Torture Is Breaking Falun Gong: “Expanding its use of torture and high-pressure indoctrination, China’s Communist Party has gained the upper hand in its protracted battle against the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to government sources and Falun Gong practitioners. As a result, they say, large numbers of people are abandoning the group that presented the party with its most serious challenge since the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square.” Washington Post

Is the addition of ReBlogger (discussion functionality) making FmH slower-to-load on a regular basis (I know I’ve gotten sporadic feedback to that effect)? Looking down at the last week of items, there’s a steady stream of ‘[0]’ comments. I’m of two minds. Take it out, and give up on commenting capacity, or simply leave it in no matter how little use it gets. The ‘[0]’s don’t clutter up the landscape very much, after all…

The Spike Report might just as well be doing an addiction-and-psychopathology special edition today, given these three items:

A physician and reformed righteous eater has coined the term Orthorexia Nervosa ‘as a label for those who push itnerest in normal healthy food to dangerous extremes.’ From a strict psychodiagnostic perspective, I’m not sure the term is necessary, since other psychopathological labels already exist to capture this obsessive compulsive condition well. But I’m glad someone is getting the word out!

And while we’re on the topic of addiction, oh man, I couldn’t believe this blink.

‘Mainline Lady, a new Dutch glossy magazine for female drug addicts, is

perhaps the ultimate in heroin chic.

Stuffed with tips on fashion, sex, beauty and health, the stockintrade of women’s journals the

world over, the new magazine bears a passing resemblance to its more staid sisters.

But Mainline Lady, financed by the Dutch Health Ministry, is no mainstream publication.

Its fashion model is Shauna, a tattooed recovering addict. The sex section recounts recollections of

a junkie prostitute. The beauty rubric counsels on countering druginduced dry skin, and “Dear

Doctor” deals with HIV hazards for syringe users.

Wijnie, a 38-year-old cocaine and heroin addict from Amsterdam, gets a hair and face

makeover. An HIV-positive former convict talks about her experiences in prison.

The magazine is the brainchild of the Mainline foundation, a 10-year-old, non-governmental

organisation that works to improve the health and quality of life of drug users. “Female users are

not just skinny hags. They have lots of interests, and that’s what we wanted to reflect in the

magazine,” says editor-in-chief, Jasperine Schupp.’ The Age

Finally, Spike pointed me toward this.

“Boomers’ Newest Fad: Self-Loathing.

At the Big Five-Oh, the Woodstock Generation Changes Its

Tune.” International Herald Tribune

Hidden Wheat Fields Spark Outrage: “Canadian farmers are upset that they have no way of knowing whether neighboring

fields are full of genetically-modified wheat that could potentially cross-pollinate with their conventional

crops.” Wired

New Yorker Annals of Medicine (link from David Brake): As Good As Dead:

“Confusion about the concept of brain death is not

unusual, even among the transplant professionals,

surgeons, neurologists, and bioethicists who grapple

with it regularly. Brain death is confusing because

it’s an artificial distinction constructed, more than

thirty years ago, on a conceptual foundation that is

unsound. Recently, some physicians have begun to

suggest that brain-dead patients aren’t really dead at

all—that the concept is just the medical profession’s

way of dodging ethical questions about a practice

that saves more than fifteen thousand lives a year.”

In essence, the paradox is this. Most people think it would be unethical to kill a person for their organs, even if they are irreversibly moribund. So they have to die of some other cause before their organs can be harvested. Yet, it is physiologically ideal that the organs still be perfused and oxygenated right up to the time of harvest and transplant, i.e. come from a living body. The solution? The concept of brain death, when it is asserted that, no matter what other functions remain, the neocortex or seat of consciousness is irreversibly defunct.

Critics say this is “conceptual gerrymandering”, in reality a quality-of-life judgment and places us on an ethical slippery slope — would some profound degree of impaired self-awareness, e.g. in extremely brain-injured patients or the senile elderly, qualify? Can someone become “so

devastated that they had lost their claim on

existence”? Persuading the family of a dying person that ‘brain death’ is ‘death’, to obtain their consent for organ donation, is a matter of semantic niceties. But if, as extreme critics insist, someone ‘brain dead’ is not ‘dead’, where does that leave us? Are they ‘alive’? Are they, philosophically, a ‘body’ or a ‘person’?

Even proponents of the ‘brain death’ concept are known to express anxiety that “the public” not know what doctors have come to know about the practice. Critics suggest that, in the interest of ethical explicitness and scientific rigor, we begin to say we are harvesting organs from patients who are “as good as dead.” Then we can start to discuss the overwhelming ethical dilemmas that would bring up.

[I have always carried an organ donor card. Now my head is spinning with degrees of the complexity of my decision I had not even considered, and I am a physician! For the sake of the position my wife or children might have to be in to carry out this wish of mine, I will have to rethink my preferences carefully in light of this article.]

Team plans to clone up to 200 humans: “A

team of reproductive specialists is

expected to announce plans Tuesday

to clone up to 200 human beings.

The announcement will be made at a

cloning conference held by the National

Academy of Sciences in Washington,

Panos Zavos told CNN Monday. Zavos

is a retired professor and head of a

Lexington-based private corporation that

markets infertility products and

technologies.

He said his team is working with 200

couples who are infertile and the aim of

the ‘attempt’ is to help them have a

baby.” Meanwhile, critics warn of cloning risks. CNN Several months ago, scientists reported in Human Genetics that early gene processing in cloned embryos frequently goes haywire, resulting in out-of-control growth or premature death.

London novelist and psychohistorian Iain Sinclair interviewed: “After Lights out for The Territory, a man sent me an X ray of his brain tumour. He’d superimposed it over a map of London and was trying to heal himself by walking out its routes through the city.” Fortean Times And: The long birth of psychohistory: “Welcome to the discipline

of psychohistory, a discipline

that concerns itself with

collective psychology, a field

that, surprisingly, has never

garnered much interest in

both popular culture and the

academic world.” Spark The web presence of The Institute for Psychohistory (“the science of historical motivation combines the insights of psychotherapy with the research methodology of the social sciences

to understand the emotional origin of the social and political behavior of groups and nations, past and present”) is here.

Pills gave Plath suicidal feelings, says an AP wire story describing the contents of some of Ted Hughes’ letters recently made public after their acquisition by the British Library.

According to the published extracts, Hughes (said) “the key factor” in Plath’s death was that she mistakenly swallowed the wrong kind of pills, which gave her suicidal feelings.

Hughes did not name the drug, but wrote that Plath had taken it once before while living in America and had suffered an adverse reaction, the newspaper said.

Don’t get me started again on the vilification of antidepressants as the cause of suicide among the severely and, unfortunately sometimes fatally, depressed, about which I wrote most recently when the manufacturer of paroxetine (Paxil) was successfully sued by the family of a depressed murderer taking that medication. As you know, it is usually more accurate to point the finger at the way in which these medications are prescribed and monitored. In fact, in this case “the anti-depressant was sold under a different brand name in Britain and prescribed for Plath by her doctor, who did not know the effect they would have on her, the Sunday Telegraph said.” More to the point, could Hughes be rationalizing about the fact that Plath ended her life within months of his leaving her? Salon

“If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you are undeniably a left wing wacko, completely out of touch with mainstream thought in this country. The rest of you are normal Americans. Congratulations. And God help us all.” Salon

“George W. Bush Isn’t Stupid…” “To call Bush stupid is to imply that his harsh conservative policy initiatives are being carried out in ignorance. Whereas in truth, Bush is an ideologue. He knows exactly what he is doing.

To call Bush stupid is to engender sympathy for a man whose policies threaten the safety, the prosperity, and the future of the United States of America. The man doesn’t need our sympathy, he needs our opposition.

To call Bush stupid is to create in Bush a Forrest Gump presidency. Many Americans loved Forrest Gump the movie and they loved its false saccharine message that it didn’t matter how smart or stupid one was as long as one had a good heart. Bush is no Forrest Gump.” Liberal Arts Mafia Juicy Bits

Ten People Who Decide What America Reads: a rogue’s gallery? Book [via wood s lot]

Thanks to Higgy for this blink: Overdue book’s return priceless; we’ re talking here about an 1859 first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species borrowed from the Boston Public Library at least 80 years ago. The woman who returned it had found in her great-aunt’s attic. On examination, the book bore signs of efforts to erase evidence of its ownership by the Library. But, as the BPL’s rare books curator lovingly put it, “Paper has such a long memory. It doesn’t forget.” The maximum late fee for overdue books, as of a campaign last year to encourage their return, is $1.25. Boston Mayor Menino offered to waive the fee in this instance. Boston Globe

An Unrepentant Nader Unveils a New Grass-Roots Project Some of the placards outside read: “Right-wing freaks coalition for Nader.” “Back-alley abortionists for Nader.” “Defense contractors for Nader.” “Citizens against tundra.” “Unelectable at any speed.” New York Times

Boston Globe editorial: Bad choice for Peace Corps. Another contemptible Shrub appointment.

Darkest Hour May Be Just Before the Dawn: I.R.A. Agrees to Arms Pact in Move Hailed as Significant. ‘The Irish Republican Army has agreed to a method of destroying its arsenal of weapons that is provable and permanent, the commission responsible for the disarming of paramilitary forces in Northern Ireland said today.

Britain and Ireland termed the statement “significant” and “historic” and said it represented the long-sought breakthrough needed to push forward with the stalled peace accord for the embattled province.’ New York Times

In the Airport Fast Lane, With Your Eyes as a Passport Trial of iris-scanning technology may allow some arriving Heathrow passengers to bypass passport control as soon as this fall. New York Times

He shoulda just let it go and ordered a replacement from FmH…

Japanese Woman Has Baby at 60: “A 60-year-old Japanese woman became the nation’s oldest new mother last month when she gave birth to a healthy baby after undergoing in-vitro fertilization in the United States.” Washington Post

New Look Gore Back From Exile. “You disappear for months, avoiding more cameras than Gary Condit.

And you resurface with a scruffy beard?

No wonder some Democrats don’t want the guy to run again.” Washington Post

Braddock Gaskill: How to anonymously get root access on a quarter million machines overnight: “This analysis describes a means through which a complete list of the estimated 250,000 CodeRed II infected and backdoor compromised hosts can be easily obtained by any individual who has been keeping a web server log of attempts on his machine, by using the backdoors on the machines that have attacked him to obtain the the web logs of the infected attacking IIS web servers to learn of new infected hosts.”

How to Tell a Bad Movie From a Truly Bad Movie: “Bad films wear their ingredients the way soup labels do. To be really bad, a film should be pretentious and sententious. It should seek to change your life. (Anti- genius is 1 percent perspiration and 99 percent aspiration.) It should be, above all, humorless.” A Warner Bros. executive who wishes to remain nameless adds:

Locate the exit nearest you, she says, before screening any film directed by big-name male actors or Brian De Palma, any film that features Robin Williams in a beard, any film scored by John Williams, any film starring Juliette Binoche or Kevin Costner, any film that features Robin Williams clean-shaven, any film directed by a woman and proud of it, any film that features Robin Williams in a yarmulke and any film positively reviewed by anyone associated with National Public Radio.

New York Times

President is taking the month off Some worry about impact on his image. Only on the job six months and he already gets a month off? A month?? Of course, some would say, he’s not really ‘off’; he’ll be briefed daily on what those really in charge are doing in his absence. A Presidential spokesperson says he’ll be making some brief outings “to celebrate some of the values that strengthen America,” making him sound more like a ceremonial chief of state than he is. USA Today and Washington Post While we’re on the issue of executive branch compensations, the White House staff is not a bad palce to work. However, it doesn’t match what an ex-President can make by just signing his name to a piece of paper and hiring a ghostwriter. More Washington Post

It’s OK to get angry. “Prank callers call someone up to bother them. But these people are calling me because they don’t know to dial a ‘1’ before they call outside of their own area code. These people are harassing me with their stupidity.” Profile of New York comedian Matt Besser, who “has built his show aound the idea of irrational anger in our society.” Several years ago, he began getting middle-of-the-night phone calls from people seeking customer support for software they’d been given for free Internet connections. He figured out they were all Manhattanites who had failed to dial a ‘1’ before the area code for the tech support line in Houston and refused to believe him when he told them they had gotten a wrong number. The Internet company refused to insert the ‘1’ in their printed material. “So Besser did what any self-respecting comedian would do: He began fucking with people” … and recording the results. Salon

It’s OK to get angry. “Prank callers call someone up to bother them. But these people are calling me because they don’t know to dial a ‘1’ before they call outside of their own area code. These people are harassing me with their stupidity.” Profile of New York comedian Matt Besser, who “has built his show aound the idea of irrational anger in our society.” Several years ago, he began getting middle-of-the-night phone calls from people seeking customer support for software they’d been given for free Internet connections. He figured out they were all Manhattanites who had failed to dial a ‘1’ before the area code for the tech support line in Houston and refused to believe him when he told them they had gotten a wrong number. The Internet company refused to insert the ‘1’ in their printed material. “So Besser did what any self-respecting comedian would do: He began fucking with people” … and recording the results. Salon

It’s OK to get angry. “Prank callers call someone up to bother them. But these people are calling me because they don’t know to dial a ‘1’ before they call outside of their own area code. These people are harassing me with their stupidity.” Profile of New York comedian Matt Besser, who “has built his show aound the idea of irrational anger in our society.” Several years ago, he began getting middle-of-the-night phone calls from people seeking customer support for software they’d been given for free Internet connections. He figured out they were all Manhattanites who had failed to dial a ‘1’ before the area code for the tech support line in Houston and refused to believe him when he told them they had gotten a wrong number. The Internet company refused to insert the ‘1’ in their printed material. “So Besser did what any self-respecting comedian would do: He began fucking with people” … and recording the results. Salon

“This might be the strongest explosive ever discovered… An accidental explosion in a German physics lab has led to the identification of a superpowerful explosive. The substance – an exotic form of silicon – releases seven times as much energy as TNT, and explodes a million times faster.” New Scientist

“Teachers are more likely to die from an autoimune disease than other professionals, according to US research.” High exposure to large numbers of school children’s viral infections could be the explanation. New Scientist

Taking pictures with your PDA. PDAs and digital cameras were ‘made to be merged.’ The Nando Times

Storm experts make cloud vanish: “Storm experts in the US have made a cloud vanish from the sky for the first time.

They achieved the feat by sprinkling a water-absorbing powder over the cloud, making it disappear from sight and weather station radar screens. They hope the powder will one day dry up deadly hurricanes and tropical storms.” New Scientist

Survivors mark anniversary of Hiroshima bombing: ‘Sunday was just another day for most of the world. But for Fumiko Amano, the 56th anniversary of the day an atomic bomb destroyed her home in Hiroshima rekindled memories of “a kind of hell.” ‘

“The Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) are very concerned that the world is going to forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Nando Times

Low Cholesterol Linked To High Death Rate In Elderly ?Our data accord with previous findings of increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol, and show, for the first time,that long-term persistence of low cholesterol concentration actually increases risk of death.

“These data cast doubt on the scientific justification for lowering cholesterol to very low concentrations (less than 4.65 mmol/L) in elderly people.? UniSci

Film is a veiled look at Scientology

It’s a movie about cults based on fictional characters, says the director. But it’s hard to miss the inspiration behind The Profit.

The main character is a science-fiction writer who founds a religion. Get it?

The leader starts the Church of Scientific Spiritualism. His name: L. Conrad Powers.

The full-length feature film was written and directed by Peter Alexander, a 20-year Scientologist who broke from the church in 1997 and now calls it an elaborate fraud. It was funded in part by Bob Minton, the Church of Scientology’s most vocal critic.

And in three weeks, it will be shown to the public for the first time at an independent theater in none other than Clearwater, the mecca for Scientologists who come there from around the world for church counseling. St. Petersburg Times

It’s OK to get angry. “Prank callers call someone up to bother them. But these people are calling me because they don’t know to dial a ‘1’ before they call outside of their own area code. These people are harassing me with their stupidity.” Profile of New York comedian Matt Besser, who “has built his show aound the idea of irrational anger in our society.” Several years ago, he began getting middle-of-the-night phone calls from people seeking customer support for software they’d been given for free Internet connections. He figured out they were all Manhattanites who had failed to dial a ‘1’ before the area code for the tech support line in Houston and refused to believe him when he told them they had gotten a wrong number. The Internet company refused to insert the ‘1’ in their printed material. “So Besser did what any self-respecting comedian would do: He began fucking with people” … and recording the results. Salon

How to fool the customer service reps into really helping you. Social engineering tip from WOIFM?.

Google’s directory of weblog tools

Talking Heads: “The desire to create talking human heads stems back

at least several hundred years. This

quest presently combines approaches that are

computational, cognitive, and biological, and cuts

across a wide variety of domains and interests. This

Talking Heads website provides a brief overview of

some of these areas and attempts to convey some of

the excitement that has spurred a considerable

amount of international research collaboration.”

SlySearch says it can find your lost property. Looks like they lost some themselves.

The War On Drug Wars – Ashkan Sahihi Gets Normal People High “If the

American government was really concerned about stopping drug abuse,

things like legalization and free needle programs would at least enter

the discussion. In the absence of that, all we have is a silly political tool

to please the Christian right.”

“Look at what we ate!”

Meet the Neanderthals — “Reconstructions of Neanderthal skulls add to

growing evidence that the creatures were not

close relatives of modern humans.” BBC

Tracking Bloggers With Blogdex: “MIT’s Media Lab is experimenting with a tool for indexing the most popular hypertext links across thousands of weblogs

and has ambitious plans to turn it into a resource for the mass media.

Launched last week, Blogdex is like a search-engine spider that visits about 9,000 weblogs a day looking for hypertext

links.” Wired

It extracts the links and ranks them by popularity. The top 10 are published daily on the Blogdex site.

Gallery of ”Misused” Quotation Marks

Lincoln Center Gets New Jazz Director. Another nail in the coffin of Great American Music, in line with Ken Burns’ and Wynton Marsalis’ treatment of the genre as a museum piece. What in the world would an ex-dean of Juilliard and the Boston University School of the Arts (where no jazz programming exists), a classical composer, a former v.p. of G. Schirmer the music publisher, want with the position? Should we worry that he wants to “propel jazz into the center of the culture” and thinks putting up a new building for Lincoln Center in Columbus Circle will do it? New York Times

MTV: Rewinding 20 years of music revolution. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the advent of “the only television phenomenon that had a generation named after it.” CNN It’ll be no surprise to FmH readers that there’s no love lost between me and MTV. In addition to the usual criticism that its three-minute quantization of entertainment doses has driven a generation to attention deficit, critics worry that the indelible grafting of visual imagery onto music has done something profound to our aural senses. It’s true, music as a performance art has always had an element of spectacle, but the violent, debased, usually misogynistic imagery of a TV commercial director has a deeply different effect than watching the performers performing, to which aficionados of live music have for ages been devoted. Finally, in some irrational way, I blame MTV every time I see anyone who isn’t a catcher wearing a backwards baseball cap (only acceptable if it’s an FmH cap…) In related news, MTV was forced to create a new finale for its anniversary gala when keynote singer Mariah Carey cancelled after a psychiatric admission. (BBC) (The oft-cited “emotional exhaustion”, by the way, does not correspond with any psychiatric malady and should be considered an uninformative euphemism at best. Denials from her spokesperson that she attempted to cut her wrists smack of the lady who doth protest too much… )

The annual human rights and violence thematic issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association is out, with a Longitudinal Study of Psychiatric Symptoms, Disability, Mortality, and Emigration Among Bosnian Refugees by Boston physician and human rights activist Dr. Richard Mollica (who long steered the Indochinese Refugee Clinic at the Brighton Marine Hospital in my backyard) and associates. Interesting finding of this study is that repatriation of refugees back to their countries of origin, even after horrendous resettlement camp experiences, does not appear to help alleviate their psychiatric symptomatology. As Mollica comments, the economic rehabilitation of wartorn regions is pouring good money after bad in the face of such an unmet need for society-wide mental health intervention. Links to other JAMA theme issues, including previous annual violence/human rights volumes, are here.

Chuck Taggart at Looka! pointed to this unspeakably tragic instance of medical carelessness. A 6 year-old boy was killed at Westchester Medical Center while undergoing an MRI scan to assess his progress in recovering from a brain tumor, because someone left a metal oxygen tank in the room during the scan! Recall that an MRI scanner is based around a 10-ton electromagnet, and imagine the rest. For God’s sake, the referral form I have to fill out when I refer a patient for an MRI scan goes to prodigious lengths to rule out the presence of even the smallest fragment of metal in the body of the scan subject because of the dangers of such a powerful magnetic field! Nice to know the entire medical center is grieving, and that the state health department wonders “if there were any violations”. I can’t imagine the responsible party having to live with the knowledge that s/he had committed such an outrageous mistake any more than the family can metabolize the senselessness of their little boy’s loss. My heart goes out to all of them. This is not the first instance of gross malfeasance at Westchester Medical Center either. Time for the head honchos to step down, if not be prosecuted for criminally negligent homicide along with the directly guilty party? There are some societies where the head of the institution might offer to take his own life over this… Nando Times

The URL for Follow Me Here is changing, to http://gelwan.com/followme.html. Thank you in advance for changing your bookmarks and spreading the word. The old ones,

http://gelwan.com/blogger.html,

http://world.std.com/~emg/blogger.html, and (most ungainly of all)

http://world.std.com/home/dacha/WWW/emg/public_html/blogger.html,

should still work, but will redirect you to the actual page.

Annals of the Invasion of Privacy (cont’d.): Face Scanners Turn Lens on Selves: ‘A leading maker of facial recognition software is calling for federal regulation of the controversial technology

to avoid misuse.

The technology, which converts facial images into an easily compiled and searched numerical code, has

been criticized by privacy advocates who say the scans amount to facial frisking… The technology first gained public notoriety in January, when Tampa, Florida, police used it to scan the

faces of unsuspecting football fans at the Super Bowl and compare their mugs with terrorists and other

criminals.” Wired

Fightin’ word: “It’s time for the left to reclaim the

term ‘anarchy’… It isn’t violence

that makes the anarchist; it’s the philosophy… A nuanced debate about anarchism would lend

credence to a set of ideas that challenge the status quo.” Mother Jones via wood s lot

Jeremy Rifkin makes an extraordinary observation, and an extraordinary prediction, in The Guardian. This is the age of biology, he says, and it will realign politics around shared goals that could not have been imagined a few years ago. He notes that right-to-life conservatives and left activists are finding common ground in their different, but converging, notions of reverence for life in contrast to a merely utilitarian view driven by the biotech industry and “market libertarians” who make the processes of life “amenable to design, customisation and mass production” and “available to customers as products and services.” He observes- — and I agree — that both groups share an oppositon to the granting of patents on “genes, cells, tissues, organs and organisms”; to GM foods; and to “designer babies”. However, I’m not as confident as he is that progressives are as united, and thus convergent with the right-to-lifers, as he claims they are in opposition to the cloning of embryos for research or even for clinical supply of stem cells, although of course they abhor commercialisation and corporate control of the process. The US does appear to be on the brink of a total ban on human cloning(BBC) for any purpose, as of this writing. But — more fundamentally — will positions with regard to these issues, as he proclaims, totally supplant classical political divisions organized around the industrial-age issues of control of the means of production and distribution of the fruits of labor and profit?

President Bush’s World is Turning. “The Bush administration’s alarming penchant for going it alone in world affairs could have

one unintended and salutary effect: Europe, however reluctantly, is learning how to lead.

And Europe could lead the way to a more balanced global order.” Boston Globe via Common Dreams

Shrub Declares War on Public Information: “…while the Shrub shreds international treaties

which have been in the works for over 30 years, he is also isolating the

U.S. government from his own people.” The Spleen [via Red Rock Eaters]

U.S. rigged highly-publicized ‘successful’ trial of anti-missile defense last week! “A U.S. anti-missile weapon was able to destroy a test warhead in space on July 14 partly because a beacon on the target

signaled its location during much of the flight, defense officials said on Friday.

The officials confirmed a report by Defense Week that the ”hit-to-kill” weapon was guided to the vicinity of the speeding warhead high over the Pacific

Ocean by signals from the electronic beacon in a successful, highly publicized test.” Reuters

U.S. Looking at Spacecraft as Bomber: “The Pentagon is exploring

development of a futuristic “space bomber” that

could destroy targets on the other side of the

world in 30 minutes but could also intensify the

growing international debate over the

militarization of space.” LA Times

Will ‘takeover ads’ take off? New trend in net-advertising even more obtrusive and intrusive.

Hopes for prion disease cure: ‘Antibodies which “cured” mouse cells of scrapie have raised hopes that the human form of mad-cow disease will one day be treatable.’ New Scientist

Widely noted on the net already, here is a blink to The Economist editorial calling for the legalisation of drugs.

A tech-savvy Italian fashion house has shown a prototype shirt with fibers of the shape-memory alloy nitinol interspersed in its fabric. Since nitinol returns to its previous shape when heated slightly, the shirt can be pressed with a hair dryer or even the body heat of wearing it. Even more extraordinarily, the fibers in the sleeves can be programmed to shorten when the temperature crosses a certain threshold, i.e. the shirt can roll its own sleeves up! Don’t expect to buy it any time soon; ‘the prototype shirt cost around £2500 to make, and is available in any colour you like – provided you have a tendency to wear metallic grey, that is. “But it looks distinctly bronze-coloured in some lights,” says (a company spokesperson).’ New Scientist

Childhood antisocial behavior is a weighty social burden, but parenting interventions can make a difference. British Medical Journal

Don’t look now, but is that dog laughing? Science News

Mnemonic Plague: ‘You are microwaving dinner, listening to the radio, finishing a crossword; you are Web-surfing

and talking on the phone. In short, you are “multitasking,” as we so often do these days. It’s a way

of keeping the mind constantly, if fitfully, employed–and in our society, it is becoming the norm.

At the same time, many of us are afflicted with worries about memory loss, as if some mnemonic

plague, including but not limited to Alzheimer’s, were at large. In light of the vast amount of

multitasking that we do, it’s worth asking if multitasking and memory are inversely related. Does

rapid attention switching interfere with the formation of memory in some way? In other words,

does a technique that was refined in computer science play havoc with the human mind?’ The American Prospect

Weapons-grade uranium seized. As Also Not Found in Nature, an exceedingly intelligent weblog (thanks for the link), commented, this may be the first known case of a sufficient amount to make an atomic weapon found available for sale on the black market. One of the world’s waking nightmares. Guardian UK

Requiem for the classical record. In an article that starts out about how the five classical music labels that control more than 80% of world sales have “lost the will to produce”, their output down to a trickle, the last nail in the coffin may be as follows:

Tower Records, the Sacramento-based retail chain, is in

trouble. With 229 stores in 17 countries, a Tower crash would endanger

the entire classical species. Corporate record labels would survive, but

dozens of independents, especially classical and jazz, would be wiped

out.

Tower was founded in 1960 as an alternative outlet, a store that stocked

the kind of discs that were too quaint or quirky for big chains to handle –

the kind that every self-respecting music-lover would pay twice as much to

own. Over time, Tower went global and dressed up in wall-to-wall Britney

Spears. Then it overstretched.

Early this year, Tower demanded deep discounts and 360 days’ credit

from suppliers. Corporate labels agreed, but the minnows refused. Small

labels need cash flow. They cannot wait a year to be paid, any more than

Tower could let customers borrow discs for 12 months before paying up.

So Tower, whose parent group took a $34.4 million (£24.5 million) loss in

the last quarter, dropped the indies. Telegraph UK

Drug users turn to embalming fluid, says the BBC: “…even though it

is highly dangerous and can make them violent

and psychotic.

Research has found that the use of embalming

fluid is becoming increasingly popular among

young people who are searching for new drug

experiences…

‘This is a violent drug, and it will turn into a big

fire if it’s not watched very closely.’

The most common method is to dip a tobacco

or marijuana cigarette in the embalming fluid,

then dry it before smoking it. The cigarettes are sold for about $20 a piece.

They are known by a variety of names,

including ‘wet’, ‘fry’ and ‘illy’.” [Users of this are hereby nominated for the Darwin awards…]

“A South African chemical warfare expert claims the US

used hallucinogenic weapons against Iraq in the Gulf War.

Dr Wouter Basson made the allegation as he testified

about drugs bought by South African defence forces for

possible use in crowd control during the Apartheid era.” Ananova

He claimed film footage showed Iraqi elite troops affected

en masse from the weapons during the Gulf War.

Have a font you want to identify by its appearance? Linotype’s automatic font identifier uses an expert system to enable an untrained user “to identify a typeface by answering a series of simple questions about its key features.” Doesn’t work all the time, though…

Congratulations to Rebecca Blood on her marriage last week.

blog.org from David Brake, UK-based Internet journalist, consultant and virtual community builder, is back “on air” after technical glitches forced a hiatus. And (finally) lake effect is on a limited posting schedule again.

Annals of the Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Teachers offered homicide insurance CNN

“A teenager created his own death site on the

internet – and hanged himself.

Simon Kelly, 18, first searched the web for

information on how to commit suicide, then set

up a page saying how and why he would do it.

It contained heartbreaking messages for his

parents – who came home from holiday

yesterday to be told of Simon’s death by his

older brother Nick.” Supposedly. Hard to say if this is yet another story that’s going to turn out to have been a hoax; after all, this is from The Sun. Going to www.essjaykay.com gives a page-not-found error.

Does this kind of uncertainty about whether someone is having at you speak to a moral issue in relation to the Internet? David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain

Manifesto and web-publisher of JOHO: The Journal of the

Hyperlinked Organization, writes on belief.net that “The World Wide Web reflects the best and

worst of humanity. But its structurally more

moral than any place we know.”

In fact, human interest and motivation is built right

into the architecture of the web. The web is only a

web because the pages are linked, and links are

created to anticipate the interests of readers. This

flies in the face of our real world geography,

where proximity has little to do with our beliefs

and interests and everything to do with the

accidents of location. The web’s geography is

neither alien, nor alienating. In fact, the web

consists of people, groups, and organizations that

for one reason or another would like us to see the

world through their eyes.

A post on MetaFilter with the title ‘Earth springs a leak‘ pointed me to this satellite photo No kidding. Impressive. AP

A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling Up: “The number of head

injuries has increased 10 percent since

1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen

sharply, according to figures compiled by

the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

But given that ridership has declined over

the same period, the rate of head injuries

per active cyclist has increased 51 percent

just as bicycle helmets have become

widespread.” Do cyclists have an inflated sense of security from wearing helmets? Are their natural predators, the motorists, becoming more aggressive or more distractible? Are more people wearing ill-fitting helmets, or wearing them wrong? Is off-road riding, inherently more dangerous, accounting for the injuries? New York Times

A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling Up: “The number of head

injuries has increased 10 percent since

1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen

sharply, according to figures compiled by

the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

But given that ridership has declined over

the same period, the rate of head injuries

per active cyclist has increased 51 percent

just as bicycle helmets have become

widespread.” Do cyclists have an inflated sense of security from wearing helmets? Are their natural predators, the motorists, becoming more aggressive or more distractible? Are more people wearing ill-fitting helmets, or wearing them wrong? Is off-road riding, inherently more dangerous, accounting for the injuries? New York Times

A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling Up: “The number of head

injuries has increased 10 percent since

1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen

sharply, according to figures compiled by

the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

But given that ridership has declined over

the same period, the rate of head injuries

per active cyclist has increased 51 percent

just as bicycle helmets have become

widespread.” Do cyclists have an inflated sense of security from wearing helmets? Are their natural predators, the motorists, becoming more aggressive or more distractible? Are more people wearing ill-fitting helmets, or wearing them wrong? Is off-road riding, inherently more dangerous, accounting for the injuries? New York Times

The Alchemy of OxyContin: From Pain Relief to Drug Addiction: “Part of what makes the spread of OxyContin abuse so difficult to track,

let alone to stop, is that the drug moves not physically but conceptually.

When crack cocaine spread from the big cities on either coast toward the

center of the country, it traveled gradually, along Interstates, city by city.

OxyContin abuse pops up suddenly, in unexpected locations.” One of the privileges of practicing psychiatry is the intimate glimpses of the lives of people more different than one would otherwise often meet. This week, a patient in my hospital with whom I have a candid relationship because I’ve treated him as more than “just an addict” (the way the profession often sees them when they come in for psychiatric admission), offered me a sociological treatise on the recent eruption of oxycontin onto the urban, Boston-area drug scene. Looks to me we are not going to stop this epidemic. A pain patient on Medicaid pays 50 cents for a month’s prescription of the drug, which may be as many as 60 or 100 80-mg tabs. S/he can immediately get $2000-3000 cash for the pills, because the man who buys them will turn around and sell them — within the day — for current street value, which is $1 per mg. That amounts to a $5000 profit on that one prescription, and the dealer is doing similar deals with dozens of recipients each month. As long as the price stays at or near current levels (which is partly driven by public hype, I realize…), the financial incentives make this trade virtually unstoppable.

Nobody inspired to comment on anything here? Take a chance; a blog can be a conversation, at least once in awhile. Click on the icon…

The New Imperative to Establish Rapport. Interesting Safire column this week, on connectedness and SMS-talk. New York Times

NASA Data Point to Mars ‘Bugs,’ Scientist Says: “Did NASA discover

evidence of life on Mars and then misplace it for almost 25 years?” Reuters

Study: W. Nile Virus Underreported:

“For every New Yorker

diagnosed with encephalitis or meningitis

from West Nile virus in the

summer of 1999, there were probably 140 milder infections that

went undetected, scientists have estimated.

The findings, which suggest that 2.6 percent of the metropolitan New

York City population was infected during that outbreak, indicate that

West Nile infections are vastly underreported.”

I actually wondered about this last summer after I came down with a mild, brief flu-like syndrome after a night that I had gotten numerous mosquito bites walking my dog in my neighborhood, which was only several blocks from the then-recent finding of several dead WNV-infected birds.

“As the mosquito season on the U.S. East Coast intensifies and the virus

threatens to spread elsewhere, health officials advised in The Lancet

medical journal that doctors should consider West Nile infection when

diagnosing unexplained summertime fever, especially if it’s

accompanied by headaches, muscle ache and joint pain.

For most people, West Nile virus causes only a flu-like sickness and

many who are exposed don’t get sick at all. It is mostly a concern for

the elderly.”

I called the public health agency monitoring for the virus and offered to have antibody titers drawn, and had a great deal of difficulty getting a return call from a knowledgable person, probably because I was seen as a crackpot (my wife scoffed at me too). But wouldn’t it be important to know, when they were continuing to state publicly that there were no known cases of human infection in the Boston area, that there in fact were? And that the nightly spraying in my neighborhood (itself not benign from a public health standpoint) was not effective? By the time a public health official returned my call, I was told it would no longer be useful to draw my blood because infection is established by comparing acute-phase and convalsecent antibody titers, and we had missed our chance to draw the former. Oh, well, chalk another one up for hypochondria…

And here’s a New York Times Magazine interview with Andrew Spielman, Harvard public health expert on mosquitoes and author of the new book Mosquito, which is somewhere on my summer reading list.

“So you have a double-edged relationship?

Yeah, absolutely. And in a philosophical sense they’re interesting. The

book has a quotation from Havelock Ellis that says something like, If you

would see all of nature gathered up at one point in all her beauty and

her deadliness and her sex, where would you find a more perfect

example than the mosquito? The mosquito is deadly; it’s dangerous. But he

also looked at them as beautiful. And I suppose there’s a sexual

connotation there — that whole thing in his eyes, apparently, translated

into an element of his science; i.e., human sexual behavior. It’s the female,

not the male, that can kill.”

Brain Reacts Differently to Faces Based on Race: “People have been found to remember faces of their own race

better than they remember faces of other races. Now researchers may have uncovered the

changes in the brain that underlie that phenomenon.

Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt and colleagues from Stanford University in California asked 19 men–9

black and 10 white–to look at pictures of faces of people from both races while they monitored

participants’ brain activity with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The investigators found that when the study participants looked at faces matching their own race, a

specific area of the brain ‘lit up’ on the MRI. But when they looked at pictures of faces of another

race, the brain area did not activate to the same degree, according to the report in the August

issue of Nature Neuroscience.” I’ve previously covered other evidence that this brain region, the fusiform gyrus, processes face recognition only and that this data is processed inherently differently from object recognition. For example, one of the clues to the social interaction impairment of autistic patients is that they seem to process the perception of other people as if they were objects. I think what this current study is saying is not that we are neurologically programmed to process the faces of other races differently, but that when our biases and preconceptions dictate that we approach the Other as an object, it is even reflected in basic neurological processes. It would be interesting to see whether distinctions around the degree of objectification of women by various men would also be reflected on fMRI. Reuters

Teenager Kills 48 for Rituals? “A teenage girl in Nigeria has confessed to taking part in the ritual killing of 48

people in the last seven years, media reported on Thursday.

Police arrested the 13-year-old school student last week as a suspect in the killing of a

two-year-old boy in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, the independent Vanguard newspaper

said.

The girl told police she was initiated into a secret cult by a civil servant seven years ago, the paper

said. The man has since been arrested.” Although it seems to have peaked and receded, I’ve been quite troubled by the last decade’s epidemic of psychiatrically distressed patients’ claiming to be victims of cultic ritual abuse here in the US. Law enforcement agencies up to and including the FBI have repeatedly found no forensic evidence of the killings these quite disturbed patients report. (The claimants have explanations for the lack of evidence too, of course. Recall that a sound hypothesis is supposed to be falsifiable as well as verifiable…) While it’s politically incorrect to disbelieve even the most outlandish abuse claims, they have usually seemed to be, at worst psychotic or at best histrionic/hysterical, fabrications or exaggerations, often subconsciously encouraged by credulous mental health professionals, by character-disordered patients, many of them indeed victims of horrible but far more prosaic abuse histories and stuck seeking pathological attention. Now, of course, the veracity of this report from Nigeria, where, Reuters notes, “ritual killing is common in some parts of Africa’s most populous country, where some people believe

witchcraft involving the use of human parts can make them rich”, is hard to assess. If true as pitched, does its plausibility depend upon the cultural belief system of the society? If so, we should look again at the U.S. situation, because there are probably plenty of depraved people out there with equally outlandish belief systems. While it would not affect my dismissal of the bulk of the claims I hear as distorted elaborations or fabrications, I would not, in the last analysis, be surprised to hear incontrovertible proof that there had been a case of multiple ritual sacrifices by a group of deluded, like-minded individuals conspiratorially working together somewhere in the darker hidden recesses of the American psyche. Addendum: Lo and behold, here’s a story of Satanic ritual murder in the Western world. Guardian UK

In Latest Hardy Boys Case, a Search for New Readers:

“The Hardy Boys turn 75 next year, still living at

home and enrolled in Bayport High. They are still

well-scrubbed Boy Scout types from the 1920’s,

with personalities that barely extend beyond the

color of their hair. And their books still sell more

than a million copies a year.

Holding on to the sunset of the Hardy Boys’ adolescence has not been simple. To keep them au courant,

their publisher, Simon & Schuster, now equips them with cell phones, computers and high- tech gadgets,

dispatching them on torn-from-the-headlines adventures involving citywide surveillance systems, corporate

whistle- blowers, extreme sports and online crime.

As with many children’s series, sales of new Hardy Boys books are flagging, publishers and booksellers

say, and some wonder how much longer the formulaic escapades can hold boys’ scarce attention. This

summer, a new team at Simon & Schuster’s children’s book division plans to re-examine its plans for the

Hardy Boys, said Anne Greenberg, executive editor in charge.” New York Times

New York Law May Fan the Fire in Divorces Like Giuliani’s: ‘Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and his wife, Donna Hanover, are enmeshed

in a system that maximizes opportunities for conflict, Professor Schepard

said, but they are also part of the problem. “They set the tone for

everybody else,” he said. “The media culture filters down. If Rudy does it

and Donna does it, then this is the way it’s done.” ‘ New York Times

A Bicycling Mystery: Head Injuries Piling Up: “The number of head

injuries has increased 10 percent since

1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen

sharply, according to figures compiled by

the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

But given that ridership has declined over

the same period, the rate of head injuries

per active cyclist has increased 51 percent

just as bicycle helmets have become

widespread.” Do cyclists have an inflated sense of security from wearing helmets? Are their natural predators, the motorists, becoming more aggressive or more distractible? Are more people wearing ill-fitting helmets, or wearing them wrong? Is off-road riding, inherently more dangerous, accounting for the injuries? New York Times

Congressional Glad Tidings: Arsenic regulators bite back against planned Bush sellout; and patient rights advocates bite back against planned Bush sellout; and lawmakers bite back against planned Bush prohibition of stem cell research. New York Times

Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker: How caffeine created the modern world. Without it, there would have been no Enlightenment and perhaps no Industrial Revolution (“One way to explain the

industrial revolution is as the inevitable

consequence of a world where people suddenly

preferred being jittery to being drunk. “), no Manhattan Project…

The interviewer is interviewed: Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.

AJR: One interesting thing about your questioning

technique is that you often ask your guests “How did you

feel?” when key events happened in their lives.

TG: Here’s the thing. I never went to journalism

school, but I think that journalists are usually taught not

to use words like “feel” when what you’re trying to get at

is something that’s more objective. But part of what I’m

interested in when I’m interviewing somebody is their

inner life. So I’m in that murky territory of feeling and

perception. That’s where I try to go, and that’s why the

word “feeling” gets used a whole lot.

Interesting to hear what other interviewers she admires, and the tidbits about the number of people who have walked out on her — Nancy Reagan, Monica Lewinsky, and Jan Wenner of Rolling Stone. Her description of the way she bludgeoned Wenner over the head with some embarrassing data about him, making for the shortest interview she ever did, at less than three minutes before he bailed out, is what some people cherish about her but what makes me cringe every time I hear her wading right in there. Interviewing is, after all, the bread and butter of psychiatric practice…

American Journalism Review

In other NPR news, you’ll recall my coverage of the bitter breakup between the erstwhile host of the nationally syndicated talk show The Connection, Christopher Lydon, and the Boston NPR station where it originated, WBUR. While Lydon is, personally, abit pompous and impatient, especially in response to call-ins from the public, his interviewing skills and helmsmanship of his talk show were unparallelled and made for the consistently most enlightening and listenable talk radio anywhere, at any time. I felt The Connection was Lydon, and would be dead without him.

I got no charge out of the succession of guest hosts WBUR put on the show while waiting to select a new permanent host, whom they’ve now found in one-time Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Dick Gordon (who?). Boston Globe The guest hosting (or “ghost hosting”, as one Lydon-supporting wag put it) interval showed that even very interesting print journalists make stiff radio hosts; the only interesting substitutes were NPR veterans like Nina Totenberg (who couldn’t do much beside politics), Robert Siegel (who would never be lured away from All Things Considered for this!) and Neal Conan (who was in contention with Gordon). Meanwhile, NPR is considering distributing a new syndicated Lydon show. Would WBUR pick it up? The station manager who fired him says she doesn’t want to talk about it. Boston is lucky, however, to have two NPR stations, so I hope WGBH would take a crack at it.

No More Periods, Period?: Progestin antagonists now being developed “would eliminate menstruation altogether, while still allowing women to get

pregnant,” or “…eliminate both periods and pregnancy.” Wired

In Order to Have Your Advice: ‘ The most clueless people in the world used to be the ones driving down the highway for miles with their turn signal on.

Every time it blinks, it blinks, “I’m clueless, I’m clueless, I’m clueless.” They’re still clueless but they’re not the world’s most clueless anymore.

The most clueless people in the world are those who click on

attachments in their e-mails, sent to them by people they don’t know.

Or even from people they do know.’ Wired

Huge identity theft uncovered: “Key personal data belonging to

hundreds of individuals have been shared in an

Internet chat room, in what one expert says

could become one of the largest identity theft

cases ever. The data include Social Security

numbers, driver’s license numbers, date of birth

and credit card information…” MSNBC

Indonesia’s George W. Bush: Remarkable similarities between Dubya and Sukarnoputri, notes William Saletan: ‘Chatterbox expects Bush and Megawati to get along

famously. White House aides will soon be sent scurrying for

answers to W.’s questions: Can she golf? Does she fish?

How’s her slider? What nickname should POTUS give her?

How about “Megawatt”? Maybe that one would lighten up the

mood in California.’ Slate

Critics decry Bush stand on treaties: ‘ “The administration has, from day one, engaged in a wholesale assault on

international treaties,” says Ivo Daalder, a National Security Council

official under President Clinton.

The moves also have sparked sharp rebukes from other nations. The Bush

administration is “practically standing alone in opposition to agreements

that were broadly reached by just about everyone else,” says Fred

Eckhard, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The administration’s rejection of the biological weapons draft accord

“confirms a pattern of reckless, unilateralist behavior on arms control, as

on environmental and other issues,” an editorial said Thursday in the

London newspaper The Guardian.

Bush’s new foreign policy vision “has largely amounted to trashing

existing agreements without any clear idea of what to put in their place,”

the newspaper said.’ USA Today And “A leading critic of the military’s missile

defense testing program has accused the Pentagon of trying to

silence him and intimidate his employer, the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, by investigating him for disseminating classified documents. ” New York Times

Philip Morris Apologizes for Czech Report Reuters

Woman in Coma 8 Months Gives Birth to

Healthy Baby. A 24-year old Kentucky woman had a severe head injury in a November motor vehicle accident and remains in a vegetative state. Doctors realized after she was admitted to the hospital that she was two weeks pregnant. Labor was induced a week before the fullterm due date to manage the unique high-risk factors. ABC

Leaving children in cars OK to many / 20% of young parents surveyed approve: “At least 120 children — most of them 3 and

younger — have died of heatstroke in parked

cars during the past five years, according to

research sponsored by the National SAFE KIDS

Campaign and General Motors. By 2004, GM

plans to start selling vans and sport utility vehicles

equipped with sensors that will detect a child

breathing in a car on a hot day and honk the horn

to alert passers-by. Eventually, all GM cars will

use the technology.” SF Chronicle

My name is George, and I’m an alcoholic: “Nearing the 15th anniversary of the president’s sobriety, a fellow ex-drinker tells what he sees when he looks at George

W. Bush.”

A drunk hides nothing from another drunk. So when I look at Bush, I don’t see a conservative Republican, a flirter with the Christian right, a Texas oilman,

a son of political royalty. I see a guy like me who never wants to quit, who has an infinite thirst and an infinite appetite for whatever you’ve got and who, if

he could, would drink up the whole room and then tear it apart looking for more. I see a guy barely containing a murderous contempt for anyone who

doesn’t drink like he does; I see a guy who has to pause when answering questions not because there’s nothing in his head but because there’s too much in

his head and most of it is vile and the rest is obscene; no doubt the first thing that pops into his head when asked a question at a press conference is “You

have the face of a barnyard animal” or “I’d like to fuck you silly.” That apparent blankness, as though his brain is having a rolling blackout, is actually a

sign that he’s sorting, looking for an answer that’s both true and bland, something that won’t set off any alarms, something that will satisfy his need to tell the

truth yet not give in to the grandiose and contemptuous impulses so familiar to alcoholics far and wide.

Salon [thanks, David!]

Tourists leap on dead whale, pat sharks — “Australian tourism authorities may change

laws ‘to protect people too stupid to protect themselves’ after sightseers

clambered on a floating dead whale and patted great white sharks eating

the carcass.” CNN [via NextDraft]

Boing Boing‘s playing that old parlour game: “Which three weblogs would you take with you on a desert island?” I read the discussion on this item, obviously because I wanted to see if anyone had listed FmH. (They hadn’t…) But in so doing I was directed to a few stimulating sites I’d never heard of.

Users of compression technology (.zip, .tar etc) usually consider opening an archive benign. However, even without opening any executables, there are ways to do malicious, virus-like damage with file extraction. Most archivers, here reviewed competitively, are affected by the nasty techniques described here, but I was delighted to see that WinZip, my archiver of choice, received an almost perfect safety record on this issue by the Neohapsis reviewers.