The last gasp of celebrity culture? “The end of Talk magazine this week was big news–if you live within 75 miles of Times Square (OK, 10 miles), or in ZIP code 90210, northwest Washington and maybe Boston. This isn’t to say that the people who live in the rest of the U.S.’s 3.6 million square miles don’t care about celebrities and buzz and what’s up below East 14th Street. They’re just not preoccupied with, well, talking about it.” WSJ OpinionJournal
Simson Garfinkel: Message in a Bottleneck
Many people who have never tried wireless messaging think that it’s just another techno-gadget—a technology looking for a market. But as soon as they try it, most realize that it’s friendlier, faster, more reliable, less intrusive and generally a lot cheaper than making a cell-phone call. The big difference is synchronicity. With the phone, Beth and I both have to be present at the same instant. With messaging, I can send her a question when I want, and she can answer it on her own time—handy if she’s changing a diaper when I try to reach her (or doing something really important, like sleeping).
This combination of attributes has given rise in the United States to a dedicated, but perplexingly small, following for two-way wireless messaging systems. MIT Technology Review
Broadband Walks the Last Mile: “If you want fast access from home, your only hopes are cable-modem and DSL services. Or are they?” MIT Technology Review
How Amazon finally made a profit: ‘Seattle-based online retailer, one of the poster children of the Internet, surpassed even Wall Street’s expectations, recording a net profit — one without qualifications — for the first time in its six-year history. The news sent its stock up 24 percent yesterday to $12.60.’ Seattle Times
Unlocking door to homes of tomorrow
The latest round in the home entertainment wars was kicked off by Steve Perlman’s start-up company, Moxi Digital. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month, Moxi unveiled the Media Centre (MC): “a combination digital set-top box, video and music jukebox, media server, and internet gateway and firewall”, says the company. It will play your DVD movies, CDs and MP3 music files. It will record broadcast TV, just like a TiVo personal video recorder (PVR).
And licenses permitting, it will stream multimedia to any personal computer or TV set in your home. It is, according to Forrester Research’s principal media and entertainment analyst Josh Bernoff, “the first true entertainment gateway”. Guardian UK
Searchin’ for the Surfer’s Saint
A group of Vatican elders is angling to give the Internet a patron saint – a holy helper with a dedicated connection to the Divine.
The church’s leading candidate is a seventh-century Spanish encyclopedist, Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636). A theologian and a scholar, Isidore was best known for his massive, 20-volume Etymologiae, an attempt at compiling all the world’s knowledge, covering grammar, medicine, law, geography, agriculture, theology, cooking and all points between.
Wired
Palm to unveil wireless device. “According to the sources, the i705’s key feature will be always-on, secure wireless e-mail access through its Palm.net service. The service will also be able to notify subscribers when there is a new message in their in-box.
The i705 will cost $449 and will also come with a Secure Digital expansion card slot, 8MB of memory and a monochrome screen with a resolution of 160 pixels by 160 pixels.” CNet As a longtime Palm fan watching painfully as the company has floundered in its last several iterations, one can hope that they’ll get it right next time, can’t one?
Bluetooth for existing mobile phones: “Plantronics recently announced its M1500 Cordless Headset Solution with Bluetooth support at the Winter 2002 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), as the first solution that brings Bluetooth to those who already have mobile phones and would like to Bluetooth-enable them. The M1500 includes a cordless headset and a Bluetooth adapter that plugs directly into the headset jack of many popular mobile phones.” infoSync
Qaeda Moving Into Indonesia, Officials Fear — ‘For the last two years, Osama bin Laden has been working to establish a beachhead here in the world’s most-populous Muslim nation, say American and Asian officials. Members of his organization Al Qaeda have slipped in and out of the archipelago, bringing millions of dollars in cash for radical Islamic organizations, recruiting members, and providing military training, those officials say.’ NY Times
“Media Alliance is a 25-year-old nonprofit training and resource center for media workers, community organizations, and political activists. Our mission is excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media in the interests of peace, justice, and social responsibility. MA offers a wide variety of services and support to its 3,000 members and groups affiliates, as well as to the general public. We publish MediaFile, the Bay Area’s media review, and People Behind the News, a comprehensive guide to media outlets and journalists throughout the Bay Area; and we train hundreds of community organizations and activists every year in media and computer skills and media advocacy techniques. We have also conducted analyses of media coverage of welfare legislation, affirmative action, and bilingual education and published the results of our analyses.”
Recent articles in MediaFile include:
- Terry Messman: Justice Journalism: journalist as agent of social change, from William Lloyd Garrison to Indymedia.
- Andrea Buffa: Watt’s Up? Behind the media’s coverage of the energy crisis.
- Jeremy Rifkin: Media Giants Lobby to Privatize Broadcast Spectrum
Great list of links to media-related resources online.
If their work is appealing to you, they’re appealing to you. “Though it is on the opposite coast from you, I thought you might be interested. Heard about Media Alliance via an SFGate article and was impressed with their history, etc. Unfortunately, they are having funding issues and I was dismayed to think another voice of dissent might be silenced,” writes an FmH reader.
Former ‘Beirut hostage’ Terry Waite: The Guantanamo Prisoners, Justice or Revenge? “I can recognise the conditions that prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba’s Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet; beaten on the soles of my feet with cable; denied all my human rights, and contact with my family for five years, and given no access to the outside world. Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled at the way we – countries that call ourselves civilised – are treating these captives. Is this justice or revenge?” CounterPunch
The New York Times tone: It’s there whenever the Paper of Record takes a look at any of the quirkier aspects of modern culture — as if to offer a distanced, bemused reassurance to its readers of the entertainment value of taking a tour of the slums — it occurred to me as I read these two articles in quick succession. (That’s all they have to do with each other, of course):
- When Nerds Collide: Bots in the Ring
At first glance, it’s obvious why “BattleBots,” the robot fighting show on Comedy Central, would draw television viewers like passers-by to a car crash.
It is, after all, a series of staged battles between remote-controlled machines equipped with spinning blades, ramming spears and swinging maces. It has noise, wreckage, pseudo- sports commentary modeled on professional wrestling and the all-too-obvious décolletage of Carmen Electra, proffered to the camera as she asks a robot designer, after a bout, how it felt to have his weapon lopped off.
In short, it is mildly nasty, mechanically brutish and thoroughly tasteless — the perfect television show.
And yet, talking to one of the show’s creators, you get the idea that the whole BattleBot universe is a giant math class, much more effective than those that take place in a classroom. Trey Roski, president and chief executive of BattleBots, would have you believe that the show is almost nothing but redeeming social value.
- “Kiss someone who has just eaten Marmite, and you’ll think you were licking paint…” Long live Marmite! Only the British could love it. The vegetable and yeast extract celebrates its centennial.
That no foreigner has ever been known to like it simply adds to its domestic allure and its iconic status as an emblem of enduring British insularity and bloody-mindedness. Were Hogarth to paint a still life in a 21st century British pantry, a jar of Marmite would have to figure in it.
In Personal Anecdote, Some See New Distance Where Others See New Strategy: ‘…(P)eople close to Mr. Bush said his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch, served as a convenient device for him to distance himself from the Enron debacle and to appear more empathetic to its investors and employees than to the wealthy business executives who escaped the Enron collapse with flush bank accounts.” NY Times And: Why Bush deserves his share of the 9/11 blame — Aaron Marr Page: “Did Bush, at a key moment, dismantle the Clinton administration’s increasingly effective anti-Al Qaeda apparatus (which, though hardly flawless, was far better than nothing)?” The American Prospect
Jonathan Chaitt: Reform School: “At first glance, the Enron scandal suggests we need campaign finance reform. Upon closer inspection, it suggests we need it desperately.”
Noam Scheiber: Business School: “Campaign finance reform seems the obvious way to prevent future Enrons. Except that campaign finance didn’t buy Enron its influence.” The New Republic
Froma Harrop: Was Enron also a cult? “There is, of course, one big difference between Lay and traditional cult leaders. Koresh and Applewhite perished with their followers. Lay had no intention of sharing their fate. While urging his employees to stay the course with Kool-Aid, he cashed out of Enron stock to the tune of many millions. No team-playing fool he.” Providence Journal
Digital divide: racism’s new frontier
“The internet is slow to recognise its responsibilities as an ethical player. If we have racism, a digital divide is its new colonial frontier. Passions surrounding the access and control of IT worldwide have triggered a cultural revolution.” Guardian UK
Cheney’s old firm on shaky ground. ‘A Texas energy giant finds itself on the financial ropes despite spending years currying favor with Washington. Nevertheless, the company can still claim a special friend in the White House.
Enron? Nope. This would be Dallas’ ailing Halliburton Co., whose former chief executive is Vice President Dick Cheney.’ San Francisco Chronicle
Important Seymour Hersh story on a secret Pakistani airlift of 5000 or so Pakistani nationals and other non-Afghani fighters for the Taliban trapped in the Northern Alliance siege of Kunduz. The US assented to, or even assisted in, this evacuation after stalling on surrender negotiations. General Musharraf persuaded the US that his slender hold on power in Pakistan would be jeopardized if his people came home in body bags. Reportedly, the US was supposed to have, but has never gotten, access to interrogate those evacuated.
India, whose intelligence service is the source of this story, is incensed but wary of offending the US with a public denunciation. Diplomatic notes of protest to the US and the UK have reportedly been ignored. Indian intelligence is convinced that many of the airlifted fighters will be encouraged to infiltrate into the ongoing Kashmiri conflict; Musharraf cannot afford to have them remain in Pakistan.
Hersh quotes sources who feel that India’s enraged “jilted lover syndrome” over this and other evidence of the Bush Administration’s decision to make Pakistan its chief ally in the Afghanistan war has contributed to the escalation of Indian-Pakistani belligerency in the wake of the December 13th attack on the Parliament Building. The precariousness of the standoff between these two hairtrigger nuclear powers grows daily.
India’s grievances—over the Pakistani airlift, the continuing terrorism in Kashmir, and Musharraf’s new status with Washington—however heartfelt, may mean little when it comes to effecting a dramatic change of American policy in South Asia. India’s democracy and its tradition of civilian control over the military make it less of a foreign-policy priority than Pakistan. The Bush Administration has put its prestige, and American aid money, behind Musharraf, in the gamble—thus far successful—that he will continue to move Pakistan, and its nuclear arsenal, away from fundamentalism. The goal is to stop nuclear terrorism as well as political terrorism. It’s a tall order, and missteps are inevitable. Nonetheless, the White House remains optimistic. An Administration official told me that, given the complications of today’s politics, he still believed that Musharraf was the best Pakistani leader the Indians could hope for, whether they recognize it or not. “After him, they could only get something worse.” The New Yorker
The First Six Months of George W. Bush: “Whatever your beliefs, know what your president is doing.”
A new group blog from the estimable provocateur Dr. Menlo, American Samizdat, themed so: “underground word lines especially needed by progit-heavy U.S.” It will include contributions from invited participants including “Fred Pyen of Metascene, Andrew Aab of gmtPlus9, Kirsten Anderson (founder, owner and curator of Seattle’s first and best alternative art gallery, the Roq La Rue), Brooke Biggs (formerly purveyor of the Bush Files over at Mother Jones, who now does the highly recommended Bittershack)…”, that ol’ Bushwacker Fred Lapides, Adam Rice from randomWalks, Mark Woods of wood s lot, and Jim of jimwich. RU Sirius was invited too, but no sign of him yet…
I’m honored to have been among the invitees, and may post there from time to time. Dr. Menlo astutely reassured me in the invitation letter that he doesn’t intend this to take any more time than my preexisting weblogging activities — that would be like blood from a stone — but that I might get extra mileage from time to time from posting some of the items from FmH on issues that particularly incense me.
Brain disease influenced Ravel’s last compositions including his Boléro, say researchers. Orchestral timbres came to dominate his late music at the expense of melodic complexity because the left half of his brain deteriorated, they suggest. Timbre is mainly the province of the brain’s right hemisphere.
French composer Maurice Ravel suffered from a mysterious progressive dementia from about 1927 when he was 52 years old. He gradually lost the ability to speak, write and play the piano. He composed his last work in 1932, and gave his last performance in 1933. He died in December 1937.
Neurologists have puzzled over his illness ever since. Nature
Gravity leaps into quantum world: ‘Far from falling smoothly, objects moving under gravity do so in lurching, quantum leaps, a French experiment has revealed. The finding confirms that gravity, like the Universe’s three other fundamental forces, can have a quantum effect.’ Nature
Stephen Metcalf: Little Darlin’ – Wes Anderson, the sequel to Quentin Tarantino — ‘Too much creative control too soon equals too little self-control, a hothouse delight in one’s own talent.’ Slate
Consumers fight back against new protected CDs — ‘All across the world, people are dropping newly purchased $17 CDs into their CD-ROM drives and freaking out. In some cases, the CD won’t play at all in their computers. In other instances, the CD cannot be ripped into digital files for use on MP3 players. And sometimes, the CD will play only with Windows Media Player.
For people who have grown accustomed to using their PC to play CDs, this is tantamount to fraud. In some countries, these so-called protected CDs have labels on them so that computer users know which ones to avoid. However, this is not the case in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom. The music industry’s head-on collision with technology has never been a thing of beauty, but I think that selling people CDs that are effectively broken has to be a new low…
Thanks to a site called Fat Chuck’s, irate consumers are compiling their specific knowledge of protected CDs (Chuck calls them corrupted ) into a database. You can search and browse the database as well as send in reports of the corrupted discs you buy so that others won’t make the same mistake. Even better, Fat Chuck–whoever he is–tries to verify the comments that people make, so you’re not just getting feedback from people who don’t like the CDs they buy for other reasons.’ CNet
The Hidden Suffering of the Psychopath: ‘… the psychopath has the image of a cold, heartless, inhuman being. But do all psychopaths show a complete lack of normal emotional capacities and empathy? Like healthy people, many psychopaths love their parents, spouse, children and pets in their own way, but have difficulty loving and trusting the rest of the world. Furthermore, psychopaths do suffer emotionally as a consequence of separation, divorce, death of a beloved person or dissatisfaction with their own deviant behavior.’ Psychiatric Times
E. Fuller Torrey, MD: The year neurology almost took over psychiatry:
In December 1880, the emerging profession of neurology almost absorbed psychiatry, which had established itself four decades earlier. The final confrontation was the culmination of an extremely bitter three-year battle, and the outcome was very much in doubt as representatives of each side prepared to testify before the New York State Senate Investigative Committee on Asylum Management. One possible outcome would be the recommendation that neurologists be given administrative control of the state asylums and, effectively, of psychiatry. Other states watched New York’s battle closely and seemed likely to follow its lead.
The Urge to Punish Cheats: Not Just Human, but Selfless. ‘In the ferocity of the public outcry, and the demand from even those with no personal stake in the Enron collapse that “justice” be done, some scientists see a vivid example of humanity’s evolved and deep-seated hatred of the Cheat. The Cheat is the transgressor of fair play, the violator of accepted norms, the sneak who smiles with Chiclet teeth while ladling from the community till.’ NY Times
Ethical Reporting ‘Journalists have long been accused of wielding power without responsibility. But a group of more than 200 UK-based editors, writers, producers and reporters have spent the last year acting on the Primo Levi principle: “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Together they have produced a book, Reporting the World, a guide to “ethical reporting” in times of conflict.’ MediaChannel
Write here, write now: “Soon you’ll be able to post a message in the air wherever you go. Bennett Daviss explores a weird new way to keep in touch:
… Pinning messages in mid-air, using the location’s Global Positioning System (GPS) reference, could become the next craze in communications. The messages are not actually kept in the air: they’re stored on an Internet page. But that page’s Web address is linked to coordinates on the Earth’s surface, rather than a person or organisation. As you move about, a GPS receiver in your mobile phone or PDA will check to see if a message has been posted on the website for that particular spot. If you’re in luck a snippet of info-left as text or a voice recording by someone who passed there previously-will pop up on your screen or be whispered into your earpiece.” New Scientist
“President Bush’s war Cabinet is drawing up a secret plan to topple Saddam Hussein as soon as six months from now.
A new Afghanistan-style strategy is being finalized to use Iraqi freedom fighters, backed by U.S. military forces, … a Bush administration adviser is reported to have said.
The adviser is quoted as saying that a “general consensus” has emerged among members of Bush’s inner circle that the dictator must be ousted.” New York Post […bastion of responsible journalism. -FmH]
Notes from a Blogger Pro demo at the Weblogger Interest Group meeting in Mountain View. This won’t mean much to those of you who don’t use Blogger, but I’m salivating.
How to seem smarter — ‘The goal behind this painless four-step plan is to seem smarter without having to read any books, listen to classical music, or depend on crutches like word-of-the-day toilet paper. By making a few minor modifications to your behavior, you will give the impression to those around you that you are smarter–not only smarter than you were before, but, more importantly, smarter than they are.’ ReadyMade
Leon Wieseltier on Cornel West: All and Nothing at All
Since there is no crisis in America more urgent than the crisis of race, and since there is no intellectual in America more celebrated for his consideration of the crisis of race, I turned to West, and read his books. They are almost completely worthless. The man who wrote them is a good man, an enemy of enmity; but he is, as he writes again and again, for “a better world.” Who is not? And who, at this late date in the history of the attempt to better the world generally, and to better the world of what West calls “America’s chocolate cities” specifically, can still use this expression without irony, or without an anxiety about the degradation of idealism?
West’s work is noisy, tedious, slippery (in The American Evasion of Philosophy, “evasion” is a term of praise, a description of an accomplishment), sectarian, humorless, pedantic and self-endeared. His judgment of ideas is eccentric. The New Republic
“Slow Wave is a collective dream diary authored by different people from around the world, and drawn as a comic strip by Jesse Reklaw. A new strip is uploaded every week on the first minute of Saturday in San Francisco; 3 AM Friday in New York; 6 AM Saturday in Paris, France; and 3 PM Saturday in Sydney, Australia…
Submit your dreams.”
Human Rights Watch World Report 2002 (Human Rights Developments in 2001)
Director Calls Bush ‘An Embarrassment’ — ‘Veteran filmmaker Robert Altman is venting about President George W. Bush again.
Altman, who’s been showered with critics’ accolades and a Golden Globe of late with the comedy murder mystery “Gosford Park,” first announced before the 2000 presidential election that he would leave the country if Bush were elected president.
He said a Republican victory “would be a catastrophe for the whole world,” taking issue with Bush’s plans to cut taxes and raise military spending.
Now in an interview the The London Times, Altman became enraged when speaking of Bush and the American government.’ The Boston Channel
“States must tighten their procedures for issuing driver’s licenses. That was clear after Sept. 11, when it became known that several of the hijackers had obtained licenses by using false identities.
But how far should the tightening go? Should these essential state identification cards become national IDs?” Christian Science Monitor
National ID in development : “…(T)he public’s willingness to trade some privacy for the promise of increased security seems to be slipping. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll released last week says just more than half of all adults would support a national identification card that includes fingerprint information. Two months ago, several polls indicated that more than two-thirds of all adults would support a national ID card.” USA Today [… a paper that’s not good for much, but when even it reports that Americans are disappointing conservative expectations it’s worth noting… -FmH]
Mickey Kaus: What Black Hawk Down leaves out; that Somalia raid really was more a debacle than a victory. Slate [No surprise unless you’re getting all your history from Hollywood… -FmH]
‘More people in America watch ‘Friends’ than have friends.’
“Leading American sociologist Robert Putnam made this semi-serious claim in a talk he gave recently to a large audience at the Brisbane Convention Centre.
Professor Putnam cites public health research which shows that people who are socially isolated are as much at risk of death as people who smoke.
Robert Putnam is the author of the term ‘social capital’, which refers to community bonds and interpersonal connections. These, he argues, are just as
important for the public good as economic wellbeing.
His bestselling book Bowling Alone: The Decline and Revival of American Community described how on many measures social capital has declined dramatically since the 1970s. Putnam analysed factors such as membership of voluntary organisations, how often people went on picnics, and levels of
philanthropy, and found sharp declines on all fronts.” abc.net.au
How a woman ‘nose’ who to mate
Women are designed to sniff out men with body odour similar to their fathers.
Researchers believe the discovery is an example of the way nature ensures the right individuals mate through subtle smell signals.
The research from the University of Chicago shows odours relate to the immune system genes a woman inherits from her father.
Ananova
Molly Ivins: What’s that sound that we’re not hearing?
After six years as governor of Texas, George W. Bush was infuriated by a federal report ranking Texas No. 1 in hunger. “You’d think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas,” he said. Well, Texas had been No. 1 in hunger since the feds started keeping count in the 1960s. It’s a permanent condition here, but the governor had never seen it.
We better stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down. Dallas-Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
What is Art Music? Orlando Jacinto Garcia:
As we enter the next century the music world can seem a bit confusing. Twenty-five years ago what was considered the Western Art music canon consisted of music from either Antiquity or the Renaissance through the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and into the 20th century. The music called by many in the general public “classical” music was relatively well defined in so far as the composers and their works. Today, this repertoire is not the only music deemed as relevant. Especially in post-modern times where categories are being redefined, it is easy for many to assert that a tango, a rock tune, and a Beethoven symphony are all the same except perhaps for the musical parameters that define the style. This can have its positive as well as negative ramifications. The positive perhaps being that all types of music are understood as having similar importance, the negative that everything is considered in many ways as being the same. NewMusicBox
Teaching Aesthetics to Artists
Artists tend to be repelled by aesthetics, for a number of reasons. Many are suspicious that too much analyzing of their art will harm their creativity; it will encourage them to develop their rational ego at the expense of their creative unconscious. Or they suspect that aesthetic analysis will have no effect on them, that thinking about art in this way is simply useless. Give a group of artists a copy of the latest issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and their response is likely to be that it simply doesn’t interest them, that the issues discussed are not ones that they face as artists, and that it seems to consist mainly of academic nit-picking and hair-splitting which has little to do with the real worlds of art.
Larkin’s lover bequeaths to church £1m of poet’s agnostic legacy:
Friends and admirers of the poet Philip Larkin were yesterday interested, surprised and in some cases affectionately amused to hear that £1m of his legacy had gone indirectly to the Church of England.
Larkin, who declined the poet laureateship a year before he died in 1985, remains best known for his reverently agnostic poem Churchgoing. However, he also said: “The Bible is a load of balls of course – but very beautiful.”
Guardian UK
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone ?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that some many dead lie round.
Dum & Dummer – Michael J. Sheehan: “Our parents taught us not to speak negatively of others, but what’s a person to do when ignorance, the absence of knowledge, rears its empty head? Any thesaurus will provide us with substantives such as blockheadedness, denseness, doltishness, dumbness, dullness, stupidity, shallowness, incomprehension, unintelligence, and unenlightenment, but when we need heftier words or more striking language, where do we turn?” The Vocabula Review
We saw A Beautiful Mind last night. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) Jennifer Connelly is deservedly the critics’ darling, up for a Golden Globe. Ed Harris is underrated and breathtaking to watch in his limited time onscreen. Even more breathtaking is Russell Crowe, who does a wonderful job as John Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician with a lifelong struggle against paranoid schizophrenia, except for some moments when he was obviously directed to be a dorky stereotype which, in reality, has nothing to do with schizophrenia. This allows a gratuitous and incongruous scene in which some longhaired Princeton students — it’s the late ’60’s or early ’70’s at this point — make insensitive fun of him. As a psychiatrist whose primary clinical activity is treating schizophrenia, I was far more moved by the film than the non-mental-health-professionals with whom I saw it. What is most difficult to understand about schizophrenic delusions — the subjective, and ultimately terrifying, experience of being unable to differentiate internal fantasies from consensus reality — is well-portrayed here, although through a cinematographic artifice of populating his world with people who turn out to be imagined. No adult schizophrenic I have ever treated or read about has this literal version of an “imaginary playmate”; most of their hallucinatory experiences are of disembodied voices about whose identities they either speculate or remain ignorant. The film also provokes the right questions about the relationship between genius and mental instability. To be overly simplistic, does Nash create because of or in spite of his illness? And, the flip side of the coin, how germane is his intellectual strength — the answer, it seems to me, is not at all obvious — to his perseverence in the face of his illness? Worth seeing.
Information page on Nyiragongo, the volcano that just erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A superb, well-organized colection of the woodblock prints of Hiroshige, which I have always found sublime. The above, “Thunderstorm at Ohashi and Atake,” from the Hundred Famous Views of Edo, has long had a special resonance with me.
[thanks to fruitlog — now plep??]
A dwelling for the gods — “The door handles took a year to design. The radiators took another. And then the ceiling had to be raised – by a few millimetres. Stuart Jeffries on what happened when Ludwig Wittgenstein applied his philosophy to architecture.” A review of “The Unknown Wittgenstein: Architect, Engineer, Photographer” at the Royal Academy of Art, London. Guardian UK [via Fimoculous]
Wallace and Gromit to return online — “The stars of animator Nick Park’s Oscar-winning The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave are to make their return on the internet, it was revealed today.
Wallace, a prolific inventor fond of red ties, green tank tops and Wensleydale cheese with creations such as the aforementioned mechanical trousers to his name, will be reunited with his plasticine dog, Gromit, in 12 one-minute movies.” Guardian UK [via Fimoculous]
“Lab specimens of anthrax spores, Ebola virus and other pathogens disappeared from the Army’s biological warfare research facility in the early 1990s, during a turbulent period of labor complaints and recriminations among rival scientists there, documents from an internal Army inquiry show.
The 1992 inquiry also found evidence that someone was secretly entering a lab late at night to conduct unauthorized research, apparently involving anthrax. A numerical counter on a piece of lab equipment had been rolled back to hide work done by the mystery researcher, who left the misspelled label “antrax” in the machine’s electronic memory, according to the documents obtained by The Courant.”
Brussels can like it or lump it on sauce: “A spectacularly obscure EU body will meet in Brussels today to decide just how many lumps a sauce can contain before it ceases to be classified as a sauce and is regarded officially as a vegetable.” The Times of London
The C.I.A.’s Domestic Reach: “The charter of the Central Intelligence Agency expressly denies the spies any domestic police powers. … So the boundaries were drawn at the dawn of the cold war. The C.I.A. would find out what was going on outside the United States — and so prevent a second Pearl Harbor. The F.B.I. would work inside the United States to catch criminals and foreign agents.
That once bright line has blurred since Sept. 11.
Congress has given the C.I.A. new legal powers to snoop on people in the United States — not limited to investigating groups like Al Qaeda. It has been granted these new powers, along with billions of dollars, without any public post-mortem into how all these guardians of national security failed to protect against the September attacks.” NY Times
Why We Want Their Bodies Back: “As humans have evolved, they’ve learned there are good reasons not to bury an empty coffin… The desire for tangible proof of the death of someone we know or love is a natural human impulse. But often that desire extends well beyond a purely rational need for certainty. In circumstances where there is not the remotest chance that someone is still alive, we still expend great energy and often put other lives on the line in order to retrieve the dead.” Discover
Stress Causes Lasting Brain Changes: ‘The research team… looked at what happened to mouse brain cells and to live mice following brief exposure to different types of stress. Their findings appear in the Jan. 18 issue of Science.
They found that within minutes of exposure, brain nerve cells, or neurons, became hypersensitive. And the change lasted for several weeks — long after the stress was gone. This is in keeping with victims of posttraumatic stress, who despite time and distance from the original trauma remain physically, mentally, and emotionally agitated.’ WebMD
Poll: Bush Admin. Hiding Something, say almost two thirds of respondents. But will it change the Administration’s approval ratings in the face of the effective pressure for sheeplike loyalty? yahoo!
Laughter in the Time of Conflict Times of India editorial; Indians use humor as weapon against world terror Smirking Chimp
PR Watch: “public interest reporting on the PR/Public Affairs industry. PR Watch offers investigative reporting on the public relations industry. We help the public recognize manipulative and misleading PR practices by exposing the activities of secretive, little-known propaganda-for-hire firms that work to control political debates and public opinion.” From the Center for Media and Democracy.
Book review: Debunking Japan’s Myths of Its Exceptional Self
For centuries Japanese have been encouraged to look at their land as exceptional. A “small island nation” set off from the huge Asian landmass, Japan was “home to the gods” and to a supposedly homogenous race of people whose origins, like those of their language, defied detection.
At various times this exceptional view of self has been used as a pernicious ideology, justifying slaughter and discrimination. More recently, during the boom years of the late 20th century, it was used to explain the nation’s spellbinding successes.
From the very beginning James L. McClain, in his sweeping and vigorously told new book, Japan: A Modern History, debunks these cherished myths. In short order he takes apart the notions of monoethnicity and cultural exceptionalism, neatly explaining, for example, how the divine-origin myth of the imperial family is at bottom a fable to cover the political massacre that allowed the Yamato clan to rule. NY Times
Poll: Bush Admin. Hiding Something, say almost two thirds of respondents. But will it change the Administration’s approval ratings in the face of the effective pressure for sheeplike loyalty? yahoo!
Happy birthday to Janis Joplin, January 19th, 1943 — October 4th, 1970.
Goodbye Digital Democracy… “The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the public airwaves and media providers, is poised to make a number of important, if not historic decisions on media ownership and monopolies.” An interview with Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy who monitors the FCC closely. Tompaine.com
Many people — for example, Craig at BookNotes — are keeping their finger on the pulse of the Enron scandal. I haven’t had the heart to follow it in detail, mostly because I think it’s so much business as usual. As a matter of fact, there doesn’t seem to be much notable news around in the past couple of weeks at all. Part of this is — I’m not sure if this is my imagination, but I’ve observed it in past years as well — there seems to be a lull in world doings for awhile after New Year’s, as if everyone slows down for a moment and takes a collective deep breath to face the twists and turns and bumps in the road ahead. It may also turn out that life during wartime — this perennial, unwinnable ‘war against terrorism’ in which security concerns are the pretext for every authoritarian move the Administration wants to make — is going to turn out to be just featureless longhaul drudgery.
In addition to the system makeover that’s been going on at my house, this has probably been one reason my blogging activity dropped off — you must’ve noticed? — in recent weeks. I’ve always been cynically unsurprised by the contemptible business of politics, until the theft of the Presidential election and then the terrorist attacks jarred me out of my complacent notion that there was nothing worth writing about in that sphere of life. Longtime FmH readers will remember haughty, superior vows I made at times in the past not to discuss politics too much. Maybe I’m coming back to my senses (grin) again…
In a related item, how much has business as usual changed since Sept. 11th? The Bush’s and others of their ilk would have you believe that events have brought the nation together and that more people want to “be-all-that-they-can-be”, but the numbers don’t support it. Washington Post And if you had any doubts about this being a kinder and gentler America, think again. Chicago Sun Times The Shrub, Inc. people would also have you believe that they have been successful in crafting an enduring, lofty international alliance against terrorism. You must’ve noticed already that this is largely a shifting fiction of spin and convenience. Now we may be heading for our Waterloo with even the most stalwart Western European ‘allies’, in Guantanamo Bay. Guardian UK And the Saudis may ask for the US exit soon too. Washington Post
The only stimulating aspect of the Enron affair would be if it were any kind of significant embarrassment to ‘Skunk’ Cheney, but don’t hold your breath. He’s been able to keep the proverbial, perennial low profile on the pretext of security demands since the fall. BookNotes, again, avows that
“…on Feb. 2, Dick Cheney will emerge from his bunker. If he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of war in Afghanistan…”
and, to be sure, three more years of corporate giveaways (by the way, did you realize that the net worth of Bush’s cabinet members is ten times that of their predecessors? the public i), and daily news reports that the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden are still not known. Here’s Cursor‘s take on it:
Also via Cursor: The US seems to want it both ways on our hunt for bin Laden.
By the way, in light of my reemergent dialogue with Dan Hartung, I feel compelled to offer at least a halfhearted apology for my continuing cynicism and pessimism. Perhaps it’s like Pascal’s wager — hedging my bet if I turn out to be wrong? Here, BTW, is what former Suck editor Tim Cavanaugh has to say about the “warblogs” (at the USC Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review):
Shine on, you crazy bloggers! Someday the rest of us will hold our manhoods cheap that we did not blog with you this day. But as long as courage lives and liberty endures, every American will be proud to have you out there, blogging for an audience of none.
What Comes After Welfare Reform? Two authors from the Center on Hunger and Poverty at
Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management suggest — novel idea — that we consider ways to ensure economic security for all Americans.
The reauthorization debate is the domestic policy opportunity of the near future, but it will be a lost opportunity if it devolves into an argument over whether this or that element of the 1996 changes succeeded. No honest analyst should feel good about discussing the minutiae of an economic security policy that clearly has not been a credible success. Reauthorization will also be a lost opportunity if it focuses only on the poor to the exclusion of other low-income working families, or even the conditions of tenuously “middle class” families. The upcoming debate offers a tremendous occasion to focus the nation and its leaders on the needs that all households have for a meaningful chance to achieve economic well-being, and it can start a discussion that one day results in a new domestic framework with asset-building policy as its common core. An asset policy framework appeals to fundamental values: opportunity, choice, personal responsibility, fairness, and social responsibility. Boston Review
OxyContin Prescribers Face Charges in Fatal Overdoses
Moving against what law enforcement officials say is a boom in “pill mills,” prosecutors are charging doctors with murder or manslaughter in the deaths of patients from overdoses of prescription drugs, including the powerful painkiller OxyContin.
In a Florida courtroom this week, Dr. James Graves went on trial on manslaughter charges stemming from the overdose deaths of four people for whom he had prescribed OxyContin and other drugs; next month in a California state court, a similar case is to begin against Dr. Frank B. Fisher. Last year, Florida prosecutors charged Dr. Denis Deonarine with first-degree murder in connection with a fatal overdose.
Legal experts said it was extremely rare for a doctor to be charged with murder or manslaughter because of their prescribing practices. Doctors accused of improperly dispensing drugs have usually been charged with fraud or with illegally prescribing controlled substances.
Related:
Few States Track Prescriptions as a Method to Bar Overdoses (December 21, 2001)
Maker Chose Not to Act to Reduce Abuse of OxyContin (August 13, 2001)
The Alchemy of OxyContin: From Pain Relief to Drug Addiction (July 29, 2001)
NY Times
Free State — ‘In recent American foreign policy, two principles loom large. In Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor, we have argued that national self-determination brings justice and peace. In Afghanistan, we have insisted that democracies should give no quarter in the war against terrorism. Now, if India and Pakistan can ignore both those principles, they may be able to avert a war over Kashmir.’ The New Republic The author argues that India essentially faces a no-win situation in Kashmir because of historical accident and contemporary pressures.
‘X-Files’ To Be Permanently Sealed
According to the Hollywood Reporter online, the final episode of “The X-Files” will air in May. It will be the 201st show of the series, which began nine years ago.
“I’d rather go out now and celebrate rather than have to make an announcement in the summer,” show creator Chris Carter told the site. The Boston Channel
About time someone finally put the show out of its misery…
ME: the making of a new disease — British physician Michael Fitzpatrick, author of The Tyranny of Health: doctors and the regulation of lifestyle, writes here about myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is what the British call chronic fatigue syndrome or CFS. A working group reporting to the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, the equivalent of the Surgeon General of the US, has endorsed the idea that ME is a real disease and requires prompt recognition and attention. Like me, the essayist is skeptical, and notes that before reaching its consensus statement, the committee was riven by controversy and resignations. My close study of CFS as one of a number of controversial syndromes on the medical-psychiatric interface about which I have written and taught convinced me that, while there is an organic basis for CFS in a small proportion of cases, by and large the diagnosis is misused by self-deceiving sufferers and politically correct clinicians with the misguided notion that it is a stinging rejection to tell a patient that their dysfunction is “all in their head.” This is enabling to patients who are invested in finding a physical explanation for their psychological distress, often personality disorders that are hard to pin down.
The essay also underscores the medical perils of the essentially political nature of the recognition of new diagnoses. This is quite familiar to those of us in the mental health field who watch the squabbling around the periodic revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the official ‘bible’ of diagnoses in psychiatry. It should not be surprising in an era when there are pitched battles over paying for medical care. As Dr Fitzpatrick notes, it “represents the capitulation of medical authority to irrationality.”
‘Self-pity and self-deception are the great enemies of Mankind’ writes medical commentator Theodore Dalrymple in his recent book, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Medicine. Yet both are pervasive in modern society, and nowhere more than among patients with ME, above all in the ME organisations. To any observer who takes a historical or sociological perspective on the emergence of novel diseases such as CFS/ME, their origins in the existential distress of their sufferers is readily apparent – as indeed it usually is in the doctor’s surgery.
The tragedy of the sufferers is their lack of insight into this process, a deficit that is reinforced by the provision of a pseudo-medical disease label. Whereas according to the new policy of the Chief Medical Officer, doctors are now obliged to collude with the self-deception of ME sufferers, for Dalrymple, it is necessary to ‘undeceive’ to achieve change. From his humanistic perspective, it is the doctor’s responsibility, acting with due circumspection, to ‘undeceive the self-deceived’. While the official line ratifies confusion and promotes incapacity, this approach points the way towards enlightenment and recovery.spiked!
Robert Kuttner: Daschle Too Timid To Take On Bush Tax Cut:
“(W)hen Democrats try to blame Bush for this year’s escalating deficit, Republicans can easily demonstrate that most of the current fiscal deterioration is the result of the recession.
That, of course, misses the real point, which is that the big tax cut misallocates national resources for the long term. Worse, instead of making national priorities the issue, Democrats make deficits the issue.
The Democrats are also loath to draw the logical conclusion that most of the 10-year tax cut should be repealed. Bush has vowed that this would occur ”over my dead body,” a vow reminiscent of his fathers famous braggadocio (”Read my lips, no new taxes”). But the Democrats should take up Bush II’s challenge.” The American Prospect
U.S. Says Tribal Leaders Balk at Aiding Search for Taliban. “Many Pashtun tribal leaders in eastern Afghanistan have balked at cooperating with American Special Operations Forces in the hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, weapons caches and intelligence that could prevent future terrorist attacks, military officials said today. The leaders’ reluctance has left American forces with few Afghan allies in one of the most dangerous regions of the country, a former Taliban and Al Qaeda stronghold that may still harbor hostile fighters and contain underground command bunkers and hideouts for staging guerrilla attacks, officials said.
” NY Times
“There are two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. The supreme achievement of reason is to realise that there is a limit to reason. Reason’s last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realise that.”
–Pascal
The suprascientific in clinical medicine:
I first heard of him half a century ago. He is one of those people who become more articulate, more cocksure, and more formidable in debate the older they get. Continental Europeans call him Erik the Genius. Although he is highly esteemed in the United Kingdom, he impresses Americans less. I call him Professor Know-All because every time a new fact emerges in science or medicine, he has expected it. Nothing puzzles him. So I decided to see what he would make of these four case histories. British Medical Journal (BMJ)
Ancient Engravings Push Back Origin of Abstract Thought: Two pieces of ochre show our ancestors were thinking symbolically at 75,000 BCE. Scientific American
ABC’s Nightline briefing on “neurotheology”: “There are certain [brain] patterns that can be generated experimentally that will generate the sense, presence and the feeling of God-like experiences,” says professor of Neuroscience Michael Persinger of Ontario’s Laurentia University. “The patterns we use are complex but they imitate what the brain does normally.”
What’s in a name? Nominal kinship cues facilitate altruism.
In an age of instant communication, what is it that makes us choose to respond to one email over another and when are we more likely to offer help to a complete stranger? The answer is when we share the same name as the other person, according to new research published in the Royal Society’s journal Proceedings B. An analysis of responses to 2,960 emails by researchers at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, found that a shared name leads to a perceived connection with and positive attitude towards, the other person, that arises from a feeling of shared ancestry – or kinship. The recent clamour by millions of people trying to access the UK Public Record Office’s 1901 census website bears this out. Our responses to people with the same name are also likely to be quicker and friendlier than when our names are different.
Half a Brain Is Enough: The Story of Nico “Some things we believe because, even though they seem impossible, someone we trust says that they are true. It’s like that with the little boy in Dr Antonio Battro’s book, Half a Brain is Enough: The Story of Nico. Nico has half a brain–and a complete mind. Battro is so expert and likable and forthright that you come away from his book not only knowing Nico’s story is true, but sharing his awe at that amazing fact.” JAMA
My comments below in response to Dan Hartung, about how depression although painful may be an adaptive response at times, have provoked a number of impassioned email responses both pro and con. For those interested in pursuing the issue further (re: depression, not antiwar thinking…), some of the links in this Google Search may be of value. Dan jotted me a note promising to reply to my comments; I’ve just checked in at lake effect again and I see he has done so.
Next step: Philippines? Washington Post
Danger Persists After Hobbling Of Al Qaeda: ‘…(A)uthorities in the United States and Europe remain deeply worried about the possibility of more terrorist attacks of smaller scope, either by al Qaeda itself or by sympathizers to bin Laden’s cause.
Even more alarming is the possibility that bin Laden and his closest associates may have preapproved another spectacular act of terrorism on the magnitude of the Sept. 11 hijackings, Bush administration officials said. At least a half-dozen alleged terrorist plots connected to al Qaeda have been unmasked since Sept. 11, including plans to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Paris and to attack U.S. interests in Singapore.’ Washington Post The article suggests that the dismantling of al Qaeda’s infrastructure in Afghanistan precludes another monumental act like the the Sept. 11th events. But, especially given that bin Laden appears to have eluded capture, on what basis should we have any confidence that we can detect clandestine communication to ‘sleeper’ cells biding their time with similar long-gestating plans in the US or elsewhere in the West?
Trawler nets giant squid. “It is thought it would have stretched to about 5.5m in length if it still had its two feeding tentacles, which were lost when it was caught.” BBC
Discovery That Common Mood Disorders Are Inherited Together May Reveal Genetic Underpinnings: ‘The genetic underpinnings of panic disorder and manic depressive (bipolar) illness have long eluded scientists. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins studying the inheritance patterns of these conditions have concluded that they probably are not separate diseases at all, but different forms of a shared and complex biological condition.
“We’ve shown that panic attacks and panic disorder are related genetically to bipolar disorder and therefore likely share a common cause,” says Dean F. MacKinnon, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Hopkins and lead author of a report on the study in the current issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. “We still can’t say what specific gene or genes cause what, but this is a major step toward solving these problems,” says MacKinnon.’ PsychLinx
We already know that anxiety and mood disorders share some common neurochemical underpinnings, because antidepressants are the best anti-anxiety medications as well. There are few “textbook cases” of either pure anxiety or pure depression untinged by the other. Clinicians have suspected that anxiety disorders evolve into more chronic, depressive conditions longitudinally. But, especially if this genetic analysis leads to the identification of a common locus, this is big news. Science Daily
Todd Gitlin: Blaming America First: “Why are some
on the left, who rightly demand sympathy for
victims around the world, so quick to dismiss
American suffering?” Mother Jones
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly: ‘The universe might make more sense if it were not alone… The idea of multiple universes is a surprisingly attractive one.
Two deep problems would go away if the universe were not, in
fact, universal, but were merely one example of an infinitely
large class of such objects. These problems are the true
nature of the uncertainty principle, and the “anthropic
principle”—the coincidence that the universe seems to be set
up with precisely the right conditions for human-like life to
evolve within it. Unfortunately, the sorts of “multiverse”
proposed to resolve these two problems are different.’ The Economist
Why We Don’t Marry: James Q. Wilson considers the growth in single-parent childrearing pivotal to the decline and fall of Western civilization, and wonders why. City Journal And while we’re at it:
Singleton society: “… adults are not only finding it difficult to sustain marriage, but just about all forms of intimate relationships.” spiked!
More than 2,300 IRS computers missing. “The Internal Revenue Service, which holds taxpayers strictly liable for accurate tax returns, is working to account for more than 2,300 computers that have gone missing over the past three years.” USA Today
Fountains and Bubbles: New Cosmic Mysteries: “…(T)he meeting of the
American Astronomical Society last
week in Washington was a sounding
board for scientists with new findings
and ideas about nearly everything
from mysterious gamma ray bursts in
deep space to revealing images
penetrating the turbulent heart of the
Milky Way, Earth’s home galaxy.
Two new discoveries described at the
meeting underscored the growing and
bewildering realization that planetary
systems abound in the nearby
universe and that they come in all
shapes and sizes, bearing little
apparent resemblance to the Sun’s
family of planets.” New York Times
Justice Department Will Seek Life in Prison for Walker: “The Bush administration will charge
American Taliban John Walker Lindh with conspiracy to kill U.S.
citizens in Afghanistan and will ask for life imprisonment rather
than the death penalty, Attorney General John Ashcroft said
Tuesday.” New York Times
Britain and US discuss Cuba captives. The UK wants assurances about the welfare of three al Qaeda detainees who are subjects of the Crown, but decline to discuss with the US concerns about other detainees reportedly ill-treated en route to Cuba. BBC
Can anyone in the world reach anyone else through a chain of just six friends?
In 1967, sociologist Stanley Milgram created what is known as the “small world
phenomenon,” the idea that every person in the United States is connected by a chain
of six people at most.Milgram’s “six degrees of separation” theory has trickled down through popular
culture, inspiring renditions such as the Kevin Bacon game.But Milgram’s theory has gone largely unproven for more than 30 years and hasn’t
yet been repeated with any success. Now, two separate research projects are using
electronic communication to test the small world phenomenon. Wired
By Royal Appointment, therapeutic counsellors to the House of Windsor: ‘The Prince of Wales has been praised for doing “what any responsible father would do” by making the wayward Prince Harry visit a drugs rehabilitation clinic to see the effects of addiction. In truth, if every middle-class parent whose child had drunk some cider and smoked a little cannabis did the same as Prince Charles, there would be little room left in rehab for the recovering heroin addicts at whom the Hooray Harrys and Harriets are supposed to gawp.’ The Times of London
. linkdup . . . . world wide web stimulus . . . . : “Design, content and technology are coming of age on the web and this maturation continues at a pace. It can be difficult to know where to look to see the best sites, so we collect and categorise them for you and save you the time and effort… WHATS THE CATCH? None. linkdup is non-commercial so there’s no nasty revenue-models to oblige us to do anything other than bring you the best, impartially.”
The Asylum on the Hill: ‘Alex Beam, the author of Gracefully Insane, probes the rich past of a mental hospital renowned for ministering to prominent, creative, and aristocratic patients…’ (McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., where I worked early in my career and about whose literary and artistic denizens, among whom figure Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Ray Charles and James Taylor, I’ve previously written here). The Atlantic [thanks, Abby]
Amour Online: Darwin Wouldn’t Have Been Surprised: ‘Is online dating a bleak reflection of an overworked, increasingly alienated, rootless and commodity-oriented society? Or is it the greatest technological love panacea ever created?’ AlterNet
‘Yeah, Right’ Dept: Pretzelgate: What Really Happened? “Last weekend President Bush was reported to have choked on a pretzel, passed out and suffered a bruise on his cheek after hitting the floor. Given this highly unusual chain of events, speculation has been rampant as to what really caused the contusion on the presidential facade.” AlterNet
Geov Parrish: White America Misuses MLK Day
In many ways, Ronald Reagan did the worst possible thing for the memory of Dr. King by acceding — reluctantly — to the national holiday that bears King’s name. Because the holiday has become a feel-good lie.
King, the man, is, along with Mohandas Gandhi, one of the two most internationally revered symbols of nonviolence in the 20th century. He spent his too-brief adult life defying authority and convention, citing a higher moral authority, and gave hope and inspiration for the liberation of people of color on six continents. MLK Day, the holiday, has only made new generations of white people mislearn King’s story.
King is not a legend because he believed in diversity trainings and civic ceremonies, or because he had a nice dream. He is remembered because he took serious risks and, as the Quakers say, spoke truth to power. He is also remembered because, among a number of brave and committed civil rights leaders and activists, he had a flair for self-promotion, a style that also appealed to white liberals, and the extraordinary social strength of the black southern churches behind him. And because he died before he had a chance to be ridiculed as a relic or buffoon. Workingforchange
Arianna Huffington: America’s Other War Heats Up: “A day after getting 14 Black Hawk combat choppers from the
U.S. — supposedly to fight the Drug War — Colombia’s president
broke off peace talks with FARC rebels, pushing his country to
the brink of war.”
The victims of the terrorist attacks deserve tremendous sympathy. They died tragically and often horrifically. But not all died in a way that people have previously described as heroic. And even the heroism attributed to the rescue workers stems as much from the country’s needs in responding to the disaster as from what actually happened in the collapsing buildings.
It is long overdue that Americans appreciate their public servants. It is also necessary to honor those who died simply for being in America. But changing the definition of hero to accommodate tragic victims may actually weaken us by diminishing the idea of role models who perform truly extraordinary acts. Boston Globe [thanks, Gary]
