sky report in a virus infected e-mail.

“I forgot to patch my Outlook Express and it went out to my entire address book,” said Gates. “You would think that if anything were to get us to focus on security in our software that it would be a gaffe like this. To ensure security in all our software, however, would mean dropping half of our product lines and I have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders.” ‘ BBSpot [thanks, David!]

Blogger Pro rolls out, but for now it’s just for Internet Explorer users. Enought of a reason for me to jump ship from Mozilla and whore for Microsoft?

The Collective Unconscious Project:

‘Users can contribute to the site by logging their dreams. This has a double effect, both helping to grow the database of dreams that the project can explore, and creating a personalized dream log for each user. The explore section of the site is the realization of TCUP. This is an environment that allows you to travel from dream to dream in a nonlinear yet interconnected way — without being made fully aware of what those connections are, and without being in control of the path you take.

In this way I hope to make the environment itself very dreamlike. The next dream that you view will be based on the dream you are currently viewing, what emotions are related to that dream, etc. Unexpected connections will be made, and interesting stories will be told. Images will also surface and pass by. Unable to be viewed for very long, these snapshots of memories aid to the dreamlike interaction.’

Blinkenlights

Celebrating its 20th anniversary the Chaos Computer Club has made a special present to itself and the city of Berlin. Since Sept 12, 2001, the famous “Haus des Lehrers” (house of the teacher) office building has been enhanced to become world’s biggest interactive computer display: Blinkenlights.

The upper eight floors of the building have been transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 lamps behind the building’s front windows. A computer controls each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels.

During the night, a constantly growing number of animations can be seen. But there is an interactive component as well: you can play the old arcade classic pong on the building using your mobile phone and you can place your own loveletters on the screen as well.

Death Knell to Cloning Movement?: “News this week that researchers can take versatile stem cells from

bone marrow worries backers of cloning because they fear they’ve lost

their best argument.” Wired

Turning Macs on Thievery: ” Stolen computers are notoriously difficult to recover. But a Houston

man cleverly found his sister’s stolen iMac using remote control

software, friends on the Net, luck and brains.” Wired

The Others: Howard Zinn, moved by The New York Times’ monumental memento mori to the WTC victims, wonders if putting a human face on those who have died under our bombs might affect those Americans who declare their support for Dubya’s “war on terrorism”. The Nation

New Theories Dispute Existence of Black Holes — ‘Two U.S. scientists have questioned the existence of black holes and suggested, in their place, the existence of an exotic bubble of superdense matter, an object they call a gravastar. The two are pointing out that physicists have swept some “humiliating” problems with black holes under the carpet. By confronting these problems, they claim to have found an alternative fate for a collapsing star.’ Cosmiverse

What Is An “Unlawful Combatant,” And Why It Matters

‘According to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters currently being held captive at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not prisoners of war, but “unlawful combatants.” What’s the difference?

The short answer is that a prisoner of war is entitled to the protections set forth in the 1949 Geneva Convention. In contrast, an unlawful combatant is a fighter who does not play by the accepted rules of war, and therefore does not qualify for the Convention’s protections.

Buried within that short answer, however, are a host of complexities and troubling implications.’ FindLaw [via dangerousmeta]

Taleban army rises again to face US

A renegade army of 5,000 Taleban soldiers with 450 tanks, armoured carriers and pick-up trucks is locked in a tense stand-off with American special forces in Afghanistan.

The troops fled Kandahar with their commander and more than 100 senior Taleban figures in December after reneging on a surrender agreement. They have regrouped among villages in the mountainous region of Ghazni province, northwest of Kandahar.

Amid growing concern that powerful pockets of resistance loyal to Osama bin Laden remain in Afghanistan, an American soldier was wounded in the foot and 15 Taleban and al-Qaeda guerrillas were killed yesterday in a gunfight north of Kandahar. The Times of London

Robert Fisk: “The man who would testify against Sharon is blown up. Was this another targeted killing?”

Why would anyone want to car-bomb the former Lebanese Phalangist militia leader and government minister Elie Hobeika in Beirut – less than two days after he agreed to give evidence against Mr Sharon in a Belgian court, which may try the Israeli leader for the murder of up to 1,700 Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in September, 1982?

Independent UK