New Tree Disease May Afflict California’s Giant Redwoods: ‘California’s awe-inspiring redwoods may be susceptible to a fast- spreading new disease that has already killed tens of thousands of oaks and other trees and infected many plant species in the state, according to preliminary findings by University of California scientists.” New York Times

Stellar ‘Fireworks Finale’ Came First in the Young Universe: ‘The deepest views of the cosmos from the Hubble Space Telescope yield clues that the very first stars may have burst into the universe as brilliantly and spectacularly as a fireworks finale. Except in this case, the finale came first, long before Earth, the Sun and the Milky Way Galaxy formed. Studies of Hubble’s deepest views of the heavens lead to the preliminary conclusion that the universe made a significant portion of its stars in a torrential firestorm of star birth, which abruptly lit up the pitch-dark heavens just a few hundred million years after the “big bang,” the tremendous explosion that created the cosmos. Though stars continue to be born today in galaxies, the star birth rate could be a trickle compared to the predicted gusher of stars in those opulent early years.’ STSCI

Brian Livingston: The next Windows: ‘With due respect to my colleagues who use the Mac OS or Linux, I believe the operating systems on the computers we’ll soon be using — and taking for granted — will look more like a newer, leaner OS named Symbian.

The future belongs to devices we’ll carry around, not boat anchors that must remain tied to our desks. Symbian — as any search on the word at InfoWorld.com will reveal — is already competing seriously with Microsoft in the handheld space.” InfoWorld

A memetics reader: “Throughout 1996-1997 I researched Richard Dawkins’ meme (a cultural unit of information that propagates across our ecologies of mind) and considered specific applications within advertising, cults and postmodern ‘designer religious viruses’ (Richard Brodie). My research trajectory was influenced by my fascination with the late Gnosis Magazine and the science fiction author Philip K. Dick. I was freelancing for the Australian science/culture magazine 21.C and considering the initiatory/philosophical implications of Cyberpunk while in the Temple of Set. In mid-1997 I discovered Clare W. Graves through Dr. Don Edward Beck and Chris Cowan’s book Spiral Dynamics, and a synthesis began to form.” disinfo

“Oh, laddie, go tell it to the Marines!”

In the mid-70s, I attended a full day seminar by the wonderfully eccentric, British psychiatrist R.D. Laing. At one point in his address, given before an audience of rather tight-assed, Calgary, Alberta, psychiatric professionals, he explained what the term, hubris, meant to him. It was a wonderful, dramatic moment. And while I no longer have my notes, I recall the scene clearly.

Laing stood on a stage before a microphone, no podium, no notes. There were several hundred in attendance. “Hubris,” he said in his Scottish brogue, “means to miss the mark. Let me illustrate it more literally. Imagine that I am a Greek archer and my target lies behind you at the back of this auditorium.” He pointed over the audience toward the rear exits. Some heads turned.

“Now, he said, “I am the Greek archer.” Slowly, he raised his imaginary bow. Just as slowly, he drew the bowstring back to his cheek. Then, deliberately and carefully, he began to turn until his back was to the audience, the “bow” still held in position. “And now,” he said, “I release the arrow.”

Again, slowly, he turned to face the audience. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is modern psychiatry. The target is out there,” pointing to the exits, “and we are loosing our arrows there,” waving to stage rear. He had alienated his audience, of course, and spent the rest of the afternoon jousting with them.

Last night, was a restless, sleepless night, and my thoughts turned to this memory of Laing and to the arrows loosed internationally and domestically by the Bush administration. The end of the old year and beginning of the new used to be a time to take stock, to determine which marks were hit, which were missed, and more important, were the targets appropriate in the first place? I could be wrong, but I don’t think this type of assessment is practiced much anymore. Too bad.

Wonderful image, from this psychiatrist’s favorite anti-psychiatrist. And applying Laing’s incisive irreverence to my favorite target, the risible Bush administration…

Terrorism Beyond Islam: “Whether the purest form of Islam or the most perverted, it so enveloped the hijackers in religious zeal that the centrality of Islam to the attacks is hard to deny.

So let me try.

It is easier to try that here in East Asia. The kind of defiant and violent antagonism to the West that we now associate with Islamists was for centuries linked instead to places like Japan, Korea and China.” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]

A Quiet Revolution for Those Prone to Nodding Off. The New York Times reviews advances in the treatment of narcolepsy, especially modulation of the neurotransmitter orexin by the first of a promising new class of drugs which may have much broader potential to modify fatigue and sleep disturbances. Surprisingly, the new drug, Xyrem, contains the compound GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate), which has gained notoriety as a “date-rape drug.” The developers of Xyrem plan to distribute it by a novel mechanism to preclude its diversion into recreational use, sidestepping the abuse that is virtually crippling other medically essential but highly abusable drugs like Oxycontin. An added dividend from this article is the news, which which I had been unacquainted, that narcolepsy appears to be an autoimmune disease. Autopsies of narcoleptics show severe deficits in orexin-containing neurons in the CNS, suggesting they have been destroyed. While narcolepsy is not strictly a psychiatric disorder and thus out of my purview, it is of course true that disorders in sleep regulation and architecture are prominent in psychiatric illness, and I’m sure that the new discoveries about the role of orexin will have psychiatric applications. By the way, narcolepsy involves not only sudden sleep attacks but some other extraordinary — and frightening to patients — syptoms, including cataplexy (sudden loss of muscle tone, often in conjunction with emotional arousal, which can lead for example to people literally falling down laughing), hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations (bizarre distortions in the perception of reality when on the point of falling asleep or awakening, often terrifying, which represent the intrusion of REM sleep into wakeful consciousness) and sleep paralysis, also terrifying. Some think, by the way, that the sleep paralysis of narcoleptic conditions may be the basis for alien abduction experiences.

In Dark Matter, New Hints of a Universal Glue: “Sometimes, defying its wont, science makes the cosmos look a little simpler. Recently it seems as if astronomers have been sprung from a long cosmological nightmare. Last month a consortium of astronomers announced that an analysis of some 130,000 galaxies showed that the the universe, at least on large scales, is structured pretty much the way it looks.

That might sound unremarkable, but it didn’t have to come out that way…” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]

No, I didn’t deliberately change the text to lightest-grey-on-white; experienced a stylesheet glitch. And just when I’m moving between machines and not able to update regularly. Many of you have written to complain, and I am sorry. You can read it now, right? And there’ll even be content again RSN…

Ten Things You Didn’t Know about Your Books by Adrian Johns,

author of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making [via wood s lot]

tv insight tidbit: “Tribune Broadcasting said WPIX(TV) New York’s Yule Log, which returned Christmas Day after a 12-year absence, was local TV’s top-rated program from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The station reported Nielsen Media Research numbers of 3.1/10 for the two-hour video of a log burning brightly in a fireplace, accompanied by Christmas carols.” Cahner’s [thanks, Abby]

Ten Things You Didn’t Know about Your Books by Adrian Johns,

author of The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making [via wood s lot]

This story is interesting for what’s not said — like how did it happen?

An Industry Motivated, More Than Ever, By Fear: New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell reflects on the state of the genre. “…In the aftermath of Sept. 11, it is harder to avoid the fact that American mainstream movies have become incredibly exclusionary: a series of spectacles in which middle-aged white guys — or those who share their sensibility — blow stuff up for the entertainment of the 12- to 19-year- olds who are thought to keep the movie business alive. By playing almost solely to that crowd, the studios have rendered modern movies irrelevant to more discerning filmgoers — the folks who’d rather stay home and wait out the ever-diminishing window between theatrical and home-video release. If you’re a woman over 25 and you want to see a protagonist with concerns similar to your own, you stay in and watch series television — although, interestingly enough, the movies have been catching up.”

iWalk Looks More Like iWish. Does Apple have a slick new PDA (that presents like the iPod) up its sleeve for a Monday unveiling at MacWorld, or is the Mac rumor site with purported pictures the victim of a hoax? Wired

Trolling the Web for Afghan Dead: “In an online report, a University of New Hampshire professor charges that the U.S. military has killed more than 4,000 civilians in Afghanistan and that the U.S. media have largely ignored the toll of the war on terrorism.” Wired On the other side of the coin, the news media are all over this fatality:

Franks Confirms U.S. Soldier Killed By Enemy. The Green Beret, on a mission near the Pakistani border in eastern Afghanistan to “facilitate cooperation” with tribal elements in the area, was killed and a CIA agent accompanying him was injured in what has been described as an ambush. He becomes the first US combat fatality to hostile fire. The Boston Channel

Corporations behaving badly: Multinational Monitor describes the ten worst corporations of 2001: Abbott, Argenbright, Bayer, Coca-Cola, Enron, ExxonMobil, Phillip Morris, Sara Lee, Southern and Wal-Mart.

Monsanto isn’t on the list, but should be right up there given the evidence of its decades-long concealment of PCB contamination in an Alabama town. Washington Post

Spotting the face of deception

The airports of the future could identify potential terrorists by using a lie detector that spots concealed blushing with a super-sensitive thermal imaging camera. Liars are betrayed by the heat that rushes to their face when they tell a fib, according to scientists in the United States. Blood flow to the surface of the skin around the eyes increases when someone tells a lie. BBC

Yes, and when someone is emotionally aroused for any of a myriad of other reasons — being nervous about flying, missing the people left behind, hassled by traffic or security procedures at the airport, having just had a stimulating interaction with an attractive stranger, etc. This proposal is another example of technological innovation without thought. Although polygraph technology has always been controversial, it has the advantage at least of not being a random sampling of the person’s physiological state of arousal but a controlled experimental probe in response to specific questions, analyzed by a trained technologist. The supposed advantage of this new system is that it gives instantaneous results to untrained observers … of the ilk of the minimum-wage workers currently responsible for airport security. I trust that, because of the enormous potential for (and potential cost of) false positives, this technology will never see the light of day.

In related news, an ACLU report reviews the failure of face recognition technology in Tampa, Florida.

Facial recognition technology on the streets of Tampa, Florida is an overhyped failure that has been seemingly abandoned by police officials, according to a report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

System logs obtained by the ACLU through Florida’s open-records law show that the system never identified even a single individual contained in the department’s database of photographs. And in response to the ACLU’s queries about the small number of system logs, the department has acknowledged that the software — originally deployed last June, 2001 — has not been actively used since August.

“Tampa’s off-again, on-again use of face-recognition software reminds us that public officials should not slavishly embrace whatever latest fad in surveillance technology comes along,” said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, which made the records request last August.

The logs obtained by the ACLU also indicate that the system made many false matches between people photographed by police video cameras as they walked down Seventh Avenue in Tampa’s Ybor City district and photographs in the department’s database of criminals, sex offenders, and runaways. The system made what were to human observers obvious errors, such as matching male and female subjects and subjects with significant differences in age or weight.

An Adobe Acrobat version of the full report is downloadable from a link at the site. This finding parallels the discussion the crime-fighting failure of public video surveillance in widespread use in the UK, as discussed in a New York Times Magazine article to which I blinked earlier this fall.

John Nichols: Reich’s Candidacy is Intriguing Idea:

As someone who covers politics, I think there is nothing more disturbing than the penchant of Americans who have been entrusted with Cabinet-level posts to hightail it into the private sector as soon as their terms end. It is a good thing that Clinton administration aides such as Reich and former Attorney General Janet Reno are looking to make bids for governorships in Massachusetts and Florida, respectively.

(…) The idea of having someone who is actually, er, smart, serving in an important position may seem outdated in this moment of the mediocre. But it remains appealing to those of us who actually have to cover campaigns and governments.Madison Capital Times via CommonDreams

Monbiot: This is The Year of the Right: But Progressives Can Fight Back if They Abandon All the Old Strategies. “There is a widespread fallacy that the destruction of society was engineered in recent times, notably by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The notion is comforting because it suggests that the trend is reversible. But social fragmentation has been the work of centuries.

” Guardian UK via CommonDreams

A serial killer analyzes serial killing: ‘The 1960s “Moors Murderer,” Ian Brady, still haunts the British psyche. His recently published book shows why.’

Sorry, a spate of hardware problems (of my own making, of course) on my home system has prevented me from posting for the past several days of intensive tinkering and tweaking. I think I’ve got things on an even keel now, and will be back at it again… Happy New Year, belatedly, to you all.

[Annoy.com via boing boing]

This is a reprise of a New Year’s Day post from FmH one year ago:

New Year’s Day History, Traditions, and Customs. Years ago, the Boston Globe ran a January 1st article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article; especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond watching the bowl games and making resolutions. A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point:

“Traditionally, it was thought that one

could affect the luck they would have

throughout the coming year by what they

did or ate on the first day of the year. For

that reason, it has become common for

folks to celebrate the first few minutes of

a brand new year in the company of

family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night

after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the

first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or

bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor

happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

“Traditional New Year foods are also

thought to bring luck. Many cultures

believe that anything in the shape of a ring

is good luck, because it symbolizes

“coming full circle,” completing a year’s

cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe

that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will

bring good fortune.

“Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming

black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by

either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes

have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and

thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes

prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is

consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also

considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper

currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on

New Year’s Day.”

The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:

“Three cornered biscuits called

hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones.

After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors.

First Footing:The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat,

dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also

performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage

proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”

Mozilla 0.9.7 is out.

Congratulations to the winners of the thoughtful (I had to say that, didn’t I, being one of the 2000 medalists?) 2001 Medley Medals, including two of my ongoing favorite sites, BookNotes and wood s lot, as well as a number of others I will surely check out.

Congratulations to the winners of the thoughtful (I had to say that, didn’t I, being one of the 2000 medalists?) 2001 Medley Medals, including two of my ongoing favorite sites, BookNotes and wood s lot, as well as a number of others I will surely check out.

Congratulations to the winners of the thoughtful (I had to say that, didn’t I, being one of the 2000 medalists?) 2001 Medley Medals, including two of my ongoing favorite sites, BookNotes and wood s lot, as well as a number of others I will surely check out.

Congratulations to the winners of the thoughtful (I had to say that, didn’t I, being one of the 2000 medalists?) 2001 Medley Medals, including two of my ongoing favorite sites, BookNotes and wood s lot, as well as a number of others I will surely check out.

If you take pictures, stay close to home… or go digital.. [This Kodak advisory starts out focusing on motion picture film. but there’s no reason not to worry about still camera film as well. -FmH] “Security precautions at US airports have been significantly tightened following the tragic events of September 11th. Among precautions that travelers can expect will be the increased use of new, high-intensity x-ray scanners for checked baggage and hand-carried baggage. Passengers should be aware that these high-intensity x-ray machines will fog and ruin all unprocessed film of any speed, whether exposed or not. Kodak recommends that air travelers do not carry unexposed or unprocessed motion picture film. If it is unavoidable that film is carried, passengers should contact the airport in advance to request hand-inspection, allow additional check-in time for such procedures, and follow the advice given below.”

The Sixth Sense: “In Educating Intuition, Robin M. Hogarth tackles a fascinating topic that has until now garnered little scientific attention. This ambitious book aims not only to define and explore the strengths and limitations of humans’ “sixth sense” but also to discover how it can be improved. A professor of business, Hogarth turns primarily to research in his areas of expertise—psychology and cognitive science—for inspiration.

In an extensive literature review, Hogarth finds intuition’s footprints in many conceptual dichotomies familiar to psychologists. Intuition is aligned with—among other things—automatic, tacit and unconscious processing; implicit memory; and procedural knowledge.” American Scientist

Ellen Willis: Bringing the Holy War Home: ‘…(R)eligious and cultural reactionaries have mobilized to attack secular modernity in liberal democracies from Israel to the post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe to the United States. Indeed, the culture war has been a centerpiece of American politics for thirty years or more, shaping our debates and our policies on everything from abortion, censorship and crime to race, education and social welfare. Nor, at this moment, does the government know whether foreign or domestic terrorists are responsible for the anthrax offensive. Yet we shrink from seeing the relationship between our own cultural conflicts and the logic of jihad. We are especially eager to absolve religion of any responsibility for the violence committed in its name: For that ubiquitous current cliché, “This has nothing to do with Islam,” read “Antiabortion terrorism has nothing to do with Christianity.” ‘ The Nation

Ian Walker on LoTR: Good film, shame about the book:

“…Joyce, Woolf and Fitzgerald… may be subtle, complex, difficult or entertaining, but the one thing that typifies the great works of modern literature is their power to rethink and re-present the world. They are all acts of engagement, where Tolkien’s is an act of retreat.

Retreating into your own made-up world is also a characteristic of adolescents and hippies – the two groups to whom The Lord of the Rings means most. Which is fine – as long as the book is recognised for what it is, an escapist adventure story. So it can be recommended as a good read, as long as you advise potential readers to skip the poetry and skim read any sections where the characters start banging on about their traditions.

But the greatest novel of the twentieth century? Only if you regard The Day of the Jackal as high literature and The 39 Steps as a brilliant insight into the human condition.” spiked!

A creaky theory: “One of the most popular theories doing the rounds about the West’s war in Afghanistan is that it’s a war for oil… The war on terrorism is not about what is going on in Afghanistan – whether it be the Taliban, al-Qaeda or any potential oil interests for the West. It is a war with no clear strategic aims, carried out primarily for domestic and political purposes and to galvanise audiences at home and abroad. In this sense, the oil-critical opponents have completely missed the point. The war in Afghanistan is not a sinister plot to control everything, but a response to a sense in the nervous West that everything is out of control.” spiked!

Robert Kuttner: Let’s Have Real Shared Sacrifice —

‘President Bush continues to enjoy popularity as commander-in-chief. But his critics are right to challenge his economic priorities. The theme of this strange war is turning out to be unequal sacrifice and wasted opportunity. If we are not careful, a longer-term theme could be a protracted recession.’

And Robert Reich: Back to Normal?

‘While the rest of us are trying to put our lives back to some semblance of the way they were before September 11th, that’s not true for the inhabitants of our nation’s capital. They’re not taking up where they left off. For better or worse, they’re leaving all that behind.

‘

The American Prospect

Chris Mooney: Outrage of Aquarius The Boston Phoenix and AlterNet.org fall hard for astrology. The American Prospect

Test-Tube Quantum Computer Makes History: ‘Scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Center have performed the world’s most complicated quantum-computer calculation to date. They caused a billion-billion custom-designed molecules in a test tube to become a seven-qubit quantum computer that solved a simple version of the mathematical problem at the heart of many of today’s data-security cryptographic systems.’

Rob Richie of the Center for Voting and Democracy:

Why a Loser Gets to Run the Country — The Case for Instant Runoff Voting. tompaine.com

I’m a little late in blinking to this, but Dec. 24th was World Sousveillance Day, the second annual ‘shooting spree’ , photographing those who keep us under surveillance.

How will I know whom I should shoot?

Taking pictures of the surveillance cameras, or even just wearing a disguise, will cause models to appear very quickly for you to photograph. When you point your camera at their cameras, the officials watching their television monitors will very quickly dispatch the models for you to shoot. This is a universal phenomenon that happens in nearly any large organization where video surveillance is used. Models often carry two–way radios and wear navy blue uniforms with special badges. Most will be eager to pose close to your camera, especially the hand models. They will reach out to you. They want to get close to you. They will crave the glamour of your camera. They will reach out and touch you, or place their hands over your camera lens so you can get a closup picture of their photogenic fingerprints.

Lessons of shoe-bomb incident — ‘Groups like Al Qaeda may now be using operatives who don’t fit the police profiles.’

Experts say that the tall, lanky passenger on Flight 63 with plastic explosives in his hightops likely did not act alone. The explosives were too sophisticated for a drifter to obtain; more likely, he was a tester for a larger terrorist organization, they say.

“It’s a classic evolution of criminal organizations: When you clamp down on one kind of drug carrier or operative, they reach out to others,” says Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general at the US Department of Transportation.

Christian Science Monitor

Al Qaeda planning next phase: ‘From a Pakistan safehouse, the Taliban’s top intelligence chief claims bin Laden is alive and well.’

“I am personally requested by Mullah Omar and Sheikh Osama to go to Urozgan and take the command of new guerrilla war preparations, which will start as soon as possible, and you will hear the news in papers and on BBC,” he adds. “We withdrew from major cities and provinces because the ruthless bombing of Americans had killed a lot of civilians as well as our holy warriors. We took that tactical step for our safety, and we will start our guerrilla campaign against our enemies as soon as we regroup.”

Christian Science Monitor

Norman Solomon author of The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media: The P.U.-Litzer Prizes for 2001: “…established a decade ago to give recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year.

As each winter arrives, I confer with Jeff Cohen of the media watch group FAIR to sift through the large volume of entries. This year, the competition was especially fierce. We regret that only a few journalists can win a P.U.-litzer.” Media Beat at FAIR Also: Danny Schechter’s readers at the Media Channel note their 2001 media hits and misses.

Justice Dept. going all sensitive on us Tom the Dancing Bug @ salon [thanks, David]

Right-Wing Biological Dread:

The Subhumans are coming! The Subhumans are coming!

‘Mary Shelley, move over. Conservative intellectuals William Kristol, Francis Fukuyama, and J. Bottum are spinning far darker visions than the author of Frankenstein in their frantic campaign to stop medical progress by derailing biotechnological research. In a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Kristol and co-author Eric Cohen were horrified that “in trying to make human beings live indefinitely, our scientists have begun mixing our genes with those of cows, pigs, and jellyfish.”

(…) These conservative intellectuals have confused being human with merely having human DNA. They are treating human DNA as though it were sacred. But DNA is merely the chemical on which the digital code for how to make proteins is inscribed. Inserting a human gene in a pig or a petunia is not an act of sacrilege. Human DNA in a pig or petunia will make a protein, not a human being. Human beings really are more than the recipe it takes to make them.’ Reason

Legal commentary on the Mumia Abu-Jamal decision — death sentence overturned but

‘otherwise a major victory for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office because (Judge) Yohn rejected 28 of the 29 claims in Abu-Jamal’s habeas corpus petition, including claims that the prosecutor improperly used his peremptory strikes to keep blacks off the jury, and that the trial judge violated his rights by repeatedly removing him from the courtroom due to his angry outbursts.

Significantly, Yohn also refused to consider Abu-Jamal’s most recent claim — that he has “newly discovered” evidence that Faulkner was murdered by Arnold Beverly, a Mafia hit man.’ law.com

Also: Europeans Hail Abu-jamal Decision Guardian UK

War watch: Indian and Pakistani troops shelled each other in disputed Kashmir overnight, and the Indian army ordered the evacuation of dozens of border villages, raising fears of war. AP Sources tell CNN that Pakistan, saying it was only responding to India’s movements, mobilized its entire army — even calling up some recent retirees — and put it on high alert Wednesday. India has moved short-range ballistic missiles to the Pakistani border. New York Times India’s armed forces are pressing the government for permission to strike militant training camps in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir. Telegraph UK Temptations on both sides to strike while the other is at a disadvantage increase risk of fullscale war. Media reports from India are indicating movement of China’s troops along Sino-Indian border just after Pakistani Pres. Musharraf returns from a state visit to China. PNS It remains unclear whether either nation actually has the capability to deliver nuclear weapons to the enemy. WorldNet

South Asia crisis hits US war on terrorism. Christian Science Monitor

“Year-End Google Zeitgeist: Search patterns, trends, and surprises.”

America the Unready — ‘Preparations against another terrorist attack range from the patchy to the poor.’ The Economist

In Sacramento, a Publisher’s Questions Draw the Wrath of the Crowd: ‘… a commencement speaker (the publisher of the Sacramento Bee)

was booed off the stage for calling for the

protection of civil liberties in the

government’s response to terrorism. (…)

“It was scary,” said Bob Buckley, a computer sciences professor and

president of the faculty senate. “For the first time in my life, I can see how

something like the Japanese internment camps could happen in our country.” (…)

“We’ve always known that if you took the Bill of Rights to the street and

asked most people to sign it, you would be unable to get a majority of

Americans to do so,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the

American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Los Angeles.’ NY Times [via Adam]

Weblog Accessibility:

• Why should you care?
• It’s much easier than you think it is.
• Eight key principles
• Links to other resources for accessibility in web design.

This makes some good points that hadn’t occurred to me about the design of my site. My readers who are webloggers themselves, at least, ought to be interested in this blink. And if there are any readers using audio or Braille readers to access my page (if you haven’t given up in disgust long ago), I’d love it if you would care to write me with your reactions to this article and your experiences with the accessibility of FmH. [thanks, David]

Nat Hentoff: Rescuing the Constitution: “There is insistent public opposition from civil

libertarians, both on the left and the right; but the

attorney general’s often unilateral, scorched-earth

approach to the Bill of Rights takes on new

dimensions so frequently that his critics have been

able only so far to react. There hasn’t been time to

organize pressure nationwide so that Congress will

awaken to the separation of powers that is at the

core of our system of governance.” Jewish World Review

Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy ‘Summary:

The fight for the

future is not between

the armies of leading

states, nor are its

weapons those of

traditional armed

forces. Rather, the

combatants come

from bomb-making

terrorist groups like

Osama bin Laden’s

al-Qaeda, or drug

smuggling cartels like

those in Colombia and

Mexico. On the

positive side are

civil-society activists

fighting for the

environment,

democracy and

human rights. What

all have in common is

that they operate in

small, dispersed units

that can deploy

anywhere, anytime to

penetrate and

disrupt. They all

feature network

forms of organization,

doctrine, strategy,

and technology

attuned to the

information age. And,

from the Intifadah to

the drug war, they

are proving very hard

to beat.’ A report from the Rand Corp., published Nov. 2001. Each chapter is downloadable from the blinked page in .pdf format.

Brace Yourself for the Segmented Internet ” Nothing can stop the spread of the Internet—but as the influence of the Internet

spreads, governments (sometimes reflecting popular opinion) are becoming increasingly

dissatisfied with the de facto policies it brings. They will never cut

off Internet access to the outside world because they need it for commercial,

academic, and other informational reasons. But they may be tempted to form a

kind of local area network for Internet users, enforcing their own particular

policies with clearly demarcated gateways to the outside world. The result will

be reminiscent of how private organizations segment their local area networks,

so I call this possibility the segmented Internet.”WebReview

“…(C)onservative hysteria has made America all-but ungovernable

for anyone but conservatives…” ‘Objectivity’ RIP. Eric Alterman, in The Nation, meditates on Dan Rather’s abandonment of all pretense of journalistic impartiality in his Letterman appearance, ABC President David Westin’s cave-in to conswervative [sic: this was a typo but I kind of like the effect, so it remains. –FmH] attack after a brief attempt to maintain some objectivity, and other evidence that “there ain’t nobody here but us chickens” in the media.

“Most infuriating about the right’s capture of the media since the war is the fact that,

according to the Pew study, nearly three-quarters of the respondents say they want news

that includes the views of America’s enemies, and just over half say reporters should dig

hard for information rather than trust official sources. So just why are the media wimping

out exactly when tough, critical reporting is not only crucial for the functioning of

democracy but is also being demanded by their audience?” [thanks, Adam]

In Sacramento, a Publisher’s Questions Draw the Wrath of the Crowd: ‘… a commencement speaker (the publisher of the Sacramento Bee)

was booed off the stage for calling for the

protection of civil liberties in the

government’s response to terrorism. (…)

“It was scary,” said Bob Buckley, a computer sciences professor and

president of the faculty senate. “For the first time in my life, I can see how

something like the Japanese internment camps could happen in our country.” (…)

“We’ve always known that if you took the Bill of Rights to the street and

asked most people to sign it, you would be unable to get a majority of

Americans to do so,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the

American Civil Liberties Union chapter in Los Angeles.’ NY Times [via Adam]

And so at this time,

I greet you, with the prayer

that for you,

now and forever,

the day breaks

and the shadows

flee away.

The most joyous of holiday seasons to my readers, and all the best of the year to come. Thank you for your continued encouragement for and enthusiasm about FmH.

My family and I will be away for the next few days, so there’ll be little or no blogging until after the holiday week. In the meantime, your jones may be satisfied by some of the thoughtful folks in the orange box in the lefthand sidebar…

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? Nick Bostrum, Yale Univ. Dept. of Philosophy, posits: ‘that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the transhumanist dogma that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation.’ [via abuddhas memes]

Missile Defense Delusion: Sen. Joe Biden argues not only that abrogating the ABM treaty to pursue NMD will trigger a new arms race and that it will squander resources on threats the Pentagon itself assesses as low-priority, but that by provoking what defense analysts estimate will be at least a tenfold increase in China’s arsenal as well as inflation of the Indian and Pakistani n-weapons stables, we vastly increase the risk of a bin Laden getting his hands on a thermonuclear device. Not to mention the continuing stupidity of unilateralism at this point in history. Not to mention the technological unfeasibility of the intercept concept. Every time I rant about NMD, I suggest that, if we are serious in asserting that NMD is in the service of peace and stability, that we are defending only against rogue threats and that the other bona fide nuclear states have nothing to fear, we should share our anti-missile technology freely and magnanimously with Russia and China. If you can point me to links that counter this argument, please do. Washington Post

Joe Conason: Whitewater Critics Quiet About Enron: The White House as an Enron branch office. The New York Observer

The clueless defector in chief

He lacks the knowledge or the motivation to acquire the knowledge necessary to do his job and we all suffer. He continues to show his ignorance even of basic geography, asking Charlotte Church recently where the city of Wales is located. He displays a knowledge of the world only a barfly would be proud of. The teachers who gave him passing grades at Andover should be ashamed.

The meritocracy completely failed in the case of Bush. Instead, the same forces of wealth and influence that got him his position continue to fabricate a complimentary image of him. Their stories of his activities during September 11 change through time and contradict each other. The American people who had their peace and prosperity ripped from them must eventually see through this charade. It takes saturation coverage of a bin Laden to make Bush look good.

This article drips with a contempt for the Shrub similar to what I continue to feel. Despite my understanding that I’m hopelessly out of tune with the times in worrying about the man’s intellectual limitations, hypocrisy a quantum level beyond that of most other politicians, and the pitiful charade that he runs anything, much less an Administration or a nation, it is viscerally necessary from time to time for me to give out with such spasms of contempt. I do, however, quibble with the following:

September 11 happened on his watch. He is to blame. If he had been at work in the Oval Office, he would have been briefed on the threat. If he took his job seriously, he would have taken the trouble to become better informed about what the government already knew of bin Laden’s plans. He should have taken steps to prevent the carnage. Instead, he relaxed at his Crawford ranch.

I quibble with it not because it ‘blames the victim’ but because it doesn’t blame the victim nearly enough. Our intelligence failure in not tracking al Qaeda or anticipating its intentions and our pursuit of swaggering neoimperialist policy guaranteed to galvanize extremist rage are far deeper and more institutionalized than one man’s stupidity and noblesse oblige no matter how profound. Online Journal [via BookNotes]

On the other hand, the Washington Post reports that the Clinton administration took far broader steps against al Qaeda than is generally understood. And, while we’re at it, Helen Hightower asks Do You Love America? Do You?

Profiles in Courage, ’01: ‘(Danny) Glover is in the headlines these days for comments he made during a speech at an anti-death-penalty forum, comments that have right-wing talk show hosts calling for a boycott of his movies because he’s “un-American.” So, in an indirect way, seeing The Royal Tennenbaums could be $8.50 spent in defense of free speech.

On November 16, the Associated Press reported that Glover had “called on the United States government to spare the life of Osama bin Laden, even if he is found guilty of being involved in terrorist acts.” Since then, a storm of controversy has been building…’ AlterNet [via Book Notes]

Taliban Chiefs Prove Elusive, Americans Say

Troops May Scour Caves for Qaeda, U.S.

General Says NY Times Do they really think bin Laden is still there??

Making Light has been back to blogging for the first time since October in recent days. Welcome back.

A feel-good email making the rounds and posted at a number of web sites (e.g. here) by a retired US Army munitions and training expert, entitled ‘The “Real” Deal about Nuclear, Biological,

and Chemical Terrorist Attacks’ wants us to buck up and not be paralyzed by envisioning what devastation could lie in store if our terrorist enemies got hold of weapons of mass destruction. He makes a stab at blaming the media for exaggerating the dangers we face. The message has been lauded by many — and reviled by the US Army — for offering commonsense, empowering advice and reassurance about the aftermath of such an attack. Take This, Terrorist Boogeyman is the Washington Post‘s take on the issue, including the reaction from the US Army: “Retired SFC Red Thomas’s article offers some common sense advice for unprotected victims of a NBC [nuclear/biochemical] attack. However, his article doesn’t reflect the U.S. Army’s position for individual defense and contains an overwhelming amount of incorrect material. . . .”

Many have found a most useful aspects of Thomas’s article to be its reminders that a terrorist nuclear attack would be a low-yield weapon with limited destructive power and range.

The effects of a nuclear bomb are heat, blast, EMP, and radiation. If you see a bright flash of light like the sun, where the sun isn’t, fall to the ground!

The heat will be over in a second. Then there will be two blast waves, one outbound, and one on its way back. Don’t stand up to see what happened after the first wave; anything that’s going to happen will have happened in two full minutes.

These will be low yield devices and will not level whole cities. If you live through the heat, blast, and initial burst of radiation, you’ll probably live for a very very long time… These will be at the most 1 kiloton bombs; that’s the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT.

Here’s the real deal, flying debris and radiation will kill a lot of exposed (not all!) people within a half mile of the blast. Under perfect conditions this is about a half mile circle of death and destruction, but, when it’s done it’s done. EMP stands for Electro Magnetic Pulse and it will fry every electronic device for a good distance, it’s impossible to say what and how far but probably not over a couple of miles from ground zero is a good guess. Cars, cell phones, computers, ATMs, you name it, all will be out of order.

[He goes on to describe radiation effects, somewhat understating them IMHO.]

I was pointed to this issue by Electrolite, and PNH’s discussion there is a good starting point:

It’s an interesting issue. Thomas admits that there are errors and overgeneralizations in his original email. But his main point seems to me correct. One of the luxuries of regarding nuclear attacks as “unthinkable” is that it spares us having to think about what it would be like to be in, say, midtown Manhattan if a smallish nuclear device were detonated downtown, or in the harbor. What it would be like: it would be horrible. What would be needed immediately: lots of rational people who grasp that what’s at hand isn’t the end of the world. In such an eventuality, and let’s pray it never comes to pass, Sgt. Thomas’s common-sense attitude may turn out to have been a wholesome piece of advance planning for the imagination.

Some people always think that discussing these things amounts to an effort to play down their awfulness. It’s not. If even a small nuclear weapon (or “dirty bomb”) ever goes off in a city anywhere, it will be a ghastly calamity. It’s rational to fear such a thing. But the difference between fear and terror is specificity . Understanding the scope and likely limits of a terrorist-sponsored nuclear attack may make the difference between the unboundedness of terror and the specificity of fear.

He’s absolutely right that gristly descriptions of the effects of a nuclear attack are not in the service of inuring us to their awfulness and making them acceptable options. “Thinking the unthinkable” is not enabling but rather taking power over and countering the nuclear threat. The thrust of my work, and that of many, in the disarmament movement of the ’70’s and ’80’s was precisely to publicize in excruciating detail the biological, psychological and sociological consequences of nuclear weapons. What facilitates acquiescence to the nuclear threat has always been what Robert Jay Lifton termed “nuclear numbing,” the denial of the unprecedented terror of the effects of these weapons. And whatever graphic details drag people out of their numbed denial empowered the desperation, terror and rage giving momentum to the polity’s disarmament sentiment. That’s why reading Hersey’s Hiroshima is one of the most significant acts of conscience and courage a responsible person could do in coming to terms with the nuclear threat in the postwar period. That’s why the network broadcast of The Day After in the early ’80’s (a made-for-TV film about the aftermath of a largescale nuclear attack on the US), and the reversal on the ban on the horrific BBC documentary War Games (depicting post-nuclear Britain) were so momentous to consciousness-raising, along with such lesser measures, taken by anti-nuclear activists throughout the world, as the conference I organized as a medical student in New Haven in 1980 (with Lifton as a keynote speaker), Not Just Your Ordinary Nightmare: envisioning the effects of nuclear terror on children.

So here’s where I differ with Red Thomas. Even though it’s useful to remind people that a terrorist’s nuclear weapon smuggled into the US in a suitcase or detonated aboard a ship in a US harbor would likely be a low-yield weapon, looking at the effects in unflinching detail can empower us to face the threat realistically without defusing the terror. In many respects, terror expands to fill all the room made available for it. Indeed, I’ve commented in FmH before that part of my reaction to the WTC devastation was that I assimilated it in my mind to the nightmare of a nuclear attack on lower Manhattan. A species of the unthinkable had come to pass. A small-scale attack would have many important similarities to, as well as differences from, the massive thermonuclear devastation we forced ourselves to imagine 20-30 years ago — not the least would be the lingering and horrendous radiation effects which, as I’ve said, are Thomas’s major underestimation. The center of an attacked US city would probably be uninhabitable for years, if not decades, and we would have a generation of people not unlike the Japanese hibakusha living out a slow radiation sickness death. And a witnessing public psychologically traumatized beyond belief, no matter with what foreknowledge they had been empowered. In this sense, even after a limited attack, Khruschev’s pronouncement that “the survivors would envy the dead” might approach being true.

Thomas’s feel-good bluster that we should not let the terrorists win by giving in to irrational fears is so much whistling in the dark if the fears are not irrational. After all, they wouldn’t be terrorists if they weren’t willing — and able — to impose terror, with impunity, beyond the bounds of that to which anyone could humanly expect to be subjected. We won’t stop them from detonating a suitcase nuclear weapon by making however many loud proclamations that we’re not afraid, because they know as well as we do that it’s a bluster. Now bear in mind that I don’t make this argument to conclude that there’s nothing we can do; quite the contrary. Terror need not be paralyzing, but the denial of terror certainly is.

Boy, did I make a big mistake. It’s apparently really really politically incorrect to have appreciated the Ted Rall column in the Village Voice to which I blinked a few days ago. I should’ve known from the get-go, that with a title like “How We Lost Afghanistan” it would set the teeth of alot of the warblog set on edge. I’ve seen several polemical responses like this one that start by doing the linguistic equivalent of rolling their eyes in the first paragraph just because it’s another of his columns, and then fall flat on their faces trying to demolish his arguments. I agree, Rall is at times knee-jerking, but for the critic to say “you really have no idea what he wants” condemns the critic’s reading ability much more directly than it does Rall’s expressiveness, because if anything Rall’s expressiveness is over the top. To be fair, the critic did characterize himself, in candor, as ranting. He uses the classical “straw man” rhetorical artifice of setting up a caricature of your opponent, demolishing that, then smirking in self-satisfied hollow victory before the other shoe has dropped. Like, perhaps, we’ve done in the war on terrorism?

Yemen Said to Attack Suspected Bin Laden Supporters. The government of Yemen demanded that tribespeople sheltering suspected al Qaeda members turn them over and attacked their village with helicopter gunships when they refused. Dubya had apparently asked Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to hand over the suspects during the latter’s recent state visit to Washington. New York Times Yemen is reputed to be a terrorist haven in whose port, Aden, the USS Cole was bombed last year. As one of the poorest of the poor nations, it would be easy (especially after demonstrating our resolve to bomb regimes harboring terrorists even further back into the Stone Age than they already are) to make the Yemeni regime an offer it can’t refuse.

Judge overturns death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal: “A federal judge here upheld the murder conviction today of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former journalist and Black Panther whose case has attracted enormous international attention, but threw out the death sentence against him.

Finding problems with the instructions to the jury in the original trial, Judge William Yohn ordered that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania conduct a new sentencing hearing within 180 days or impose a sentence of life imprisonment.” New York Times

Abu-Jamal’s supporters are unhappy because the judge upheld the murder conviction despite the defense’s new evidence. I must say, from following this case for years as a death penalty opponent, the prosecution’s claim to have proven a case of coldblooded murder of a police officer seems pretty open-and-shut, and Abu-Jamal’s counterarguments pretty outlandish. But the prosecution and the police lobby are upset because the death sentence was vacated. It does violate a pretty central tenet of fairness, whether you believe in the death sentence or not, to not allow consideration of mitigating factors in the penalty phase, after a murder conviction. But, since Abu-Jamal and his supporters to this day steadfastly insist he’s innocent, would they introduce any mitigating circumstances in the first place and, in so doing, start down the slippery slope of conceding he’s responsible?

U.S. Again Placing Focus on Ousting Hussein Gotta have some place to turn next to sustain the Sisyphean war on terrorism. New York Times

Does Welfare Cause Terrorism? rc3 (congratulations, Rafe, on your nomination for weblogger of the year in the Scripting News poll) pointed to this Mickey Kaus column, calling it worth thinking about even if you don’t agree with his politics.

Well, I don’t, and it’s not. Kaus’ thesis is that alienated subcultures sustained by welfare breed terrorism. He commits several logical fallacies in his argument; I searched the column high and low in vain for evidence that I was underestimating his reasoning, but I’m not, unless I’m very very dense. First, even if you grant that terrorists tended to be on welfare (and he doesn’t even sustain this point), does that mean that those on welfare are terrorists? And second, he confuses correlation with causation — if members of the alienated underclass are both eligible for government benefits and associated with antisocial acts, that doesn’t mean that their receipt of social welfare causes their attacks.

This is a clumsy and intellectually crippled way of advancing a xenophobic and elitist anti-welfare agenda. The problem is, the Shrub administration is probably listening.

“Two paradoxes of happiness: why you can’t pursue it and why you can’t tell when you’ve found it,” some charming philosophical musings by Ronald de Sousa.

Why the paradoxes follow

I am a philosophical manic-depressive. As a philosopher, I want to see the world as it really is. I also believe, (and there’s now empirical research to back me on this) that I see things more clearly and truly when I am depressed. So when I’m depressed, I say: Good! Now I see things as they are! and become elated. Which of course depresses me. And so on.

This situation embodies both my paradoxes. First, I cannot pursue the clarity of depression without exposing myself to the stupidity of elation : the pursuit is therefore self-defeating. Second, the happy clarity of depression can only subsist so long as I remain unaware of it : so I can’t both be happy and know that I am. [via UFO Breakfast]

And now for a word from our sponsor:

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! Omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal creams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

— Allen Ginsberg (1956)

Bipolar depression eased by pig feed. A nutritional supplement developed when a livestock products salesman noticed similarities between the behavior of a distraught neighbor’s bipolar children and aggressive pigs’ ear-and-tail-biting syndrome has proven successful in reducing medication needs in a large study of bipolar depressed patients.

For close to a century, agricultural scientists have done research on the impact of nutrients on animal behaviour. Aggressive behaviour is routinely treated with food supplements. Oddly, this body of knowledge has not made its way into human medicine. Without a blueprint to guide them, Mr. Hardy and Mr. Stephan concocted a mixture of vitamins and minerals.

This Globe and Mail article is being heavily blinked to. Here are some of my thoughts (in the direction of measured optimism but not over-the-top enthusiasm):

• The psychiatric treatments the patients in the vignettes described had had before trying the nutritional supplement sound like caricatures of bad treatment. Prescribing nine medications together, exploding at patient and family when one’s expertise is questioned, etc. A subset of people will improve when just removed from such adverse treatment conditions. The nutritional supplement might be a red herring in these cases.
  

• The study was not double blinded and not placebo controlled. Time and again, apparent treatment success in preliminary studies is not replicated with rigorous study designs that remove hidden experimenter and subject biases.
• The idea that a simple nutritional supplement could replace medication — and its corollary, that a devastating disease can be reduced to an overlooked dietary factor or factors — often represents a sort of magical thinking — yearning for a ‘quick fix’ — on the part of sufferers and families faced with a difficulty accepting a disease recovery from (or stabilization with)which requires instead a long patient and courageous commitment on their part. You know the old saying — if a breakthrough sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The degree of skepticism required in reacting to a claim is in direct proportion to its momentousness…
  

• Remaining with the too-good-to-be-true theme, you’ll see a series of case reports on the website of the company set up to distribute the supplements claiming efficacy in almost the entire spectrum of psychiatric ailments (anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue, Tourette’s Syndrome, ADHD, depression and schizophrenia).
  

• One of the longest-running subthreads in psychiatric treatment controversy is that of nutritional treatments. I’ll mention just two prominent ones, mega-vitamin therapy for schizophrenia (a la Linus Pauling et al) and the Feingold Diet for children with attention deficit disorder. They never pan out. And there’s an entire subgenre of alternative medicine called clinical ecology which focuses on allergies, environmental and dietary influences on emotional and physical health, which I’ve looked into at depth and find remarkable for its conceptual confusion and pseudoscience.
  

• I’m not, however, saying that there are no dietary influences on mood. If you’re serious about this area, you have to be familiar with the groundbreaking lifelong commitment of Dr Judith Wurtman at MIT to reputable research in this area. And well-designed clinical trials have shown beneficial effects of a nutritional supplement, omega three fatty acids, in treatment-resistant bipolar disorder. While the components of the Hardy-Stephan supplements are a proprietary secret, it contains “only non-prescription nutrients”. It seems likely that only one or two components of this “shotgun approach” supplementation are the crucial factors. It would be nice to get the cost down below the certainly excessive $250 a month desperate families are paying. I was reassured to hear that the company distributing the product is non-profit, at least.
  

• Improvement in “bipolar depression” over a six-month followup period might be expected just from the natural history of the disorder, which tends to be cyclical and sometimes seasonal, relapsing and remitting. And dietary effects might be nonspecific, i.e. enhancing overall wellbeing rather than exerting a specific stabilizing effect on a clinical disorder.

From the Guardian, a series of primers on ‘difficult’ art forms:

• Jonathan Freedland on minimalism
  

• Stuart Jeffries on installation art
  

• Stephen Poole on sound art
  

• Adam Sweeting on soap operas
  

• Gary Younge on country music
  

• Libby Brooks on performance art
  

• Giles Foden on pottery
  

• Claire Armistead on video art
  

• Simon Hattenstone on electronic music
  

• Stephen Moss on modern architecture
  

• Jonathan Jones on jazz
  

• John Sutherland on surrealism
  

• Mark Lawson on ballet
  

I got this from the newly-relocated [sub]culture . [Some of these art forms don’t seem so ‘difficult’ to me…]

A massive compendium of Social Criticism source materials, categorized very intelligently. [via William Fields, who said “Holy shamoley!” when he found this…]

Via the null device, Mayo researchers can’t prove power of prayer. No difference in outcome between cardiac patients unknowingly prayed for over six months and matched controls. “The study drew immediate criticism as an attempt to measure God’s will.” Perhaps S/He made sure not to listen to these particular entreaties in order to punish the blaspheming researchers? Duluth Tribune Naturally, if the recipient of prayer knows about it, it’s a different story. That’s called, of course, the placebo effect, an erroneously disparaging term about an erroneously discredited phenomenon that is behind a far greater proportion of the healing benefits of medical interventions than we are willing to concede…

Suspect Claims Al Qaeda Hacked Microsoft – Expert

A suspected member of the Al Qaeda terrorist network claimed that Islamic militants infiltrated Microsoft and sabotaged the company’s Windows XP operating system, according to a source close to Indian police.

Mohammad Afroze Abdul Razzak, arrested by Mumbai (Bombay) police Oct. 2, has admitted to helping plot terrorist attacks in India, Britain and Australia, India’s Hindustan Times newspaper reported Saturday.

During interrogation, Afroze, 25, also claimed that a member or members of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, posing as computer programmers, were able to gain employment at Microsoft and attempted to plant “trojans, trapdoors, and bugs in Windows XP,” according to Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad, a New Delhi information systems and telecommunication consultant. NewsBytes

Further reason not to upgrade to Windows XP (which I’ve discussed before) even if you’re opting to remain in Microsoft’s grip; or to consider finally moving to Linux…

“It started last week with Jennifer Balderama’s Where Internet Promises Remain Unfulfilled article on CNET followed by Doc’s Fulfilling the Promise response and Jennifer’s guest blogger answers to Doc’s issues. After that Doc invited Jennifer to start a blog and Jennifer made it happen with her new blog on Friday….” Commentary from the Keep Trying metablog [via blogger.com]

Saudi stability on borrowed time: ‘Saudi Arabia expects a $12 billion budget shortfall for fiscal 2002. Unwilling or unable to turn to outside creditors, the government is considering a path of economic and social reform that could fuel public frustration and lead to upheaval. An embattled Riyadh will impact the stability of the entire Arabian Peninsula and strain relations with Washington.’ StratFor

Planespotters to be freed on bail: “Fourteen tourists on a Greek aircraft-spotting holiday may have spent six weeks in prison thanks, in part, to a quirk of mathematics. Planespotters, like trainspotters, are obsessed with collecting the numbers of the vehicles that they see – and unfortunately this habit is indistinguishable from one form of hostile intelligence-gathering…

The Greek authorities have expressed concern over records of serial numbers from the tailplanes of helicopters at the base. A handful of such numbers can reveal a surprising amount of information about total number of pieces of equipment and even production capacity.” New Scientist

This, about the band 3 Mustaphas 3, is apparently (a part of) my earliest usenet post (the beginning of the first sentence, which explains how I got to be there, being truncated), according to the new Google groups 20-year searchable archive. This archive enhancement turns out to be moderately embarrassing. If your searches are sorted by relevance rather than date, what comes up at the top of the list of a search for me is a discussion about whether I was a “bad trader”, one of the ultimate epithets on rec.music.gdead, i.e. whether I had stiffed someone in a tape trade. I hadn’t.

David Corn: The more Bush Grows, the more he stays the same:

My, how he’s grown! That’s the cliché tossed around by pundits and politicos about George W. Bush, deployed especially by those who never fancied W.

The plot-line: smirky boy-President, in the post-9/11 crucible, becomes a man and a true leader. Bush loyalists have simultaneously pooh-poohed and encouraged such talk. They certainly cannot admit their boss was a lightweight to start, and they deny he needed maturation. But they are eager to enhance (and exploit) his image as a strong, in-charge wartime president… The surprise is not that Bush has done all this reasonably well; the surprise would have been had he, a professional politician and presidential son who (like most pols) is surrounded by image-makers and communications specialists, not been able to seize the moment. I imagine that even Al Gore would have been able to rally the nation following the horrific assaults of September 11. Perhaps Michael Dukakis, too. (It is doubtful, though, that Republicans and conservatives would have been as supportive of a Commander Gore as the Democrats have been of Bush had Gore, like Bush, waited several weeks before initiating retaliation.)

This is not a knock on Bush, whose job approval rating appears to be approaching 137 percent. Here comes the knock: his growth has not changed much. On substance, he remains the same sort of president he was prior to September 11… Arrogant unilateralism, a continuing obsession with tax cuts for the well-heeled. The newly-somber George W. Bush, having confronted the harsh realities of war, has dropped the adolescent-like smirk, but there are some things he has not grown out of.AlterNet [thanks to BookNotes]

Unto us a lamb is given: on the long and happy friendship that existed between men and sheep before the present slaughter began. “So far this year we have slaughtered and burnt four-and-a-half million of them; it may not be enough. We are planning to kill or castrate hundreds of thousands more. The government is awarding itself powers to destroy any it chooses, and no right of appeal will exist. We have declared total war on sheep.” Spectator UK

Unto us a lamb is given: on the long and happy friendship that existed between men and sheep before the present slaughter began. “So far this year we have slaughtered and burnt four-and-a-half million of them; it may not be enough. We are planning to kill or castrate hundreds of thousands more. The government is awarding itself powers to destroy any it chooses, and no right of appeal will exist. We have declared total war on sheep.” Spectator UK

Unto us a lamb is given: on the long and happy friendship that existed between men and sheep before the present slaughter began. “So far this year we have slaughtered and burnt four-and-a-half million of them; it may not be enough. We are planning to kill or castrate hundreds of thousands more. The government is awarding itself powers to destroy any it chooses, and no right of appeal will exist. We have declared total war on sheep.” Spectator UK

Why I’m Not Sending Christmas Cards This Year: “As much as our leaders want us all to get back to normal, it’s time to admit that when it comes to going postal — this is not your father’s mail. Now that postal workers are suddenly on the front line of the war against terror, shouldn’t the generous spirit of Christmas dictate that we contribute not one more piece of inessential mail to their substantial load?” Arianna Huffington

Bin Laden videotape was result of a sting: “This weekend, as the debate the tape has provoked continued across the Islamic world, several intelligence sources have suggested to The Observer that the tape, although absolutely genuine, is the result of a sophisticated sting operation run by the CIA through a second intelligence service, possibly Saudi or Pakistani.

‘They needed someone whom they could persuade or coerce to get close to bin Laden and someone whom bin Laden would feel secure talking to. If it works, you have got the perfect evidence at the perfect moment,’ said one security source. ‘It’s a masterstroke.’ ” Guardian UK [On the other hand, if the tape was disinformation and doubtful reactions began to accumulate, they could be countered neatly with the rumor that it was a CIA sting, simultaneously asserting its authenticity and explaining its fortuitously-timed appearance.]

Hate Hits the Mainstream. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center says that, while everyone has bent over backwards to show tolerance for Muslims in the wake of the war on terrorism, anti-Semitism has gone mainstream across the Arab world, unacknowledged and uncountered. LA Times

The irrepressible Molly Ivins: Watch Out for Those Bush Photo-Ops

“When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, many political observers had a theory that whenever he started holding photo ops with adorable little children, it was time to grab your wallet because it meant some unconscionable giveaway to the corporations was in the wind.

I did not fully subscribe to the theory, but having noticed a number of adorable-child ops in the past few weeks, I decided to check for what might be flying under the radar…” Common Dreams

Wind may explain mystery anthrax cases New Scientist

Coming to a Mall Near You: Just War: “The phrase, ‘Just War,’ used in reference to the battle being waged in Afghanistan, is beginning to resonate. Not as a deep philosophical concept, but like the names of those specialty stores you find in shopping malls: ‘Just Lamps,’ ‘Just Bulbs,’ and ‘Just Paper.’ In fact, ‘Just War’ turns out to be an eerily accurate marquee for the little shop known as The United States of America. War, to the increasing exclusion of everything else, is the only thing that America collectively cares about anymore.” David Potorti, brother of a 9-11 attack victim, in CommonDreams

Bin Laden’s voice ‘heard in Tora Bora’ — ‘US troops apparently intercepted radio messages last week which showed that Osama Bin Laden was still commanding his forces in the area.’ BBC

W. G. Sebald, Elegiac German Novelist, Is Dead at 57: “…(T)he profoundly elegiac and distinctive author of Austerlitz and other novels and one of the most acclaimed of contemporary writers was killed yesterday in an automobile accident in Norfolk, England, near his home in Norwich in East Anglia. He was 57.” NY Times

Tongue piercing causes brain abscess New Scientist

An Israeli company reportedly knows who calls whom in virtually every phone call made in US Fox News

Report: London Attack Plan Found: ‘A British newspaper said it has found a notebook at an al-Qaida training camp in southern Afghanistan that contained a terrorist “blueprint” for an attack on London.’ Washington Post

Don’t Throw It Away — ‘Grammatical English is now the near-exclusive province of the middle-aged and elderly because it hasn’t been formally taught in most schools (on my side of the Atlantic, at least) for about thirty years. Knowledge of the mechanics of how words, clauses, and phrases are hooked up to form sentences and paragraphs has been withheld from most children for such a long time that clear grammatical precision is now a rarity.

Those few young people who do learn it, seem to pick it up, against the odds, by instinct. Even then they’ve no template of understanding with which to correct their own writing when something goes wrong.’ The Vocabula Review

Nice Distinctions: “(A) word whose meaning is ambiguous is likely to be shunned by those who would make their meaning clear…” The Vocabula Review

The Grammar of Anthony Burgess’s The Eve of Saint Venus: “Simply to speak ill of those who truly deserve it shows a lack of imagination. All it requires is simple description. An infinitely more engaging task is merely to praise those who we think are worth our consideration — and ignore the rest. This positively dispraises the unmentioned by implication.

And, indeed, a very effective way for tenure-track literature teachers to stay on track while helping their students distinguish between sound literature and literary litter is to require that those students read good writing to learn what good writing is, and Cliff Notes to prepare for department-wide exams. Those teachers who are given tenure can then stop assigning Cliff Notes to, for instance, that recent well-seller that has a male dolphin kill the bad guy by raping him. Merely to notice such grotesqueries is to seem to elevate them beyond their proper status — that of literary litter.

Literary litter lays claim to the title of authentic literature because, among other reasons, it observes all the rules of grammar. Because grammar, if not virtue, can be taught, much of today’s literary litter exhibits good grammar along with its bad taste. But good grammar is as appropriate to literary litter as jewels and expensive cosmetics are to loathsome hags. This essay written in praise of the grammar of Anthony Burgess’s The Eve of Saint Venus addresses the difference between grammar used as drabs use jewels and lipstick, and those very same rules of grammar used as the necessary and appropriate complement to good writing. But if we are to think that a readership is correct in judging a book to be authentic literature merely because it is written following the rules of grammar, then we must conclude that grammar has the power to turn sows’ ears into silk purses. Grammar cannot do this, and the readership that thinks it can is clear neither about what a sow’s ear looks like nor what a silk purse looks like — an easily understood mistake. After all, each can be used to carry small change, and small change, whatever sort of purse is used to carry it in, is still small change.” The Vocabula Review

Dying to know the truth: visions of a dying brain, or false memories? Thoughtful commentary about out-of-body experiences during near-death events and whether they indicate consciousness without brain function, as several recent research studies have suggested. The commentator is at the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at the University of London:

The nature of mind-brain relationships and the possibility of life-after-death are some of the most profound issues relating to mankind’s place in the universe. The report in today’s Lancet by Pim van Lommel and colleagues of near-death experiences (NDEs) in survivors of a cardiac arrest provides intriguing data that are relevant to these issues. Theirs is the second prospective study of this type, the first being a smaller-scale study done in Southampton by Parnia and colleagues. Both groups of researchers think that their findings indicate a need for radical revision of current assumptions about the relationship between consciousness and brain function. van Lommel and colleagues ask, “How could a clear consciousness outside one’s body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?”. But the truth is that nobody knows when the NDEs reported by these patients actually occurred. Was it really during the period of flat EEG or might they have occurred as the patients rapidly entered or gradually recovered from that state? The Lancet [free acces; requires registration]

Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army’s Stocks. This is in direct contradiction to a government spokesperson’s claim that the terrorist anthrax was of a different strain than the weaponized anthrax the US has recently produced at Dugway (secretly, and in violation of the US commitment to refrain from production of biological weapons), about which I wrote below.

Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests.

Although many laboratories possess the Ames strain of anthrax involved in this fall’s bioterrorist attacks, only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters, the scientists said. And all those labs can trace back their samples to a single U.S. military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. Washington Post