New Cautions Over a Plant With a Buzz — “An obscure hallucinogenic herb from Mexico is gaining a toehold in the

world of recreational drugs, prompting law enforcement officials to

increase their scrutiny of the plant, which is legal, and moving health experts to

issue cautions about the drug, whose jarring effects are not fully understood.

The herb, Salvia divinorum, is a type of sage plant that can cause intense

hallucinations, out-of-body experiences and, when taken in higher doses,

unconsciousness and short-term memory loss. Users have also reported sensations

of traveling through time and space, assuming the identities of other people and

even merging with inanimate objects.” New York Times The newest new thing isn’t really new at all. In fact, although I’m a little rusty on my Castaneda, I think it had a role in the Don Juan books. Let’s try a Teoma search for it… 3000 hits.

Compelling argument for not urinating where you swim [via Factovision]

Rhyming Suicide Notes: “The writings of poets who wound up committing suicide contain words and language

patterns that serve as precursors to their eventual fate, researchers say.” Comparing the language patterns of more than a hundred poems of nine poets who ended their own lives — John Berryman, Hart Crane, Sergei Esenin, Adam L. Gordon, Randall Jarrell, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Sylvia Plath, Sarah Teasdale and Anne Sexton — with a similar number from nine demographically matched poets who had not suicided (including, interestingly, the psychiatrically troubled Robert Lowell) revealed that “the suicidal poets gravitated toward words indicating their detachment from other people and preoccupation with themselves,” according to the study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Some of the parameters examined included the ratio of self-reference as compared to references to other people; trends in the frequency of word relating to interpersonal communication; and, of course, words related to death. Wired

India’s ‘Bandit Queen’ MP shot dead. Of mythic folk hero stature, Phoolan Devi’s story reads like an incredible, cinematic, spaghetti Western, and she comes to an appropriately dramatic end. The article does not indicate who might be responsible for her assassination, curiously… CNN

Left-handers at greater risk of bowel problems. Taking my cue from the late great Harvard neurologist Norman Geschwind, I have believed for a long time in a relationship between left-handedness, immune dysfunction, digestive system problems and certain neurobehavioral disorders. Few have found this credible; here’s some empirical data for part of the observed association. Ananova

Is this the rival to Google?

We’ve spent most of the afternoon testing out a new search engine

called Teoma. You may have heard of it but it seems unlikely. Only

this month did it hit the search engine industry’s consciousness (it

first appeared in May apparently), so we suppose its techie sites

like us and then the mainstream.

So what’s the fuss about? Well, it looks as though it may give

Google a run for its money. It’s certainly improves on Google’s

methodology in one sense but it may end up being the ideal search

tool if you know exactly what you are after. The Register

Here’s the Search Engine Showdown review of its strengths and weaknesses. Biggest limitation? No Boolean searching, although it does support the use of ‘”-” (the minus sign) before a search term to exclude it.

A Quick and Dirty Guide to Chaos and Complexity Theory: “three race horses and four hobby horses” [and lots of mixed metaphors…] Skeptics Society

U.S. rejects germ warfare treaty: ‘The United States, again

standing alone against most world opinion, on

Wednesday rejected as unworkable a proposed

international plan for enforcing a 30-year ban

on using germs in warfare. “In our assessment,

the draft protocol would put national security

and confidential business information at risk,”

Washington’s representative, Ambassador

Donald Mahley, said.’

I can’t describe better than this the visceral contempt and rage I feel when I hear these people telling the world what the “United States” can and can’t support as if they are speaking for me or my children, when in fact they make it clear it is the nation’s corporate interests they represent. There’d be an element of shame if I thought the world were so naive as to believe Li’l George had our mandate. MSNBC

Now former President Carter is more ‘politic’ about his feelings, which run more to concern and disappointment. Encouragingly, the meaningless tradition of not criticizing the President while he is out of the country was broken by both Carter and Tom Daschle this week. Rumsfeld and Cheney were not spared Carter’s scorn either. New York Times

The summer ’01 Whole Earth Review, guest-edited by Bruce Sterling and the Viridians (not yet online) has a comprehensive broadside and call to action, “Let the Carbon Wars Begin!”, by Kert Davies, the director of Greenpeace USA’s global warming campaign, that needs to be read. Although it is somewhat fatalistic, the derisive tone is in almost exact resonance with my own feelings. While you’re waiting, here‘s an April 2001 interview with Davies, although without the affect. Stay tuned…

And, not letting up easily, the Guardian gives us this lesson in How to Rule the World:

The leaders of the free world present a glowing example to the

rest of the planet.

Of the eight men meeting in Genoa this week, one seized the

presidency of his country after losing the election.

Another is pursuing a genocidal war in an annexed republic. A

third is facing allegations of corruption. A fourth, the summit’s

host, has been convicted of illegal party financing, bribery and

false accounting, while his righthand man is on trial for

consorting with the mafia.

Needless to say, the major theme of this week’s summit is

“promoting democracy”.

But were the G8 nations governed by angels, they would still be

incapable of promoting global democracy. These eight hungry

men represent just 13% of the world’s population. [thanks to wood s lot]

The Crimson to use labor in 3d world. Thanks for this link and congratulations to NextDraft, which celebrates its 50th anniversary — its 50th issue, that is — today. The Harvard Crimson, which editorializes in favor of a “living wage” for campus workers, is turning to Cambodian typists paid around 40 cents an hour to typeset the 19th century editions of the Crimson as part of its project to create a free internet archive going back to its first edition published in 1873. A group of monks in India is handling the 20th century portion of the project. Boston Globe

Margarine linked to dramatic asthma rise: “Campaigns to reduce heart disease by promoting polyunsaturated

margarines and cooking oils could be partly responsible for the

recent dramatic increase in childhood asthma in the developed

world, say researchers in Australia.

They found that a diet high in polyunsaturated fats more than

doubles a child’s risk of asthma.” New Scientist

Scathing Reviews of Junkets. Even apart from Sony Pictures’ fabrication of critics’ and viewers’ comments, many film viewers have little use for reviews and especially ‘pull quotes’ splayed all over movie ads. Self-conscious film journalists face the daunting task of defending the merit of the industry-sponsored press junkets they go on; even Hollywood itself has turned a scathing eye on the practice recently, with the cynical America’s Sweethearts, which

“drips with cynicism about junkets:

The celebrities depicted in the movie, who are portrayed by Catherine

Zeta-Jones and John Cusack, lie straight-faced and unabashedly to the

press. The journalists, meanwhile, are presented as simpering and feckless,

the sniveling, unctuous lackeys of the harried studio publicity head, played

by Crystal.”

A group of filmgoers are now bringing suit for redress of the fraudulent nature of the favorable reviews that result. LA Times

The amazing disappearing book review section: “In the age of market research, newspaper editors have

decreed that their readers just don’t care about books.” Salon And as literacy dwindles in the post-industrial West, it’s been assumed that the great working class masses had little use for

literature and intellectual pursuits in ages past either. A new book by Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, suggests that wasn’t the case. A century ago “the

working-class pursuit of education was not an accommodation to middle-class values, a capitulation to

bourgeois cultural hegemony. Instead, it represented the return of the repressed in a society where the

slogan ‘knowledge is power’ was passionately embraced by generations of working-class radicals who were

denied both.” The Telegraph (UK)

Uncle Joe loved a good joke A new Top Secret Soviet file has been uncovered, containing cartoons and

doodles done by senior Politburo staff made during their meetings with Stalin. “Not only did Soviet leaders

often doodle during their meetings, they also passed their drawings around the room for each other’s

comments. Stalin joined in the game too.” The Telegraph (UK)

The Tabloid Public Is Not the Majority. Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, writes in the New York Times op-ed page that a relatively small proportion of viewers with an appetite for tabloid journalism — e.g. the Chandra Levy saga — drive the TV news business into mindless infotainment.

Dissident or Don Quixote? “Challenging the HIV theory got virologist Peter H. Duesberg

all but excommunicated from the scientific orthodoxy.

Now he claims that science has got cancer all wrong.” Scientific American

The Irish Independent comments on the racially motivated violence in the North of England this summer, and finds “disturbing and depressing

overtones of the evolution of events in Northern Ireland over

the past three decades.”

Israeli daily Ha’aretz covers the controversy over Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Egyptian-style, where the Mufti of Egypt has ruled that the show is no longer to be broadcast because it offends Islamic anti-gambling principles.

First Tear Gas, Now Bullets: “While many activists feel galvanized by the repressive policing, others question whether the level of

street combat at recent events has gone too far. They fear the violence from small factions of

militants—greatly amplified by the media—plays to police efforts to demonize the movement, while

obscuring its pro-democracy aims.” The Village Voice

Northeast fireball likely a meteor. Anybody see this? CNN

Oregon Democratic Party Backs Court Impeachment: ‘The party’s central committee voted overwhelmingly to begin a campaign it hopes will take the

issue to the U.S. House of Representatives, which has the authority to impeach justices.

The resolution passed Sunday by the 66 Oregon party activists called for the “immediate

investigation of the behavior” of the five justices who voted to stop hand recounts of Florida ballots.’ Reuters

Some Features You May Need on Your Computer

Studies Link Video Games to Aggressive Behavior — “Violent video games may indeed increase aggressive behavior, two Iowa State psychologists conclude after

conducting a comprehensive review of the literature in this hotly debated field.”

Damaged Brains and the Death Penalty: “Almost without exception, Dr. Lewis has

found in evaluating dozens of death-row

inmates, they have damaged brains. Most

were also the victims of vicious batterings

and often sexual abuse as children. Psychotic symptoms, especially

paranoia, are common.

A professor of psychiatry at New York University, Dr. Lewis is among a

handful of researchers who are rethinking the etiology of violence. Her

studies focus on some of the most violent criminals; she has interviewed

150 to 200 murderers, sorting through their medical histories and, as

much as it can be done, their brains.” New York Times

Review: The Holocaust Encyclopedia ed. Walter Laqueur and Judith Tydor Baumel. “The

Nazi genocide of the Jews has been turned into a cheap

moral resource, called on to support just about any cause.” New Statesman

Becoming Literature

James Merrill died in 1995, aged 69, just

before his last book of new poems, A

Scattering of Salts, appeared. …..Since the

1970s he had been one of America’s

best-known serious poets: the formal agility

of his shorter poems had inspired legions of

imitators, and his book-length poem The

Changing Light at Sandover had acquired

a flock of interpreters. Even as Merrill’s

admirers (me, for example) treasured that

last book, new questions arose: When would there be a book of all

the poems? Were there post-Salts poems, and would we see them?

What would his work look like as a whole? Would important facts

about the man emerge? This monumental and timely Collected

answers the first three questions, while Alison Lurie’s brief, frustrating

memoir tries to answer the last. Both books remind us how, and how

often, the poems depict, and reflect on, Merrill’s life.

Boston Review

Monks to Lift Century-Old Curse — ‘Greek monks have agreed to lift a century-old curse on an island village to

“never sleep again” for bringing the wrath of the Ottoman empire on their monastery, the village’s

mayor said on Monday.’

Enzyme Could Lead to Medical Marijuana Alternative: “In findings that could one day offer an alternative to so-called

medical marijuana, scientists have discovered that blocking a particular enzyme in mice allows a

natural marijuana-like compound in the brain to trigger pain-numbing effects comparable to the

drug’s.

…These findings, (the investigator) said, hold out the possibility that a drug that blocks the FAAH enzyme in

humans will allow the natural anandamide system to work as a painkiller–but without making

patients inhale the toxic compounds in marijuana smoke or experience the drug’s mind-altering

effects.” Reuters via Yahoo!

Miniature Supernova Created in Lab: “A form of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate, which first was created in a laboratory in 1995,

has been tinkered with until it caused miniature explosions that resemble exploding stars called

supernovae, according to a new study.” Space.com

Bonn Climate Deal May Not Bring Down Emissions: “Backslapping

and cheers greeted Monday’s rescue of

the Kyoto accord on fighting global

warming but the pact, 10 years in the making, may not achieve its

stated goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions this decade.

According to calculations by the environmental lobby group

Greenpeace, the “loopholes” agreed to at the U.N. talks in Bonn

and at the original treaty discussions in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, may

mean emissions even go up instead of down.” Reuters

And: “the administration would be hard-pressed to

find a better alternative. While Kyoto is often maligned by the U.S. media —

the New York Times routinely calls it “flawed” — it is by many measures a

sweetheart deal for the U.S.” Tompaine.com

Rage Against the Machines:

In some ways, it is easy — and tempting — to write off the neo-Luddites as sad-sack ’60s refugees, aging

hippies who pine away for a romantic, preindustrial idyll that never existed in the first place or, to the extent

it did, was actually characterized by large-scale human deprivation. But in the wake of demonstrations in

Seattle over the World Trade Organization and, more recently, in Quebec over the Free Trade Agreement of

the Americas, it is clear the neo-Luddite mentality is not only widespread, but a powerful motivating force in

attacks on free trade and technological innovation.

Those of us who believe that markets and technology offer the best hope for reducing human poverty and

misery — and for increasing human opportunity and flourishing — would do well to examine the basic

premises of the neo-Luddite movement and engage its underlying fallacies. Because it drew together so

many of the intellectual architects of the neo-Luddite movement, the IFG Teach-In provides a perfect

occasion for such an exercise.

Smug, superior Reason commentator succeeds in showing us how uncritically naive are his own boundless optimism and kneejerk opposition to government regulation. Actually tries to ridicule neo-Luddite concerns about new technology by citing the invention of fire, bows and arrows, crop cultivation, domestication of animals, the invention of writing…

Mysterious, Destructive Power Surge at WJKM Radio in Hartsville, Tennessee near allegedly undeveloped Hartsville TVA nuclear reactor. Earthfiles

God’s Many Unique Visitors ‘… the online masses are flocking to a homespun site run by Reata Strickland, a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Sunday

school teacher who took a short, inspirational, anonymously written “Interview with God,” and set it to Shockwave

animation.’ Wired

God’s Many Unique Visitors ‘… the online masses are flocking to a homespun site run by Reata Strickland, a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Sunday

school teacher who took a short, inspirational, anonymously written “Interview with God,” and set it to Shockwave

animation.’ Wired

God’s Many Unique Visitors ‘… the online masses are flocking to a homespun site run by Reata Strickland, a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Sunday

school teacher who took a short, inspirational, anonymously written “Interview with God,” and set it to Shockwave

animation.’ Wired

Coke sued over death squad claims: “Trade union leaders in the United States have

said they are suing the soft-drinks company

Coca-Cola for allegedly hiring right-wing death

squads to terrorise workers at its Colombian

bottling plant.” BBC

George Harrison ‘knows he will die soon’, his producer is quoted as saying. MSNBC

“We decided that death in the desert is wrong and we are going to do something about it…” A cup of mercy for the illegals — After the May deaths from dehydration of 14 border crossers from Mexico in the Arizona desert, a group of Tucson volunteers has formed an alliance called Humane Borders and begun to take water to those parched in the desert. Since 1998, the article says, there have been 1,118 documented deaths during Mexican border crossings. The Guardian UK

The wild boy who became a martyr: The Observer pulls together a portrait of Carlo Giuliani, 23-year-old ‘punk anarchist’ killed by police in Genoa. “The Reuters photographs of his death are likely to become icons for the militant Left, who see the killing as a state execution. A reconstruction of Carlo’s final moments,

however, reveals he was killed by a terrified youth three years his junior.”

‘As Frank Rich wrote recently in the New York Times: “He is a man who does not know how much he does not know, and seems

in no rush to find out.” If he is treading down policy paths that infuriate and antagonise the rest of the world, he is probably the last person to find out, or

even care.’ Is This the Most Dangerous Man in the World?: “The last time the wider world was quite this appalled by the actions and policy agenda of a new American president, international relations were buried

deep in the Manichean logic of the Cold War, the postwar consensus on the welfare state was about to blow apart and market-driven greed, that defining

characteristic of the Eighties, was well on its way to being considered good.” Independent UK

Indonesian Assembly Defies Wahid, Plans Ouster. The fourth most populous nation in the world heads for conflagration as the President dissolves the legislature and the legislature demands his appearance for an impeachment hearing. Where will the military throw its support, as Jakarta protesters assemble in the streets? Reuters via Yahoo!

Nuclear Event Detectors: ‘MCE and Matra BAe Dynamics

are collaborating in the

promotion of a family of

Nuclear Event Detectors that

can not only detect low level

nuclear events, but also

provide switching to remove

power from the electronics and

a “fail safe” mechanism to avoid

drop out during normal

operation.’ Be the first on your block to know when to ‘duck and cover’.

Debt to Society: MotherJones‘ special report on the real costs of our incarceration society. How did the ‘Land of the Free’ become the world’s leading jailer? Are we, ironically, making the streets less safe by locking people up? What are the social costs of the loss to hundreds of thousands of American children with a parent behind bars? What are the moral costs to society and our souls? What are the alternatives?

Amelia Earhart Plane Possibly Spotted By Satellite ‘ “There does appear to be an object on the edge of the reef, off

the western end of the island. It’s in a particularly suspicious

location…” There is a rust-colored

tint in satellite imagery pixels at nearly the spot where

fishermen visiting that area long ago reported seeing a

wrecked airplane.

…(A) 12-year investigation, dubbed The Earhart Project,

offers compelling new evidence which suggests that the

ill-fated flight reached Nikumaroro, formerly Gardner Island.

This uninhabited coral atoll is in the Phoenix Group, now part

of the Republic of Kiribati. Islands of Kiribati are low-lying

coral atolls built on a submerged volcanic chain and encircled

by reefs.

Five earlier expeditions to the remote island have recovered

artifacts, suspected of being from the lost flight…’ Space.com

GreaterGood.com closes down GreaterGood.com, which operated Web sites to fight world

hunger and rain-forest destruction, reportedly shut down this week.

The company closed Tuesday after its board of directors decided not to invest more money, the Seattle

Post-Intelligencer reported Saturday.

GreaterGood.com’s most popular sites included The Hunger Site and The Rain Forest Site. Nando Times

God’s Many Unique Visitors ‘… the online masses are flocking to a homespun site run by Reata Strickland, a Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Sunday

school teacher who took a short, inspirational, anonymously written “Interview with God,” and set it to Shockwave

animation.’ Wired

Study: Abe Lincoln’s Anti-Depressant Made Him Mad.

‘A few months into

his presidency, Abraham Lincoln stopped

taking the little blue pills used to treat his

melancholia because they made him

“cross,” and scientists said on Tuesday it

was good that he did.

Those pills contained enough mercury to

kill him, said retired physician and

medical historian Norbert Hirschhorn,

who authored a study on the subject.

“If Lincoln hadn’t recognized that the little blue pill he took made

him ‘cross,’ and stopped the medication, his steady hand at the helm

through the Civil War might have been considerably less steady,” he

wrote in the summer issue of the journal Perspectives in Biology and

Medicine.’ [thanks, Abby]

Recall that to be ‘mad as a hatter’ refers to mercury and arsenic poisoning as well, which hatters contracted because of the pesticides used to prevent insect damage in the wool and cotton they handled. Interestingly, a Google search on (arsenic AND “mad hatter”) comes up with as many hits about Arsenic and Old Lace as it does to environmental toxicology; it seems my favorite screwball comedy is often mentioned in the same breath as the “mad hatter”. Recall, also, that concerns about arsenic poisoning are back in the news because, as I’ve previously blinked, chromated copper arsenate leaches into playground soil from the pressure-treated lumber used to build kids’ climbing structures.

I’m treating a man with a psychiatric disturbance and arachnodactyly (Marfan’s Syndrome) right now (although, of course, not with mercurics!); Lincoln had Marfan’s. I could only find eleven citations in the medical literature discussing the question of whether there is an association between Marfan’s syndrome and mental health symptoms. (Because Marfan’s is associated with cardiac anomalies, there may sometimes be CNS insults due to circulatory problems that might be mistaken for a primary psychiatric problem.)

For only the most rabid ‘Followers’: added items at the FmH store, courtesy of CafePress.com. Now including baseball caps! As with all the other merchandise, these feature the discreet little FmH logo and signify your membership in an elite little secret cabal… I don’t make any profit on these, BTW. They’re sold at cost, just to get the word (actually, it’s a wordless logo) out there. So far, I’m the only one who’s ever purchased any FmH swag; I’m very pleased with my coffee mug (I recommend the larger size), my teeshirt (grey) and, not least, my baldhead mousepad. Gonna rush right out and order myself a baseball cap when I next deserve a present… The rumor around cafepress is that they’re going to start offering the teeshirts etc. in colors

R.I.P. Mimi Fariña; folksinger who founded Bread & Roses dies at 56. She had a sweeter voice than sister Joan…

Refrain:

Well, if somehow you could pack up your sorrows,

And give them all to me.

You would lose them, I know how to use them,

Give them all to me.

(Refrain)

No use cryin’, talking to a stranger,

Namin’ the sorrows you’ve seen;

Oh, ’cause there are too many bad times,

Too many sad times,

Nobody knows what you mean.

{Refrain}

No use ramblin’ walkin’ in the shadows,

Trailin’ a wanderin’ star.

No one beside you, no one to hide you,

An’ nobody knows where you are.

{Refrain}

No use roamin’, walking by the roadside,

Seekin’ a satisfied mind.

Ah, ’cause there are too many highways,

Too many byways,

Nobody’s walkin’ behind.

{Refrain}

You would lose them, I know how to use them,

Give them all to me.

Bush Is No Reagan; He’s a Harding — ‘Conservatives are claiming the new administration of George W. Bush

is less like his father’s than that of Ronald Reagan. But a close reading of

history suggests it’s more like that of Warren G. Harding.

It’s not just that Harding was an affable but not too bright politician

chosen for office by “fifteen men in a smoke filled room,” or that his

campaign slogan, “Back to normalcy,” reflected his tendency to mangle

the English language (he’d meant to say, “normality”).

Harding became the 1920 Republican standard-bearer after the

front-runners deadlocked at an oil dominated party convention in

Chicago. He won the backing of big business based on his pledge to cut

the tax rate for the top brackets (what Al Gore would call, “the top one

percent”). As President, Harding fulfilled this pledge, even though

Americans making below $66,000 saw no tax-relief.

Harding also filled his cabinet with a combination of old cronies and top

industry officials. Muckraker H.L. Mencken described Harding’s cabinet

as “three highly intelligent men of self-interest, six jackasses and one

common crook.” ‘ AlterNet

I’m trying out ReBlogger; the icon will allow you to post a comment to an item here, and the number in brackets shows how many comments have been posted to that item. Thanks in advance for comments on anything or everything, agreeable or contentious; fire away! And thanks to everyone who wrote with suggestions for a discussion system. Please let me know if FmH’s load speed (sluggish as it is already!) seems to take a hit now that ReBlogger’s in place.

The raging left is alive in Genoa, and one of its number is dead: ” Italian police shot

dead an anti-globalization demonstrator

on Friday, bleakly sweeping aside the

worthy words of world leaders on the

opening day of a Group of Eight summit.” The version I heard is that he was ready to throw the fire extinguisher he was brandishing through the window of a police van, and was shot through the head at close range. We may be looking at an eruption of rage tomorrow that will make it impossible for attendees at the G8 summit inside the barricades to remain oblivious to what is going on in the streets around them, as they did today. Streetfighting may return to the U.S. for the IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington D.C. Sept. 28-Oct. 4. There’s beginning to be a smell in the air like Chicago ’68…

Good Morning, Colombia. Arianna Huffington: “For more than a year, critics of our government’s drug war aid package to Colombia (now

hovering at $2 billion) have been warning of the mission creep that threatens to embed us

ever deeper in that country’s 4-decade-old civil war.

Well, the slippery slope just got greased.” Buried in the House foreign operations appropriation bill is a provision that would remove restrictions on U.S. funding of mercenaries for the Colombian “counterdrug” war. Common Dreams

Psychiatrist claims sunlight link to schizophrenia: “An Australian psychiatrist claims lack of sunlight on the skin

of pregnant women may cause their babies to be

schizophrenic.

Dr John McGrath says it explains a jump in the European

and North American incidence of ‘schizophrenia births’

between February and April each year.” Ananova

‘Gut Feeling’ May Be Connected to Past Experience. This is one of the least surprising psychological research findgs I’ve ever read. Reuters via Yahoo!

Secret’s in the Gray Matter. MRI brain scans of subjects with family histories of early-onset Alzheimer’s dementia and who themselves had gene markers predictive of the disease (all of whom went on to develop the disease over eight-year followup) have showed structural deterioration of the medial temporal lobe as much as three years before symptomatic manifestations of the disease developed. It is possible that the medications we now use to retard the progression of symptoms (after the disease appears) might be useful in preventing or delaying its initial emergence in cases that could be identified this early. Wired

U.S. Suspends Human Research at Johns Hopkins After a Death. This draconian step, effectively shutting down federally financed medical research involving human subjects (at the university that receives the most federal research funds bar none) is virtually unprecedented. In June, a healthy volunteer died in an asthma study after inhaling a non-FDA-approved drug; federal overseers found Hopkins negligent with respect to precautions to protect subjects in the study. The FDA has been ambivalent about whether it ought to review and approve applications to do basic research with human subjects, and used to discourage academics who inquired. Now the FDA says scientists should seek its approval for any study, such as the one in question, involving new or unusual uses of drugs, but it does not enforce compliance, and the human investigations board at Johns Hopkins was free to approve the study without FDA approval. Officials of the university reacted with outrage to the funding suspension despite the fact that a university committee investigating the death found that the researcher had ignored or missed reports in the medical literature indicating that the drug had the potential to cause severe lung injury of the type that killed the research subject. New York Times

The Secret Agents of Capitalism Are All Around Us. You may soon be surrounded by disingenuous paid shills hired to subtly impart their sponsor’s message to those around them by a maketing firm that claims to have perfected undercover marketing. ”In order for a product to really succeed right

now, the product has to have credibility. People have to see it, they

have to understand it in a real way. The only way for them to understand it in a

real way is for it to be in their world. And that’s what we do. We put it in their

life.” New York Times

abuddhas memes has moved.

Are you a noomeejahoor?

Coasts and Islands Facing Era of Strong Hurricanes. New analysis provides firmest evidence yet that cycles in ocean and atmospheric conditions that suppressed big storms from 1971 to 1994 have shifted into a storm-spawning state that may last from 10 to 40 years. The researcher cautions that the analysis on which this is based is speculative. However, the consequences of unpreparedness for this possibility are dire, as the seaboard is much more developed than during the ’20’s-’60’s, the last putative peak in the cycle. “The prospect of more exceptionally strong storms is particularly troubling

because their destructive power rises enormously for even a small increase in

wind speed. For example… winds of 130 m.p.h. have

almost double the punch of winds of 100 m.p.h.” New York Times In a case of what New Scientist magazine famously calls “nominative determinism”, one of the co-authors of the study is named Christopher Landsea.

Ibogaine is back in the news, with recurring claims that it can stop an addict’s cravings and allow a trouble-free withdrawal from addiction. A powerful hallucinogen, it appears to have a cognitive effect as well, prompting an addict’s transformative reappraisal of their relationship to their drugs and their habits. People report actually taking a day-and-a-half trip and waking up afterward to realize their addiction is literally just gone. Would love to see someone sufficiently interested to bankroll reputable clinical trials of this, but the drug addict community is not much of a constituency for either public or private funding sources, and NIDA and the FDA appear scared off by the drug’s toxicity.

The Battle for Genoa. 120,000 souls of all persuasions against 1800 police in full metal jacket in “Europe’s Seattle.”

Yes, there will be violence and yes, the mass media will focus on it. The world

leaders will publicly condemn the head-bangers, but gratefully use them as an excuse to

ignore the arguments of the rest.

What should seriously concern the G8 is not so much the violence, the numbers in the

street or even that they themselves look like idiots hiding behind the barricades, but that the

deep roots of a genuine new version of internationalism are growing. This is demonizing the

global institutions and there’s not much governments can do. Common Dreams

The Webby Awards: 2001 Winners. Congratulations to the winners. Unfortunately, Dancing Paul and LiveJournal beat out Blogger in the “personal web site” category.

In animal behavior, the handicap principle, codified by Israeli zoologist Amotz Zahavi after careful observation of a social bird of the desert called the babbler, explains the counterintuitive observation that prey often ostentatiously advertise their presence to the predator stalking them, rather than keeping a low profile. Zahavi says this will dissuade the predator from wasting energy on a quarry that seems to have boundless energy to put up a good chase. Animals “signal courage by courting danger”, announcing their “readiness to entertain adversity”; they even compete in ostentation and prevent animals inferior in the hierarchy from out-babbling them. The principle may be a key to overcoming evolutionary theory’s failure to date to develop a satisfactory explanation of animal (and human) altruism. [It also strikes me as particularly apt that this principle would be formulated by an Israeli scientist!] National Post

Maybe It’s Your Platitude: Can we convey anything about art without platitudinous superlatives? Can we convey anything with them?? Washington Post

“It’s as if Hitler and Michelangelo collaborated to make a masterpiece.” Cross of Shame. “In 1981 Thomas Hoving wrote King of the Confessors, a rippling narrative of his pursuit and purchase of the Bury St. Edmunds Cross, a masterpiece of medieval sculpture for the

Cloisters Museum in upper Manhattan. Now, having uncovered new information, Hoving has rewritten his original book to reveal the controversial and disturbing truths about the history

of the cross. Hoving is no stranger to controversy. The former enfant terrible of the New York museum world, Hoving became head curator of the Cloisters in 1965 at the age of 34. By 1967 he

became the youngest director in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is today a world-renowned expert on the international art market.

“…I wrote the original book in part,” he says, “because I wanted to show people the

real art world, a world of backstabbers, sharks and con artists–not the salon world of tea-drinking esthetes.” What he didn’t realize at the time was that the Bury St. Edmunds Cross

was controversial on so many levels. More than a pretty pawn in the international chess match played between wealthy and occasionally unscrupulous acquisitors, it was a object full

of hate. Beneath its pious beauty, it is inscribed with fiery anti-Semitic invective…

Today, the cross remains in the possession of the Cloisters, which, according to Hoving, is aware of its anti-Semitic inscription but refuses to acknowledge it. ” Forbes

Two—Make That Three—Cheers for the Chain Bookstores. The author has had enough of the romanticization of the warm fuzzy independent bookstore.

In a syrupy scene in You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan lovingly

introduces one of her child customers to Maud Hart Lovelace’s

classic Betsy-Tacy series. Now, I am a Betsy-Tacy fan myself, as

are my children, and only a few weeks before seeing the movie I

had gone searching for some of the later books in the series. My

first stop was Books of Wonder, the famous Manhattan children’s

bookshop on which You’ve Got Mail’s independent appears to

have been based. The clerk there had never heard of the series,

and when she looked it up in Books in Print, she proceeded to

confuse it with another venerable series, Carolyn Haywood’s

Betsy books. The store, in any case, didn’t carry them. At Barnes

& Noble, on the other hand, I hit pay dirt on the first try: after only

a moment’s thought, the young clerk led me right to the shelf

where almost every volume in the series was stocked. Borders,

too, I soon ascertained, carried the Betsy-Tacy books. The Atlantic

Surly? They Jest. Rock stars have always glowered and sulked when photographed. Here are some theories on how this happened. Washington Post

“A temporary brain disturbance is all you need…” ‘According to Canadian scientist Michael Persinger, believing you have been

abducted by aliens or found God is the result of a “temporary brain

disturbance”.

Persinger has been tinkering with the heads of volunteers, disturbing the

electrical activity in the grey matter with magnetic fields… Persinger’s experiments could undermine thousands of years of silly love

songs.’ Spark

Artists of Resistance: “The roster of artists with social consciences is endless. I point to a few to represent

so many, because their work, their commitment, encourages and sustains me, and I

want it to encourage and sustain others.” –Howard Zinn The Progressive

A finger on the crime scene: review of Suspect Identities: a history of fingerprinting and criminal identification. “For almost a century, American courts have thought about fingerprints the way children visualize snowflakes: No two are exactly

alike. So most judges, jurors, and lawyers came to trust that fingerprints left at crime scenes match the right suspects to their

misdeeds. But in his new history of criminal identification, Simon Cole questions whether fingerprinting deserves its hallowed

reputation.” Christian Science Monitor

Thoughts and words on ones and zeroes: “Are we affecting our creative capabilities when we use

all this increasingly complex machinery? And does digital technology help

us generate ideas, or merely execute them?” Spark

In Labyrinth of Desire, Rosemary Sullivan asks why

“so many intelligent, accomplished women fall

into obsessive infatuation with men who turn out to

be shallow cads.”

The Bug Stops Here: “Bacterial scourges that plagued humanity are coming back, and our

food is partly to blame. Few people would realise that a lot of the food we eat – chicken, pork and

even some beef – comes from animals that have been pumped full of

antibiotics for most of their lives. Modern animal farming relies on repeated

and large-scale use of antibiotics as growth promoters. And yet, there is little

evidence they have any beneficial effect.

In fact, the evidence is mounting that the practice actually breeds bacteria

harmful to humans, and such wholesale use of antibiotics increases

bacteria’s resistance against them. Thus creating a nightmare scenario for

doctors: people with serious infections that don’t respond to antibiotics.”

ConnectNet.org: enter your zipcode and this site spits out a list of computer centers with public internet access nearby. Thirty sites came up when I plugged my zipcode in. Obvious question: how are the ‘net-less going to access this information in the first place? I know, I know, you can do a public service by printing out the data and disseminating it locally where it’s likely to do good.

Very excited to read the news, via Metaforage, that Laurie Anderson is releasing a new recording in August; and look at the list of collaborators! I think I’m sorry, however, that it is not the studio version of the music from her touring production “Songs and Stories from Moby Dick” that it was originally intended to be.

Rebecca Blood pointed me to The Mirror Project, “a growing community of

like-minded individuals who have snapped their

likenesses in a variety of reflective surfaces.

You are more than welcome to join us in our

reckless pursuit of what some consider

narcissism.”

Micro$oft has announced they’re about to close down Listbot. The FmH mailing list has not seeen much traffic anyway. So I’m removing references to it. The icon will now just direct your comment to me via email. I tried and didn’t like BlogVoices, mostly because its slow server made FmH grind to a halt sometimes while the page was loading. If you know of another way to graft a comment/discussion function onto a Blogger weblog, please let me know.

Czech Study for Philip Morris found smokers’ early deaths helped finances; the company cites the cost-savings from the accelerated demise of smokers as a ‘positive benefit’ of smoking to society! CNN

Insidious: Industry Spoof on Lorax: “From Truax, a children’s book by Terri Birkett, modeled on Dr. Seuss’s Lorax and funded by the Hardwood Forest Foundation and the

National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association. Four hundred thousand copies of Truax have been distributed to elementary schools

nationwide.” Probably only meaningful to you if you’re familiar with The Lorax.

picture of internet: “A bot is out on the internet every half hour and looks for images which it puts together to a giantic picture – the picture of internet. This is samples from all over the internet. The bot surfs pretty strange and

takes strange ways to spread out its ways as much as possible. Sometimes it follow links that it doesn’t should visit… but that doesn’t happen too often.” [via MetaFilter]

Deconstructing the Dead: Skeptic Michael Shermer, in Scientific American: ” A well-known illusion… is the alleged ability of mediums to talk to the

dead. The hottest medium today is former ballroom-dance instructor John Edward, star of the

cable television series Crossing Over and author of the New York Times best-selling book One

Last Time. His show is so popular that he is about to be syndicated nationally on many

broadcast stations.

How does Edward appear to talk to the dead? What he does seems indistinguishable from

tricks practiced by magicians. He starts by selecting a section of the studio audience, saying

something like “I’m getting a George over here. George could be someone who passed over,

he could be someone here, he could be someone you know,” and so on. Of course, such generalizations lead to a “hit.” Once

he has targeted his subject, the “reading” begins, seemingly using three techniques…

Is this art? The Stuckists don’t think so.

A slovenly, unmade bed befouled with condoms and

tampons; a dead shark preserved in formaldehyde; human

excrement, fastidiously canned and packaged. Would you

call this art?

If the answer is a resounding no, you’re a Stuckist. You’re

stuck, outdated, fuddy-duddy and loving it. You crave the

good old days when a picture spoke a thousand words

and you could read everyone of them.

Painting was pronounced dead in the 1970s, sacrificed on

the altar of conceptualism, the art of ideas where even a butchered cow can belong in a

gallery.

Stuckists want to put painting back on its pedestal, they want to see brush strokes on

canvas and recognisable objects. Down, they say, with all the detached, “clever” stuff that

these days passes as art.

“You look at a Stuckist picture and you can see what it is,” says the Stuckist movement’s

co-founder, Charles Thomson, speaking from London, neatly resolving centuries of polemic

into a pithy definition of art. What you see is what you get. The Stuckists have devotees

around the world.

The movement was formed two years ago in reaction to the Brit-Art phenomenom

championed by British advertising tycoon and private collector Charles Saatchi, the man

behind the controversial Sensation exhibition, who famously paid £150,000 for a

soiled bed.

…Tracey Emin’s naughty rumpled bed, Damien Hirst’s

nasty dead shark and grisly cut-up cow, Chris Ofili’s profane painting of the Virgin Mary

decorated with elephant dung. In fact (and in frustration), it was Emin who gave the

Stuckists their name, denouncing her former lover, painter Billy Childish as “stuck, stuck,

stuck”.

Childish and Thomson embraced the insult, founded the Stuckists, posted a 20-point

manifesto on the web, and encouraged other painters around the world to take up the

cause.

They redubbed Brit-Art “Brit-Shit” and claimed 19th-century rebels such as Vincent Van Gogh

and Edvard Munch as honorary members. (Does Van Gogh’s suffering have no end?)

The Age

Cheney Calls on Navy to Pay Bill to Light His Home. His official residence, on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, racks up $186,000 annually in electricity bills! New York Times

Lara Riscol writes on AlterNet: Bush Versus Smart Sex — ‘Like a pimply teenager smoking his first pack of Marlboros despite its

warning label, President Bush has soundly rejected the U.S. Surgeon

General’s latest advice.

Just one week after Dr. David Satcher issued the Call to Action to

Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior, which aims

“to begin a mature, thoughtful and respectful discussion nationwide

about sexuality,” Bush’s Health and Human Services Secretary

announced $17.1 million in new abstinence-only funding.

By ignoring America’s top doc, Bush must have impressed his

conservative buddies. What a rebel! Ignorance of health options is so

cool. Comprehensive sex education is, like, so five minutes ago.’

Mental illness ‘at the root of jazz’? ‘The mental health problems of one musician

could have led to the creation of jazz.

Without his schizophrenia, Charles “Buddy”

Bolden – the man credited by some with

starting off the jazz movement – might never

have started improvisation, psychiatrists have

heard.’ BBC

Exposure to Suicide May Deter Suicidal Behavior; runs contrary to our assumptions about the significance of epidemics of ‘copycat’ suicides after a friend, family member or public celebrity has taken their life.

Levels of ‘Anti-Pain’ Brain Chemicals Vary Among People: “For the first time, researchers have examined in real time how different people feel pain in the brain. By monitoring healthy humans

experiencing sustained pain, scientists at the University of Michigan got to watch the brain’s painkiller system in action and determined that

not all brains handle pain equally well.” One of the most vexing problems I’ve faced as a doctor is the difficulty assessing pain complaints, especially when dealing with patients who appear to be “med-seeking.” Objective measures to assist in finding a middle ground between the healthcare profession’s dual tendencies to undermedicate legitimate pain (“pharmacological Calvinism”) and to be taken advantage of by scammers would be an enormous advance. Scientific American

Clerking for Dollars: “In this week’s The Talk of the Town, Jonathan Kay

considers the case of Circuit Court Judge Danny J.

Boggs, who administers trivia tests to prospective

clerks. Here is last year’s Boggs trivia test. The New Yorker [thanks, Walker]

L.A. County Targets Satellites in Out-of-This-World Tax Plan. The LA County assessor wants to impose property taxes on several highly-valued satellites owned by an LA-based corporation. The move is legal, say his tax attorneys: “While the satellites are in Earth orbit, they nonetheless have a situs for tax

purposes in Los Angeles County, California.” Hughes Corp., the satellites’ owner, counters that they were launched from Cape Canaveral or from French Guyana and never pass over California territory. LA Times

Donor Sues Clintons for Not Giving Pardon. What goes around comes around.

Defcon Keeps Hackers Hooked: Awkward run-ins as underground event swells to thousands of people; “…some old-timers decry what they call the growing bureaucratization of Defcon, marked by everything from noose-tight

security and paid security guards to daily press conferences for the dozens of journalists in attendance and a two-page

sheet of rules reporters are required to sign.” Wired

ACLU Action Alert on the Bush Faith-Based Initiative: “Despite repeated controversies and reports that President

Bush’s faith-based initiative has lost its momentum, the full

House of Representatives is expected to vote as early as

Wednesday on legislation that would implement the

President’s fundamentally flawed plan.

The legislation, (H.R. 7,), the “Community Solutions Act,” includes

provisions that sharply attack one of the oldest civil rights

principles — that tax dollars not fund discrimination. Because the

proposal removes restrictions on how religious organizations

incorporate their beliefs into the delivery of social services,

discrimination would be permitted in hiring decisions and in the

delivery of services.

The President has repeatedly claimed that the bill would include

sizable tax incentives for charitable giving and new funding for

social service programs, both are absent from the bill that will

be voted on-only the government-funded religion provisions

remain. Further, the legislation now includes a provision that

allows Cabinet Secretaries to turn any social service program

into a voucher program. This unprecedented move would allow

longstanding grant programs to be converted to voucher

programs without Congressional approval and would remove

legal barriers that now stop religious organizations from

proselytizing beneficiaries.” Send a free fax to your Congressional representatives in two clicks from this ACLU site. An added option is to send a fax to Li’l George to tell him how you feel about this issue. Feel free to customize the message they suggest for you, which is IMHO too diplomatic.

The Pentagon’s Trojan Horse. This In These Times analysis says that everyone knows NMD doesn’t make any sense, but that abrogating the ABM treaty over NMD is important to allow us to militarize space in other ways, especially theater missle defense.

Bush rests comfortably after surgery to implant pacemaker in brain Salon

Nightmares plague Republicans, says study:

“Republicans are nearly three times as likely as Democrats to experience

nightmares when they dream,” Kelly Bulkeley, who teaches at the Graduate

Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., claims in findings to be released

Wednesday at the 18th Annual International Conference of the Association for

the Study of Dreams in Santa Cruz.

Don’t call me righty. Review of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now: multicultural conservatism in America by Angela Dillard, about that most extraordinary of species, the “conservative who is black,Latino, female or gay (and sometimes Asian)”. Salon

The Pentagon’s Trojan Horse. This In These Times analysis says that everyone knows NMD doesn’t make any sense, but that abrogating the ABM treaty over NMD is important to allow us to militarize space in other ways, especially theater missle defense.

Trial Heads Straight for the Cell: “Lately, cell phone service providers have been summoned to murder trials as if they were

medical examiners discussing DNA tests.” Wired

U.S. Sets Missile Defense Plan, Threatening 1972 ABM Pact. Contrary to Dubya’s ignorant and absurd assertion, the arms race is alive and well; it’s just been exquisitely balanced by just such international agreements in the face of mutually assured destruction (“MAD”) as we are about to abrogate irrevocably. New York Times In that context, as I mention each time I discuss further developments down the path to NMD, I still see no reason (if we truly believe our threat is from ‘rogue states’ and not our former Cold War adversaries) not to preserve MAD and prevent the next escalation in the arms race by sharing the missile defense technology with Russia and China so that they can implement it without delay as we do.