Rock Stars Oppose Bush’s Energy Plan and Ask Fans to Join Them. In addition to reinvigorating Greenpeace (see below), the Shrub in the White House puts rock activism back in vogue, and wonderful old warhorses like David Crosby get a second wind (or a third…?) New York Times

Signs of Hope: Spotlight Turns to Undecided Sen. Thompson (R-Tenn) and Pete Domenici (R-NMex), who have yet to announce whether they will stand for their seats next year. Jesse Helms, Strom Tuurmond and now Texas Senator Phil Gramm are retiring from the Senate. So far, all 14 Democratic Senators whose seats are up for grabs are expected to stand for reelection. A total of 20 Republican seats hang in the balance as well. Reuters [Whether the Democrats take control again or not, I’m loving the prospect of a US Senate without Thurmond and Helms…]

Early School Lunch May Violate Federal Rules The first lunch period at this Boston-area high school will begin at 9:26 a.m.! School overcrowding, of course, is the culprit. Federal regulations, by the way, allow school lunch at 10:00.

Move to Criminalize All Leaks of Classified Data Hits a Snag: “A Senate hearing scheduled for

today on a proposal to make all leaks of classified information

crimes was canceled after the White House told the bill’s Republican

sponsor that it was not prepared to support the legislation.

A senior White House official said that while the administration opposed

leaks, a new law was not needed to safeguard national security.” New York Times [George B— as a card-carrying ACLU member??]

Shaking Down American Travelers. Via boing boing, this link to an article by an attorney discussing reports that Ry Cooder is being fined $25,000US for travelling to Cuba to make the Buena Vista Social Club film. It is illegal for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba — actually, it seems the crime is spending money there without the permission of the Treasury Dept. No one has yet been brought to court to enforce this blatantly unconstitutional (in my legally untutored opinion) law, but 379 Cuba travellers have voluntarily “settled” with the gov’t to the tune of a collective $2 million. Anyone protesting such a fine would be entitled to a due process review by an administrative judge within the Treasury Dept, but it has none. Indeed, a backlog of protests is waiting to be heard. Despite the fact that House has voted to stop funding enforcement and the Senate is likely to follow suit this fall, the Shrub administration is having the Treasury step up enforcement of the travel ban by sending agents to foreign airports where U.S. citizens are likely to transfer to Cuba-bound flights. I share speculation that this is “some kind of pliitical payoff to the Cuban American National Foundation”; B— is increasingly making moves on a number of fronts to increase his Hispanic voting bloc in anticipation of 2004. The author advises Ry to fight this:

“Unconstitutional regulations and laws are illegal and void and should immediately be terminated or repealed. If questionably constitutional, they should be taken to court for determination as soon as possible. They should not be kept on the books for years in order to harass selectively, or to frighten and bilk the unwary when our government (but not the traveler) knows there will be no prosecution. Last January our President took an oath to uphold our Constitution. He has plenty of good legal advice. If he truly represents us, Cuba travelers like Ry Cooder should be able to rely on his good faith in this respect.

” Common Dreams

The New York Times eulogizes Pauline Kael, 1919-2001. “Provocative and Widely Imitated Film Critic, Dies at 82. Whether dismissing auteur theory,

reviewing Robert Altman’s Nashville

(1975) before it was finished, questioning

the extent of Orson Welles’s contribution to

Citizen Kane (1941) or proclaiming

Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris

(1973) as a cultural event comparable to

the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s Sacre

du Printemps, Ms. Kael was always provocative. Her seductive writing

style bred a legion of acolytes, known as Paulettes.”

…the most quotable critic writing; but what is important and bracing is that

she relates movies to other experiences, to ideas and attitudes, to

ambition, books, money, other movies, to politics and the evolving culture,

to moods of the audience, to our sense of ourselves — to what movies do

to us, the acute and self- scrutinizing awareness of which is always at the

core of her judgment.

–Eliot Fremont-Smith

Welcome to new readers who found FmH through Rebecca Blood. Like her, I found the piece below on infrasound and hauntings one of the most fascinating items in awhile. Hope you find something else you like here… [thanks, Rebecca]

Doctors Say a Chocolate a Day Keeps Them Away: ‘Chocolate contains compounds called

flavonoids that can help maintain a healthy heart and good

circulation and reduce blood clotting — which can cause heart attacks

and strokes.

“More and more, we are finding evidence that consumption of

chocolate that is rich in flavonoids can have positive cardiovascular

effects,” Carl Keen, a nutritionist at the University of California, Davis,

told a science conference.’ Reuters

Annals of Intolerance (cont’d.): Protestants Terrorize N.Irish Girls Second Day: “Irate

Protestants hurling stones and abuse

terrorized scores of Roman Catholic girls for

a second day Tuesday as they walked to

school under massive security in Belfast.”

And: U.S. and Israel quit U.N. conference against racism. Boston Globe

Strange bedfellows. The Rainbow Warrior puts in an appearance on my local seacoast. “It was classic Greenpeace… The rabble-rousers of the environmental movement are back”, reinvigorated by the environmental dangers posed by B—. Boston.com

Gore Attends Campaign-Like Event — “Former Vice President

Al Gore attended his first

campaign-style political event since his

narrow loss in the presidential election,

brushing aside questions about whether he

would run again.” Still sporting the sinister-looking beard. AP

I previously wrote about a theory that Federal regulatory changes would result in increasing shark attacks. Now here’s another one, which has killed one swimmer and left another in critical condition in North Carolina. And those wacky folks at PETA have unveiled a billboard urging sympathy for sharks: “Would You Give Your Right Arm to Know

Why Sharks Attack, Could it be Revenge? Go Vegetarian, PETA.”

Reno Moves to Run for Fla. Governor AP

Via randomWalks, a blink to Werewolf, a mind game for a large group of people. Links to a number of variants and related games. “I really like it. But then I go to some strange parties,” says the page’s poster.

Chuck Taggart at Looka! points to the fact that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was awarded the 2001 Hugo Award for best novel. While longtime readers of FmH know of my relish for Rowling’s Harry Potter books, each of which I’ve read aloud to my son, I agree with Chuck’s consternation that this is by no stretch of the imagination a work of science fiction. By the way, has any reader noticed any recent news of when (if?) we can expect the next in the Potter series?

How to Calibrate a Television FAQ: “Most televisions have electronic service adjustments. This means that adjustments like picture

geometry, white balance, and color presets are adjusted via on screen displays (OSD), using the

remote control and the service menu.” [from jerrykindall]

We Love You, We Hate You — “Despite the ill will of Barney haters everywhere, the saccharine purple dinosaur’s popularity is undiminished — and that’s not a bad thing…” Dallas Observer I hasten to add that the opinion expressed is not that of the editor of FmH, who had the misfortune of raising two children of susceptible ages during the peak popularity of Barney. The article suggests that the visceral revulsion most adults feel toward Barney is attributable to our cynicism in the face of the ‘image of genuine goodness’ he presents to guileless children. Oh boy, does this miss the point! My horror at watching children’s rapt attention to the show relates to the fear they are being irrevocably indoctrinated into the superficial, plastic, stiff, forced nature of the good-timey ambiance the show thrives upon…

Impulse Gravity Generator Based on Charged YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-y} Superconductor with

Composite Crystal Structure. In other words, as Phil Agre of Red Rock Eater puts it, they think they’ve created antigravity in the lab…

Why won’t Britain jail this war criminal?” The UK has been a haven to 400 Nazi murderers. All

but one have got away with it.” Guardian UK

‘We’re going to get them’: “Israel hunts terrorists amid controversy. An inside look” at ‘targeted killing’.

Israel says it is not only in a war against terrorism, but it’s also in a war

against international opinion. It insists it has a legal and religious right to kill

its enemies. USA Today

“Is starting a weblog like declaring yourself a pundit?”

Book review: Grammars of Creation: Is the Future Just a Tense?: “It is difficult not to be impressed by

George Steiner. Part literary critic, part

existential elegist, he presents himself as

the polymath’s polymath. The erudition is

almost as extraordinary as the prose:

dense, knowing, allusive. In Steiner’s work

the suggestion of total cultural mastery,

from the pre-Socratics to the postmodern,

is inescapable.” New York Times

The monk and the fly.

Live Jail Cam — “This is a real life transmission of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Madison Street Jail. Instances of

violence or sexually inappropriate behavior by detainees during the booking process may occur. Viewer

discretion is advised. This is a jail not a simulation. The persons in this transmission are either

employees of Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, other police agencies in Maricopa County or arrestees.”

Vic Tandy, a lecturer in law and international relations at Coventry University, believes that extremely low-frequency sound — ‘infrasound’ — may explain hauntings. Twenty years ago, after he and co-workers had been experiencing an unsettling presence in their office, he identified a standing sound wave of ~18.5hz from a ventilation fan as the culprit; the lower limit of human hearing is around 20hz. The sense of presence disappeared when the fan was shut off. A ‘haunted’ 14th century pub cellar in Coventry was shown to have an 18.9hz peak when its soundscape was spectrally analyzed. Other research has shown that infrasound around this frequency can cause nausea, fear and panic. Extraordinarily, the human eyeball has a resonant frequency of 18hz, which might explain visions of ghostly presences.

Storms and waves pounding the shoreline can produce infrasound effects travelling hundreds if not thousands of miles. In a 1968 study, a U.S. town receiving infrasound from a storm over 1500 miles distant demonstrated increased traffic accidents and school absenteeism. The military has been interested in possible applications and claims powerful effects to human subjects from low-frequency and low-intensity pulses.

Recently, a team of North Carolina animal researchers has shown that, prior to attacking, tigers stun their intended prey with a roar containing frequencies around 18hz. Some dolphin clicks have long been suspected to have a role in their hunting, but a recent Hawaiian study has filmed them emitting low-frequency ‘bangs’ while chasing and catching fish; these may disorient the fish, damage their hearing, or even paralyze and kill. Researchers have observed Atlantic dolphins emit a buzz which makes buried eels jump out of the sand. Tandy speculates that human sensitivity to infrasound may be an evolutionary vestige of times when we were prey to big cats.

Regarding the best bus shelter in Britain, which has its own website. Times of London

Psychologist says adulthood dawns at 35 not 21: ‘A study claims a generation of “fledgling adults” has

developed who only start growing up at the age of 35.

A psychologist says attitudes, tastes and aspirations of

Americans and Britons change most at that age.

Stephen Richardson says until then people are typified by

the overgrown teenagers of Men Behaving Badly.’ Ananova […and what about the women??]

Stop ignoring the data — “Backed by an explosion of scientific data

underscoring the importance of behavioral and

social factors in health, an interdisciplinary group of

scientists is arguing that the sheer weight of that

evidence demands a restructuring of how social

and behavioral research and interventions are

conducted.

At a May 23 symposium organized by the National

Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of

Medicine (IOM), “Through a kaleidoscope: viewing

the contributions of the behavioral and social

sciences to health,” experts drew on six recent NRC

and IOM reports (viewable here). Each concludes that

the nation’s health can be significantly improved if

the scientific and medical communities–as well as

policy-makers–heed the wealth of data that show

how behavior and social environments shape

health.” American Psychological Association

M.I.T. Professor and author of How the Mind

Works Steven Pinker discusses technology with Richard Johnson.

What has been your worst experience of technology?

A Bang & Olufsen television and phone. They may be in the

Museum of Design, but they send you to the manual for the

simplest task. I am a professor at MIT, and if I cannot figure out

how to use them, then something is wrong with the human

factors. Sunday Times of London

EPIC Alert: “online newsletter of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC. The Alert is bi-weekly

and covers issues related to privacy and civil liberties in the information age.”

The Hunger Site is back up, under new ownership.

Hermenaut, ‘an irregularly published journal of philosophy and pop-culture, has been described as “a zine that gives voice to indie intellectual thought,” “a scholarly journal minus the university,” and “a sounding board for thinking folk who operate outside the ivory tower.” Founded in 1992 by a rag-tag group of outsider intellectuals, Hermenaut uses the tools of philosophy, sociology, and critical theory to explode the received notions of academia and the hipster demimonde alike.’

‘I’d like to force the world to sing…’ ‘…one of the more inventive conspiracy theories now making the rounds. The funny thing is how plausible it all seems once you start looking into it. In 1993 Kristol outlined a program for selling conservatism as rebellion in the pages of Commentary magazine, declaring absurdly that “now it is liberalism that constitutes the old order.” At the time this seemed quite mad. Today it seems prescient. We have all heard about the clear-eyed youngsters of “Generation Y,” with their faith in Wall Street and their uncanny entrepreneurial skills. Well, it’s all William Kristol’s doing. He has managed to persuade an entire generation with his weird logic. But how?

Two words, according to the theory: OK Soda.’ The Baffler [via Metascene] [Make what you will of this…]

“Star Wars” poses nuclear risk to Europe: ‘Further doubts were raised on Thursday about the viability of President George Bush’s controversial missile defense system when a researcher said intercepted “rogue” missiles could fall on Europe or America.

Ted Postol, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the system includes a plan to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) just minutes after launch, while their rocket boosters are still burning. This should be simpler than targeting missiles in mid-flight because tracking a flaming rocket is easier than homing in on a relatively cool warhead.’ MediaJunkies

Saddam’s poison gas kills 20 of his men — “At least 20 specially-trained Iraqi soldiers are dead

and up to 200 have been admitted to hospital after

taking part in a chemical weapons exercise that

went wrong.

News of the

training accident

emerged last week

amid concerns that

Saddam Hussein

has rebuilt his

chemical weapons

arsenal.” Telegraph UK

Naughty children ‘born from anxiety’ — ‘Anxiety during the last few weeks of pregnancy can

affect an unborn baby’s developing brain, increasing

the chances of children becoming hyperactive or

badly behaved.

Researchers say the connection is almost certainly

due to exposure to chemicals in the womb and not

the result of “bad” parenting.’ Telegraph UK

Food for higher thought — ‘So, the school exam pass rate is up again, for the

19th year in a row. Who would have believed it? All

those hours spent playing Tomb Raider and Gran

Turismo 2 on the PlayStation, and it seems we are

still turning out a nation of young Einsteins. Either

someone’s massaging the maths or mothers are

putting something in their offsprings’ fish fingers.

“If only the latter were true,” says Lorraine Peretta,

an expert nutritionist, “but the latest Government

statistics on child nutrition are appalling.” Perretta,

who moved to London from her native New York in

the early 1980s, has just written a book, Brain Food.

Bright and bubbly, with the sort of clear eyes that

come with drinking no claret and plenty of cranberry

juice, Perretta believes that, by feeding our brain

the right nutrients and minerals, the old can protect

their brains from premature ageing, the young can

cope better with exam pressures, and the sad can

overcome depression.’ Telegraph UK

Takashi Mike’s Audition: seems to be a disturbing, horrifying film experience creating quite a buzz. “If you didn’t know this was a horror story, you wouldn’t see it coming.” Right up my alley? Deep Focus [via randomWalks]

From randomWalks (yes, they really capitalize it that way): “Let’s catalog how copyright owners have used the DMCA so far: to silence a magazine publisher (2600 case); to threaten computer science professors (Prof. Ed Felten); and to jail programmers (Dmitry). And as for the public’s first sale and archiving rights, copyright owners are poised to debut a host of DRM [digital rights management] technologies that will dramatically curtail these rights… The writing’s on the wall — how much worse does it have to get before the Copyright Office recognizes that the DMCA has fundamentally, and unwisely, unbalanced the Copyright Act? The U.S. Copyright Office just issued a disgraceful endorsement of the DMCA.”

Bob Dylan: Sometimes He Talks Crazy, Crazy Like a Song. Greil Marcus’ elliptical preview of Love and Theft, Dylan’s imminent new recording, makes it seem as full of metaphorical stories as Highway 61 Revisited, a third of a century ago. New York Times

Monument to same-sex couples discovered in Cambridge chapel; from 17th century. ‘Alan Bray discovered a tomb in the chapel of Christ’s

College, Cambridge, shared by John Finch and Thomas

Baines.

It features portraits of the men linked by a knotted cloth,

thought to be a pun on the love knot.

Mr Bray, a Roman Catholic and church historian,

discovered Mr Finch described his friendship with Baines

as a “connubium” or a marriage, reports the Cambridge

Evening News.’ Ananova

Monument to same-sex couples discovered in Cambridge chapel; from 17th century. ‘Alan Bray discovered a tomb in the chapel of Christ’s

College, Cambridge, shared by John Finch and Thomas

Baines.

It features portraits of the men linked by a knotted cloth,

thought to be a pun on the love knot.

Mr Bray, a Roman Catholic and church historian,

discovered Mr Finch described his friendship with Baines

as a “connubium” or a marriage, reports the Cambridge

Evening News.’ Ananova

Monument to same-sex couples discovered in Cambridge chapel; from 17th century. ‘Alan Bray discovered a tomb in the chapel of Christ’s

College, Cambridge, shared by John Finch and Thomas

Baines.

It features portraits of the men linked by a knotted cloth,

thought to be a pun on the love knot.

Mr Bray, a Roman Catholic and church historian,

discovered Mr Finch described his friendship with Baines

as a “connubium” or a marriage, reports the Cambridge

Evening News.’ Ananova

We’ve Been Misled by the Drug Industry

I have recovered from schizophrenia. If that statement surprises you — if you think schizophrenia is a lifelong brain disease that cannot be escaped — you have been misled by a cultural misapprehension that needlessly imprisons millionsunder the label of mental illness.

In the last 20 years, the pharmaceutical industry has become the major force behind the belief that mental illness is a brain disorder and that its victims need to take medications for the rest of their lives. It’s a clever sales strategy: If people believe mental illness is purely biological, they will only treat it with a pill.

Drug companies have virtually bought the psychiatric profession. Their profits fund the research, the journals and the departments of psychiatry. Not surprisingly, many researchers have concluded that medication alone is best for the treatment for mental illness. Despite recent convincing research showing the usefulness of psychotherapy in treating schizophrenia, psychiatric trainees are still told “you can’t talk to a disease.” This is why psychiatrists today spend more time prescribing drugs than getting to know the people taking them.

Fisher is right to decry these trends — the pharmaceutical industry’s ‘ownership’ of the psychiatric profession; the woeful deemphasis on investing in talking with our patients in modern training — but he surely comes to his conclusions for the wrong reasons. He appears to be stuck in the dichotomous world of ’60’s psychiatry in which the debates raging about whether psychiatric illnesses were “either or” were the most important preoccupation of academic psychiatry and psychology. To be as polemical as he is — “schizophrenia is more often due to a loss of dreams than a loss of dopamine” — ignores the agonizing futility of the efforts of many with this disease to make anything work in the world, the daily terror of their existence, and the very real attenuation of their distress modern treatment, with antipsychotic medication, affords. While he is right in suggesting there should be more research into how people recover, the disease is often characterized by a progressive deterioration of intellect and personality and usually an inevitable downhill course, without ‘cure’. The trends of the past twenty years have arisen mostly from the vast progress in neuroscientific understanding of this — yes, I’ll say it — brain disease. Throw in for good measure a society that, continuing to stigmatize and marginalize the mentally ill, devalued the severity of their distress and became increasingly unwilling to pay for the expertise and experience generations of psychiatrists had had with the severely mentally ill, instead hiring cheaper allied health professionals to do the talking to the patients and relegating psychiatric physicians to the role of hired guns writing prescriptions and consulting instead of doing direct treatment. To dismiss the entire profession as misguided, as Fisher does instead of grasping the more complicated picture, does psychiatry — but, moreso, our patients — an enormous disservice. Washington Post

Fisher appears to be cast somewhat in R. D. Laing’s mold. The father of British antipsychiatry, Laing provided what remains one of the most accessible and profound descriptions of the subjective and existential experience of schizophrenia in The Divided Self. He then went on, however, to romanticize sufferers as cultural heroes resisting dehumanizing and oppressive societal programming, and cast madness as a consciousness-raising experience. In attempting to counter the stigmatization of the mentally ill and its contribution to their social suffering, he rejected the notion of their patienthood. Indeed, the altered functioning in mental illness is, mostly, the source of their dehumanization. Laing was one of my inspirations, and you can hear his influence in my resonance with the existential crisis of my patients and my anti-stigmatization polemics. But — and this is a big ‘but’ — the empathic physican’s ability to use physiological as well as psychological-emotional means at her/his disposal is not a baby to be thrown out with the bathwater.

For those with further interest, Janus Head‘s Spring 2001 issue was devoted to a consideration of the legacy of Laing.

Some scientists believe that kids simply aren’t wired to care. Drastic change occurs rather late in adolescence in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs self-control and planful behavior, two neuroscientists find. This suggests ‘caring’ may develop relatively late, as the frontal lobe matures. Chicago Tribune

Geologic evidence piles

up that humans are the culprits in mass

extinctions on two continents — “For decades, scientists have debated what caused the mass

extinctions. Some saw humans as the guilty party; others blamed

climate change. Without solid evidence, the debate was a draw.

But two recent studies are tipping the balance in favor of humans as

the culprit. Though not a smoking gun, the new research places man at

the scene of the crime and casts serious doubt on his alibi.” The Dallas Morning News

Monument to same-sex couples discovered in Cambridge chapel; from 17th century. ‘Alan Bray discovered a tomb in the chapel of Christ’s

College, Cambridge, shared by John Finch and Thomas

Baines.

It features portraits of the men linked by a knotted cloth,

thought to be a pun on the love knot.

Mr Bray, a Roman Catholic and church historian,

discovered Mr Finch described his friendship with Baines

as a “connubium” or a marriage, reports the Cambridge

Evening News.’ Ananova

Web Ad Blocking Under Linux/Unix, BeOS, MacOS and Windows. This is an old page, last updated in 2/2000, so some newer spam hosts may slip through, but it works.

Anyone else unable to reach David Anderson’s Metaforage/Metaphorage, one of my favorite weblogs and daily reads up until my vacation hiatus? (“What’s a meta for?”) Both this page at The Well and this one, show nothing anymore, and a Well search reveals no such user. Has his address changed? David, you out there? Anyone? TIA…

ZIP Find – Calculate distance between two ZIP Codes. Find all ZIP Codes within a radius of a ZIP Code.

Reforming psychiatry’s DSM

Modern psychiatry has become mired in a system of disease classification that defines mental disorders by the way they look and not on biological or

psychological processes, according to Dr. Paul McHugh, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the

Johns Hopkins University.

Notably, McHugh’s criticism and his proposed solution are featured in the current issue of Psychiatric Research Report, a publication of the American Psychiatric

Association’s Division of Research. [see article, available online here]…

The topic of contention is the fourth edition of the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), an encyclopedic catalog used to

consistently diagnose psychiatric diseases based on clinical symptoms.

But the focus on symptoms, rather than psychologic or biologic foundations, has led to thousands of overlapping conditions and confusing diagnoses, and the

current system has become unwieldy and outmoded, according to McHugh. EurekAlert!

“The National Initiative for a Networked Cultural

Heritage (NINCH) is a diverse nonprofit coalition of arts,

humanities and social science organizations created to

assure leadership from the cultural community in the

evolution of the digital environment.”

My Personal Bolt of Lightning: “I never believed that I could be in

danger on a golf course — until I was struck by lightning on one

last year.” New York Times via Spike

Death by Overwork — “As pressure intensifies in our working lives, scientists are

discovering that stress not only triggers illnesses but may

be a killer in its own right.” The Times of London

Learning to forgive can benefit the forgiver: “Forgiving others is a valuable gift for yourself, and

even the most grudge-bearing people can learn how to do it, new studies

suggest.” USA Today

Measuring brain activity in people eating chocolate offers new clues about how the body becomes addicted: “Using positron emission tomography scans to measure brain activity in people eating chocolate, a team of U.S. and Canadian neuroscientists

believe they have identified areas of the brain that may underlie addiction and eating disorders.

…(I)ndividuals’ ratings of the pleasantness of

eating chocolate were associated with increased blood flow in areas of the brain, particularly in the orbital frontal cortex and midbrain, that are also activated by

addictive drugs such as cocaine.

…(T)he brain regions activated

by eating chocolate when it is rewarding are quite different from those areas that are activated by eating chocolate when it is perceived as aversive (as a result of

having eaten too much chocolate).” EurekAlert!

Parents May Influence How Child Relates to Peers: “Despite recent claims that peers are

more important than parents in youth development, a parent’s

involvement with a teenage son or daughter still influences how the

adolescent relates to his or her friends and peer group, researchers

report.” You may find this self-evident, but the idea of parental influence on the development of personality has been under siege in academic psychology.

Chicagoans Are Reading the Same Book at the Same Time: “In a radical

effort to pull an entire city away

from video screens and into the pages of

literature, Chicago officials are asking

every adult and adolescent in the city to

read the same book at the same time.

The book they have chosen is Harper Lee’s

powerfully anti-racist novel, To Kill a

Mockingbird, which won a Pulitzer Prize in

1961.” New York Times

“Palm and Handspring have both had their wireless PDA plans made

public. Details of Palm’s i705 – the successor to the VII family – and

Handspring’s Treo k180 and g180 have been posted on the Federal

Communications Commission’s Web site as part of the process

both companies must undertake to get their devices approved for

wireless use.” The Register

ACLU Action Alerts:

Oppose expanded government secrecy:

“Last year, with little debate and no public hearings, Congress

adopted an intelligence authorization bill that contained a

provision to criminalize all leaks of classified information. A

firestorm of criticism from civil libertarians, major news

organizations, academics and librarians resulted and President

Bill Clinton vetoed the bill. Unfortunately, at the request of

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), this year’s intelligence

authorization bill may include the identical provision.

…The media often plays the crucial role of exposing

governmental misdeeds and the need for reform. To accomplish

this task, most major news outlets base many stories on classified

information.

…This provision would essentially eliminate the check

on government power that public scrutiny of government action

provides.”

Support the right to travel freely:

On July 25, 2001, the House of Representatives approved an

amendment to this year’s Treasury Appropriations Bill (H.R.

2590), offered by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), that would stop the

government from prohibiting travel to Cuba. The Senate is

expected take up a similar measure this fall. In both houses, bills

are pending to repeal the travel ban altogether – the “Bridges

to the Cuban People Act of 2001,” (S. 1017/H.R. 2138)

sponsored by Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Lincoln

Chafee (R-RI) and Reps. Jose Serrano (D-NY) and Jim Leach

(R-IA).

One-click faxing of your opinion to your representatives from ACLU’s site.

Guerrilla Ad Banner Battle Looms: “A showdown over a new piece of software that plasters unauthorized ad banners onto

websites has intensified after the company running the service, Gator.com, sued a major online trade group

that threatens to block the practice.” Wired

“If the music industry thinks it can make money charging for digital

music downloads, it can think again – punters just aren’t interested in

paying for music online.

So concludes G2, yet another subsidiary of research colossus

Gartner Group, after surveying the purchasing plans and habits of

4000 online adults.” Most just don’t use their PCs as hi-fi’s, preferring to listen to music from the comfort of their living rooms than hunched over a computer desk. No surprises there, IMHO. The Register

Court ruling puts Internet on notice:

An Australian judge yesterday threw out arguments by high-flying

London barrister Geoffrey Robertson in a decision with major

implications for publishing on the Internet.

Justice John Hedigan ruled businessman Joe Gutnick can sue US

publishing giant Dow Jones for defamation in Victoria over

money-laundering allegations.

Justice Hedigan threw out a claim that because the allegations were

published by Dow Jones on the Internet, Gutnick’s lawsuit should be

heard in the US. He ruled defamation takes place on the Internet

when a person “downloads” the offending words on their computer,

not when they are “uploaded” on the other side of the world. news.com.au

Emperor-Without-Clothes Dept. (cont’d.): Critic savages ‘pretentious’ US literati

Is the United States a nation of “gullible morons” unable to tell the difference between good literature and pretentious nonsense? Do many literary bestsellers remain unread because they are too “intellectually intimidating”, or because they are unreadable?

These are the questions prompted by a row in the literary pages of American newspapers on what constitutes good writing and whether reviewers are deliberately ignoring readable literature in favour of fashionable pretension.

Among the writers attacked are Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, E Annie Proulx and David Guterson.

The row started with the publication in the latest Atlantic Monthly of “A Reader’s Manifesto”, by Brian Myers. Subtitled “An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose”, the essay described much of the canon of modern American literature as over-praised and, in some cases, meaningless. Guardian UK

Unsettling Rapatronic Photographs, once you realize what the subject matter is. [broadly blinked]

William Buckley reframed as a liberal? Boston Globe

Review of Gareth Medway’s Lure of the Sinister: The Unnatural History of Satanism, skeptical [as am I] of this modern ‘epidemic’: “An alternative explanation is that, by the end of the 20th century, we had supped so full of extraordinary horrors that any evil was regarded as possible, and none could be ruled out of court. Contrary to what Mr Medway states, it is not the unknown that modern believers in Satan fear, but the known. They fear that science has removed Divine purpose and meaning from the universe. Better that Satan should exist than that life should be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Telegraph UK

Principia Mathematica III: “Stephen Wolfram says he has created a new kind of science based on simple computer programs rather than equations.” The author of Mathematica now thinks we ought to scrap equation-based modelling of physical processes as inadequate to the task. Since nature apparently uses simple processes to create complexity, we can describe it with simple computer programs.

And, while we’re considering novel computer descriptions of the real world, “an international set of specifications for writing non-verbal human

communications in computer code is being drawn up by a US web

standards group… HumanMarkup Language (HumanML) will allow software engineers

to write abstract, non-verbal human communications in computer

code. This will give computer users the power to communicate their

emotions and gestures to other computer users over the internet… With HumanML, web pages could be used to express meaning to

someone who speaks an entirely different language.” New Scientist

Review of Dreaming of Cockaigne: medieval fantasies of the perfect life by Herman Pleij. Cockaigne “… is the name that people in the middle ages gave to an imagined land filled with all the things that their own lives lacked.

It is the focus of literature in many of the languages of medieval Europe; it is also the subject of a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, part of which is reproduced on the cover of Pleij’s book. Three men lie beneath a tree, one of them fast asleep, the second stretched out on his side and the third gazing beatifically into the air. Round him parade such objects as a pig with a knife in its back and an egg on legs, heading straight for the dreamer. This may have nothing to do with drugs, but the bizarreness of Bruegel’s painting seems easily worthy of them.

” Guardian UK

“I’ll be damned if I let a psychiatrist near my son”, says this Wall Street Journal editor. Shrinking to Excess: “I have a confession to make: I have a mental illness, and it is called Psychobabble Defiance Disorder. Since at this moment I am also afflicted with Ranter’s Syndrome, I intend to have my say on a topic that troubles me. No, let me put that more strongly, a topic that makes me flood the room with rage.”

A Spot of Firm Government “Criticism is becoming a minor offshoot of science fiction, even if it presents the exotic and outlandish only to upbraid such notions as imperialist. ‘We are obsessed with “barbarians”,’ Claude Rawson remarks in this erudite, passionate book”, God, Gulliver and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination 1492-1945. London Review of Books

Interview with UIUC professor of “subjective well-being” New Scientist

Kyoto begins at home: ‘Although the US government refuses to endorse the Kyoto protocol, people could sign up to the treaty at an individual level, a UK environmental scientist suggests.

David Reay of the University of Edinburgh has calculated that simple lifestyle changes and home improvements could go a long way towards achieving one’s “own private Kyoto”. ‘ Nature

Body simulator keeps human kidney alive: “A research team successfully kept a human kidney alive in a machine that simulates a warm human body this weekend, a medical first that could revolutionize organ transplantation.” Nando Times

‘A trendy henna “tattoo” could cause you months of pain and discomfort, and even a lifelong allergy to a common chemical found in dyes, doctors are warning.

Numerous cases of people developing severe skin reactions days or weeks after having a temporary tattoo have been reported.’ New Scientist

Powell Will Not Attend United Nations Meeting on Racism in an official expression of our displeasure about the so-called ‘Zionism-racism equation’. In doing so, the US continues its recent trend of isolating itself from the world community. New York Times And “(r)acism only happens in the little nations”, says Tara Mack in The Guardian.

Sean Penn attacks Hollywood system: “…Penn, 41, who was at the Edinburgh Film Festival for a screening of his new film ‘The Pledge, said anyone was now capable of making a studio movie.

He told reporters he had decided to concentrate on working behind the camera after becoming dismayed at the standard of many of the directors he had worked with.

‘Truly, half the people in this room could work on that level. It takes enormous pressure off to know that if you put two thoughts into your movie, you’re already well up on them. I actually wish I had started sooner’ .” CNN

[Damning himself with faint praise, isn’t he?]

Annals of the Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Rush-hour traffic tied up for hours by I-5 jumper. The 26-year old woman is in critical condition in a Seattle hospital after jumping into the Lake Washington ship canal after a three-hour bridge railing dialogue with police. Interestingly, this Seattle Post-Intelligencer article does not mention that she was apparently persuaded to jump by the irate suggestions of motorists stalled by the standoff. .

This was apparently one of the most notable events while I was away from the media for the past two weeks, say the weblogs. I apologize if it’s already old, boring news to you. “A presidential milestone passed almost unnoticed Friday. For the first time in the history of televised news conferences, a president of the United States made fun of a bald person.

Ribbing the young Texas reporter for his thinning hair fits with a long pattern of Bush making others the butt of his jokes. Sometimes the comments seem playful, such as giving reporters slightly demeaning nicknames. Other times, they have a touch of malice…

Much like this prince taunting the beggars, Bush asserts a privilege to speak condescendingly to commoners in his presence. He puts them down with little jokes that they feel they have no choice but to accept.” Consortium News

“Surfing in Sagittarius — not for the fainthearted! Hubble observations have revealed huge waves sculpted in the

Red Spider Nebula. This warm and windy planetary nebula harbours one

of the hottest stars in the Universe and its powerful stellar winds generate

waves 100 billion kilometres high…” ESAIC

Dialtones (A Telesymphony) — members of the audience register their mobile phone numbers as they enter the venue. The musicians upload new ringtones to participants’ phones, and the entire symphony is played by ringing these phones. The debut is this Sunday in Linz, Austria, and I wish I were there. Downloadable .mp3 samples at this page. [via boing boing]

McDonald’s-Museum Deal Draws Mixed Reaction. Oh, but it’ll be a “nontraditional MacDonald’s.” Washington Post

Mysterious Maddening Buzzing Probed in Southwest Germany: “Hundreds of people in Germany’s southwest are being driven to distraction by a mysterious nocturnal buzzing noise — seriously enough for the local authorities to decide to investigate the matter scientifically.

Many have been complaining of racing pulse and fatigue along with a sense of excitation and uncontrollable muscle quivering during their resulting insomnia… If one were to believe the authors of the German website http://www.raum-und-zeit.de, the source of the mysterious buzzing sound in the ears of afflicted citizens is a US military project named HAARP based in Alaska.” Common Dreams via WebToday

Black Holes “It is a curious thing about the English language, that although it has a vast

vocabulary and rich idiomatic variations, it lacks words for some common and

useful ideas… The presence in English of an unnaturalized foreign word is a fair indicator of a

black hole in the language. The presence of a convenient foreign word very likely

prevents the emergence of an English equivalent.” The Vocabula Review via Abby

“Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory are on a roll.

Last week, an international team of scientists working with one of the lab’s particle accelerators announced

they had made a batch of “doubly strange” particles. Just weeks earlier, another group said it is very close to recreating the conditions of the

earliest universe.” Wired

“The Greens have got it wrong.” Matt Ridley considers Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist to be ‘probably the most

important book on the environment ever written’:

The Big Green organisations will not like it. They will accuse

Lomborg of defending Big Business, no doubt, as they did Julian

Simon. But the charge cannot stick. He has an impeccably Leftish

background and a transparent independence of mind. And he is not

complacent: “By far the majority of indicators show that mankind’s

lot has vastly improved. This does not, however, mean that

everything is good enough”. Telegraph UK

Desert Dust Kills Florida Fish: ‘New research links huge African dust clouds with the “red

tides” that kill millions of fish along the Florida coast each

year.’

Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities: “(T)he artists have gone coy. Their

dealer, who witnesses say watched the

event from a hotel suite, now claims it never happened. Either the balcony

was an elaborate hoax meant to look real, or the inverse is true: it really

happened, and the closer it comes to being found out, the more those

involved would prefer for everyone to think it was a hoax.” New York Times via Abby [Thanks, Abby, watching for interesting links for me in my absence…]

Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities: “(T)he artists have gone coy. Their

dealer, who witnesses say watched the

event from a hotel suite, now claims it never happened. Either the balcony

was an elaborate hoax meant to look real, or the inverse is true: it really

happened, and the closer it comes to being found out, the more those

involved would prefer for everyone to think it was a hoax.” New York Times via Abby [Thanks, Abby, watching for interesting links for me in my absence…]

Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities: “(T)he artists have gone coy. Their

dealer, who witnesses say watched the

event from a hotel suite, now claims it never happened. Either the balcony

was an elaborate hoax meant to look real, or the inverse is true: it really

happened, and the closer it comes to being found out, the more those

involved would prefer for everyone to think it was a hoax.” New York Times via Abby [Thanks, Abby, watching for interesting links for me in my absence…]

This guy has 50 by 30. I’ve got 47 by 49.

As pointed out at MetaFilter, if you used to have repetitive strain disorder, you won’t for long, in the world according to the shrub. American Prospect

Israel Kills Palestinian Activist

Israeli forces firing a pair of missiles with pinpoint accuracy assassinated a senior Palestinian leader today as he sat at his desk in an apartment building inhabited by several Palestinian American families…

“Pinpoint accuracy” indeed:

The U.S.-made missiles, launched from helicopters, knifed through two windows at midday and obliterated the third-floor corner office where Zibri was at work. Neighboring apartments full of Palestinian American families were splattered with shards that sprayed from windows shattered by the blast, but none of their inhabitants was reported injured. Washington Post

Breaking the language barrier: ” ‘Words you can’t say’ will be heard

more than ever on network shows as

cable lowers the bar.”

F**king with those who sit at the other end of the surveillance cameras.

“Only someone completely distrustful of all government would be opposed to what we are doing with surveillance cameras.”

— NYC Police Commissioner Howard Safir, 27 July 1999.

[via Rebecca]

Wow! As Dan Hartung discusses at Lake Effect (he’s fully back, BTW…), the change in Google’s indexing paradigm gives precedence to weblogs. But I never expected that a Google Search on “follow” would show FmH first!

Delhi children make play of the net: “The results were startling, showing how much

children with little or no English and no

computer training at all could achieve.” BBC via RobotWisdom

A special spring ’01 issue of The Kenyon Review celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize. In addition to the dialogue between Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein discussed in this New York Times article, the issue has contributions from Seamus Heaney, Patrick White, Yeats, Beckett, Naguib Mafouz, Czeslaw Milosz… You can download a .pdf of the entire issue.

Cosmic Laws Like Speed of Light Might Be Changing, a Study Finds: “…the basic laws of nature as understood

today may be changing slightly as the

universe ages, a surprising finding that

could rewrite physics textbooks and challenge fundamental assumptions

about the workings of the cosmos…” New York Times via Abby

Tombs Found in Mongolia Might Hold Genghis Khan — “A team searching for Genghis Khan’s elusive grave site said this week it has

discovered a walled burial ground 200 miles northeast of the Mongolian capital that may contain

the 13th century conqueror’s remains along with priceless artifacts.” Yahoo! via Abby