Sweet Nothings Are Better Heard in the Left Ear: “Lovers take heed. If you are going to whisper sweet nothings to your sweetheart, make sure it is through the left ear. …Study (shows) that emotional words got through to people better when spoken through the

left ear, not the right.”

“She doesn’t fear anything. Rabid dogs sit next to her and calm down.” Indian Guru Seeks to Love the World Personally:

“From dawn to late at night people stream toward her.

One-by-one they place their heads on her breast or belly or shoulder for a hug. She pats them on

the back, chucks their chins, listens to their woes, smoothes their hair, smiles broadly and whispers

heartfelt blessings into their ears, sometimes drying their tears.

Rapidly growing in popularity and a sought-after guest, Amma, 46, goes where she is summoned

and does not publicize her visits. She stays where people offer lodging, asks for nothing, eats little

and spends up to 18 hours a day — rarely moving from her seat — hugging, praying for, and

blessing anybody and everybody who comes to her.” Reuters [via Robot Wisdom]

Thanks to higgy, who points to Lew Welch’s Ring of Bone:

I saw myself

a ring of bone

in the clear stream

of all of it

and vowed

always to be open to it

that all of it

might flow through

and then heard

“ring of bone” where

ring is what a

bell does

Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper: “In the end, a year of hard work boils down to this: Echelon exists and the

Europeans don’t like it, but there isn’t much they can do except wring their hands in impotent fury as the

Americans continue spying on whomever they please.” Wired [via Progressive Review] And here’s a Wired news collection, Privacy Matters.

A Saucer From Mars? Nope, Canada. A new book details a secret ’50’s U.S.-Canadian project to develop a flying saucer. Bill Zuk, the Winnipeg-based historian who wrote Avrocar: Canada’s Flying Saucer, wants the two surviving prototypes repartiated back to Canada from American museums. Wired

Annals of the Invasion of Privacy (cont’d.): Nowhere left to hide. “Whether you’re in jail or at the supermarket, your image

might be shown on the Net, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.” Salon

“Michael S. Joyce is an ultraconservative ideologue. For years, prior to

his recent retirement, he headed” the Milwaukee-based Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation, “one of the most effective right-wing

foundations in America. Joyce recently answered President Bush’s call to

resuscitate his floundering faith-based initiative. If anyone is up to that task,

it’s Joyce.”

(Bradley) Foundation support for conservative writers included

grants to: Dinesh D’Souza for The End of Racism, a revisionist view of the

history of slavery and racism in America; Charles Murray for The Bell Curve,

an argument for the genetic inferiority of blacks; David Brock for The Real

Anita Hill “which characterized Anita Hill as ‘slightly nutty slightly slutty'”

(Brock repudiates the book in the August issue of Talk magazine); and

Christina Hoff Sommers for Who Stole Feminism. Tompaine.com

Pig Treatment Used to Treat Mentally Ill People

A mineral supplement developed for calming

aggressive pigs has been modified to treat children and adults with

serious mental disorders, a Canadian scientist said on Tuesday.

The concoction of minerals, initially dismissed by the scientific

establishment as “snake oil,” was developed by the owner of an

animal feed company in Canada to help a friend with children

suffering from severe psychological disorders.

David Hardy used his knowledge of animal nutrition to create the

treatment made up of 36 components, most of them minerals, and

the effects on the children were dramatic enough to encourage him to

develop it further.

While stressing the research was preliminary, a leading pediatrician

from Alberta Children’s Hospital in western Canada said it was

convincing enough to conquer her skepticism. Reuters

First Artificial Intelligence to Undergo Formal Human Psychological Evaluation: “For the first time a standard psychological test known as the

MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) used by clinicians world wide in the

evaluation and treatment of adults will be administered to a machine based artificial personality.

GAC (Generic Artificial Consciousness) – pronounced ‘Jack’ – is the artificial personality being

developed at the Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project (www.mindpixel.com) with the

collaboration of nearly 40,000 internet users from more than 200 countries worldwide. GAC will be

evaluated using the MMPI-2 over the next several months to assess it’s learning of human consensus

experience from the Mindpixel project’s large and diverse group of users from many different

cultures. The test will be supervised and interpreted by Dr. Robert Epstein, one of the world’s

leading experts on human and machine behavior.”

Fireworks leave polluting afterglow; happy Independence Day. “The spectacular fireworks that mark

public events like the Olympics and the

new millenium, leave a nasty afterglow of

the air pollutant ozone according to new

research.”

Emotional controversy (as emotional as it gets in the sober letters column of the Journal of the American Medical Association) over a study reporting that St John’s Wort was ineffective for the treatment of major depression.

Review of Nell Casey (ed.)’s Unholy Ghost: writers on depression:

This powerful collection of reflections on depression includes some well-known authors,

such as Ann Beatie, Susanna Kaysen, and William Styron, but for the most part the less

well-known writers outshine the big names. Possibly that is because editor Nell Casey

had more influence over the less prestigious writers, and encouraged them to crystallize

their ideas. Nearly all of these pieces are new, while a few have been printed

previously in magazines, and just two are extracts from previously published books. All

the authors have been in close contact with depression, either personally or though

helping a family member deal with a crisis. The experience of these writers gives their

contributions authority and depth, and their ability to reflect on this experience makes

this collection both thoughtful and moving.

There’s a common misconception (which I encounter all the time in contending with the families, spouses, employers and friends of the depressed people I treat) that clinical depression is just like the ‘down’ times that the rest of us experience. Untold fractiousnessness and second-level suffering results from the message to the depressed patient that they should just “snap out of it” by “force of will” and “get on with their life”, and the like. For those tolerant of a literary approach, this book is the best antidote I’ve found (I used to recommend William Styron’s Darkness Visible, which is excerpted in this anthology.) to give the skeptic some perspective on the qualitatively distinct suffering of a person in the throes of a deep depression.

Consider this, poet Jane Kenyon’s “Having it Out with Melancholy”, especially the brutal, starkly riveting stanza 7 whose central image has burned its way indelibly into my consciousness since I first encountered this poem many years ago:

If many remedies are prescribed

for an illness, you may be certain

that the illness has no cure.

–A. P. CHEKHOV, The Cherry Orchard

1 FROM THE NURSERY

When I was born, you waited

behind a pile of linen in the nursery,

and when we were alone, you lay down

on top of me, pressing

the bile of desolation into every pore.

And from that day on

everything under the sun and moon

made me sad — even the yellow

wooden beads that slid and spun

along a spindle on my crib.

You taught me to exist without gratitude.

You ruined my manners toward God:

“We’re here simply to wait for death;

the pleasures of earth are overrated.”

I only appeared to belong to my mother,

to live among blocks and cotton undershirts

with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes

and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.

I was already yours — the anti-urge,

the mutilator of souls.

2 BOTTLES

Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,

Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,

Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.

The coated ones smell sweet or have

no smell; the powdery ones smell

like the chemistry lab at school

that made me hold my breath.

3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND

You wouldn’t be so depressed

if you really believed in God.

4 OFTEN

Often I go to bed as soon after dinner

as seems adult

(I mean I try to wait for dark)

in order to push away

from the massive pain in sleep’s

frail wicker coracle.

5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT

Once, in my early thirties, I saw

that I was a speck of light in the great

river of light that undulates through time.

I was floating with the whole

human family. We were all colors — those

who are living now, those who have died,

those who are not yet born. For a few

moments I floated, completely calm,

and I no longer hated having to exist.

Like a crow who smells hot blood

you came flying to pull me out

of the glowing stream.

“I’ll hold you up. I never let my dear

ones drown!” After that, I wept for days.

6 IN AND OUT

The dog searches until he finds me

upstairs, lies down with a clatter

of elbows, puts his head on my foot.

Sometimes the sound of his breathing

saves my life — in and out, in

and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .

7 PARDON

A piece of burned meat

wears my clothes, speaks

in my voice, dispatches obligations

haltingly, or not at all.

It is tired of trying

to be stouthearted, tired

beyond measure.

We move on to the monoamine

oxidase inhibitors. Day and night

I feel as if I had drunk six cups

of coffee, but the pain stops

abruptly. With the wonder

and bitterness of someone pardoned

for a crime she did not commit

I come back to marriage and friends,

to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back

to my desk, books, and chair.

8 CREDO

Pharmaceutical wonders are at work

but I believe only in this moment

of well-being. Unholy ghost,

you are certain to come again.

Coarse, mean, you’ll put your feet

on the coffee table, lean back,

and turn me into someone who can’t

take the trouble to speak; someone

who can’t sleep, or who does nothing

but sleep; can’t read, or call

for an appointment for help.

There is nothing I can do

against your coming.

When I awake, I am still with thee.

9 WOOD THRUSH

High on Nardil and June light

I wake at four,

waiting greedily for the first

note of the wood thrush. Easeful air

presses through the screen

with the wild, complex song

of the bird, and I am overcome

by ordinary contentment.

What hurt me so terribly

all my life until this moment?

Along these lines, you might be interested in The Literature, Arts, & Medicine Database, a multi-institutional project initiated in the summer of 1993 at the New York University School of

Medicine — an annotated bibliography of prose, poetry, film, video and art which is being developed as a dynamic,

accessible, comprehensive resource in Medical Humanities, for use in health/pre-health and liberal arts settings.

Health effects, reproductive issues and effects on short-term memory from caffeine; an excerpt from Weinberg and Bealer’s The World of Caffeine: the science and culture of the world’s most popular drug (Routledge, 2001).

If, like the great

majority of people in the world, you use caffeine regularly, you are faced with

a complex, confusing, and often apparently contradictory cacophony of

traditional and contemporary claims about its effects on human health. … In

the last half of the 20th century, an explosion of general medical knowledge

and a large number of controlled experiments have shed scientific light on

many of caffeine’s effects. It has been often and truly said that caffeine is

the most studied drug in history. Yet, because of its nearly universal use, the

variety of its modes of consumption, its presence in and effects on nearly all

bodily systems, and its occurrence in chemically complex foods and

beverages, together with the complexity of the social and psychological

factors that shape its use, caffeine may also be one of the least adequately

understood. Tompaine.com

Both intrusive parenting and children’s scatological preoccupations are going high-tech.

It’s the thirtieth anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death; now he’s back. Jerry Garcia’s already returned.

UFO Cult May Sue U.S. FDA Over Human Cloning: “Brigitte Boisselier, a French biochemist who belongs to the international Raelian Movement, told

Reuters on Tuesday that her company Clonaid still plans to produce a cloned child within the next

year despite a recent crackdown by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

Oxy Craze Makes Way to Cities. Are the media discovering a scourge, fabricating or fantasizing about one, or helping to precipitate it?

Ky. Patient Gets Artificial Heart. Near death without it, the titanium and plastic device which is expected to extend his life by around a month is the first self-contained artificial heart without external connections. The heart allows a patient to pursue normal activity up through moderate exercise. About half of people awaiting heart transplant die before a suitable donor heart is available. The expectation is that this patient will die with the artificial heart.

Israeli target (lower right)?

State nixes GPS highway robbery. “There is no legal ability for them to charge a penalty when there has

been no damage,” says the State of Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection, ordering the auto rental company to cease and desist and refund penalties to customers who have complained. Surprising ruling. As outrageous as I think the auto rental company’s practice is (was), the renter did sign a contract agreeing to it. The consensus was that he would lose in court. The Register

Ford Wants to Send Drivers of Sport Utility Vehicles Back to School. Now Ford says it’s not Firestone’s fault, not Ford’s fault, but the fault of the SUV driver?? New York Times

Congressman Is Accused of Asking Woman to Lie. Condit’s web of apparent lies around the Chandra Levy disappearance, regarding which he is officially “not a suspect,” deepens. What’s that funny smell? New York Times

Wood Products to Have Arsenic Label: I’ve previously written about the first inklings of danger to children from playing around climbing structures made from treated lumber. Now “consumer warning labels will start appearing

this fall on nearly all the treated lumber in the United States, warning

about an arsenic-laced preservative being used to protect the wood

from decay and insect damage… Also Tuesday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (news – web

sites) took a first step toward possibly banning CCA-treated wood

from playground equipment. It also is commonly used in the making

of decks, railings, picnic tables, fences, posts and docks.” AP

“How easily could a hacker bring the world to a standstill?” The Doomsday Click — “It didn’t

take long for me to see what computer-security experts have known for

years: any fool can enter, alter, and destroy even the most seemingly

impregnable Web sites…. It’s not even against the

law. You don’t have to know how to write, or even understand, the code

to wreck it. ” The New Yorker

Justice O’Connor Questions Death Penalty, “add(s) her voice to the growing chorus of skepticism about the administration of capital punishment in the United States.” Washington Post

Reformed snorer is ambivalent after uvulectomy. Washington Post

A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample: “Rhinotillexomania is a recent term coined to describe compulsive nose picking. There is little world literature on nose-picking behavior in the

general population…

Conclusion: Nose picking is common in adolescents. It is often associated with other habitual behaviors. Nose picking may merit closer epidemiologic and

nosologic (sic) scrutiny.” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

He’s Your Inspiration, Not Mine. The Spike Report discussed this important Washington Post op-ed piece by Kathi Wolfe. Blind herself, Wolfe says that Erik Weihenmayer’s feat as the first blind man to climb Everest, and other sagas of superfeats by the disabled, are not welcome and make life harder for the less able. “One of us bursts onto the cultural radar screen as a superhero, and all of us are expected to perform amazing feats. It’s hard to say which stereotype is more annoying: the disabled as helpless victims or as superheroes.” Realistic stories about the less able are excluded bythe ubiquity of “supercrips” .

News Analysis: Critics of Health Industry Shaped Debate on Patients’ Rights. Good news in the struggle against ‘managed care’, an issue close to my heart. And, in case you were curious, for me and most doctors I know it’s not an issue of chafing under restrictions to our earning power, but — really — advocacy for our patients, plain and simple. A ‘patients’ bill of rights’ passed the Senate Friday and looks likely to have enough support in the Republican House as well, despite Li’l George’s scramble on behalf of the industry. Health care reform advocates’ crucial step appears to have been to succeed in driving a wedge between the insurance companies and their traditional allies the employers by immunizing the latter against the lawsuits to which the former will be susceptible. Pitiable contradictions in the HMOs’ arguments are apparent. New York Times

U.S. Charges Internet Operation Was a Huge Scam:

The fantasy world is so detailed that, in one

instance, the government was struggling to

cash a $9 million check posted in the English

case, only to find that the bank on which the

check was drawn did not exist. And then

there are the bizarre individuals connected

to the case, like the purported financier who

claims to be in radio contact with a 9-foot-6

extraterrestrial circling the earth in a

spaceship.

“When you look at what went on here, you

have to willingly suspend any sense of

reality,” said J. Chris Condren, an Oklahoma lawyer appointed by a federal

court as a receiver for EE-Biz. New York Times

Napster Temporarily Halts Service For Upgrade: “Embattled online music service Napster began shutting users

out of its song-swap system this weekend unless they downloaded the

latest version of its software using audio fingerprinting technology, a

spokesman for the company said on Monday. ‘All previous versions

of Napster have been disabled. We’re making this change as part of

our ongoing effort to comply with the court’s orders,’ a message

posted Friday on its website said.”

Trimble’s exit takes Ulster to the brink. Sadly, it appears the Northern Ireland peace process has collapsed; if Trimble thinks his resignation will pressure the IRA to decommission its weapons as it so far appears to have failed to do, it seems very unlikely. The Guardian UK Here’s a BBC timeline of the peace process since the 1998 Good Friday accords, and websites for Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists.

And, while we’re at it, the fragile truce in the Mideast, surely a castle built on sand if ever there was one, totters in the face of the ongoing violence. Sometimes my head hurts from all our collective thinking about who’s right and who’s to blame in this strife. It’s just so unbearably sad that we keep doing this to ourselves. In retrospect, the prospects for peace in these festering hotspots always amounted to hope against hope. To paraphrase Pete Seeger, however, the reason to go on when things are hopeless is only that we may be wrong.

Graphic summary of the international war crimes indictment against Slobodan Milosevic from the Washington Post. The devil is in the details; 500 individuals whose massacre he and top aides ordered during the Serbian conflict against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are named. And Q & A about the legal process in The Hague, where Milosevic refused to legitimize the proceedings by entering a plea, from the BBC.

Report: Danger Lurks in Shark’s Fin Soup — “Sharks are more dangerous dead than alive, experts said on Tuesday,

warning of serious health risks posed by Asia’s love affair with soup made from their fins… Levels of(mercury) found in sharks’ fins for sale in Thailand were as much as 42

times more than safe limits for humans.”

Astronomers Find Solar System Body. Kuiper Belt objects began to be discovered only a decade ago, but they are the most abundant large objects in the solar system. Now one of the largest, rivalling Pluto’s moon Charon in size, has been found. Understanding the nature of the Kuiper Belt has led to the recent debates about whether it is proper to continue to consider Pluto to be a planet. If it is, this discovery indicates that other ‘planets’ may lurk out beyond awaiting discovery. AP

Uploading Life: Send Your Personality to Space. Sociologist W.S. Bainbridge, observing that the prospects for enhanced space exploration are waning, proposes founding a cosmic civilization without flying human bodies to the further reaches of the galaxy. If we start archiving personalities, it’s a good bet the technology for high-fidelity reanimation — into humans, clones, cyborgs, robots or other lifeforms suitable for the alien environments in which they find themselves — will develop. We should begin sending such ‘Starbase archives’ throughout the galaxy. “By offering the stars to people living today, the second wave of the spaceflight movement would

be spurred into being, Bainbridge said. The future demands a powerful, motivational force to

create interplanetary and interstellar civilizations, he said, and a new spaceflight social movement

can get us moving again.” Others propose merely disseminating our genetic code and a way to cultivate life on its arrival elsewhere.

Devotion, desire drive youths to ‘martyrdom’: ‘In more than a dozen interviews with former and current members of the militant group Hamas and with Israeli security officials who track them, USA Today was given a rare look into the secretive and terrifying world of suicide bombers and the culture that creates them…

At any time, Israeli officials believe, Hamas has from five to 20 men, ages 18 to 23, awaiting orders to carry out suicide attacks. The group also claims to have “tens of thousands” of youths ready to follow in their footsteps. “We like to grow them. From kindergarten through college.”

In Hamas-run kindergartens, signs on the walls read: “The children of the kindergarten are the shaheeds (holy martyrs) of tomorrow.” The classroom signs at Al-Najah University in the West Bank and at Gaza’s Islamic University say, “Israel has nuclear bombs, we have human bombs.” ‘

Should your child have a tanning doll? All the rage at French beaches this summer, but appalling to cancer experts fearing it undoes all their public health efforts to deglorify dangerous sun-based skin damage. “What will be next, a smoking Barbie?” says one appalled critic.

Inappropriate Cancer Chemotherapy at Life’s End: ‘Many patients with cancer receive chemotherapy at the end of life, even if their kind of cancer is known to be unresponsive to the drugs, according to a study reported at the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists held in San Francisco.

The finding “strongly suggests overuse of chemotherapy at the end of life,” lead author Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of clinical bioethics at the US National Institutes of Health, told delegates. “Many are concerned with the quality of end of life care and specifically that patients should not be overtreated with ineffective therapies that won’t improve their quality of life,” he said.’ British Medical Journal

The music world diminished: R.I.P. Chet Atkins, age 77, slick-fingered country and crossover guitarist and producer, inventor of the Nashville sound without which country music would probably never have made it to the pop charts. And lyrical jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson [right] is gone at 64. “You could hear roots coming out of Lester Young, Stan Getz. There was a wailing, a search in his playing. Within just a few notes you knew that it was Henderson.” New York Times

R.I.P. Mortimer Adler, age 98. One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, at least if judged by presence in the public forum. Paradoxically, a passionate populist and yet best known for his insistence that it is familiarity with the classical ‘Great Ideas’ that is the best indicator of quality of thought. Adler was a high school dropout who ascended to the University of Chicago faculty, although for much of his career in departments other than the philosophy dept., where his ideas (or perhaps his personality?) were too contentious.

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post

Disabling Smart Tags on a Web Page — Thanks to boing boing for pointing me to this tip. ‘If you are a Web author, you can disable Smart Tag recognition in Internet Explorer within a Web page by adding a Meta tag to that Web page.

After adding this tag, any Smart Tags that the author has added to the page will continue to work, but Internet Explorer will not dynamically add new tags when users view the page.

The tag is:

<meta name=”MSSmartTagsPreventParsing” content=”TRUE”>‘

How your chocolate may be tainted: this may try the virtue of those of us who try to use our purchasing power to leverage social good. 43% of the world’s cocoa beans come from the Ivory Coast, where its cultivation and harvesting is achieved with adolescent slave labor. Americans spend $13 billion a year on chocolate; adolescent laborers in the Ivory Coast harvesting the fruit of the cacao tree have never heard of chocolate. Representatives of the industry say the harvests are pooled, so it’s impossible to discriminate products produced by dint of slave labor with those for which a decent living wage was paid.

Roger Clinton Linked to New Clemency Case. Latest in a long series of seeming payments to the ex-first-brother to intervene for Presidential pardons before Clinton left office appears to be some hefty sums directed his way on behalf of a Gambino family heroin dealer. Roger Clinton continues to deny such allegations but has no explanation for his lifestyle in the absence of visible means of support. LA Times

Clinton to Arafat: It’s All Your Fault. More on what Clinton’s up to since leaving office, and it’s not a pretty picture. Reportedly, he regaled guests at a recent Manhattan party with the story ‘that Arafat called to bid him farewell three days before he left office. “You are a great man,” Arafat said. “The hell I am,” Clinton said he responded. “I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.” ‘ MSNBC

‘Furious advocacy groups worldwide have slammed rapper Eminem for trivializing Tourette syndrome by blaming his foul mouth on the disorder.

The Tourette Syndrome Association says Eminem’s claims are “dubious.”

They believe the Detroit-born rapper was “just trying to be provocative” by claiming his lyrics are full of four-letter words because he has the rare brain and nerve disease.’

Supreme Court upholds free speech rights of tobacco industry: “A state government may not impose its own advertising restrictions on tobacco beyond the broad federal law that bans cigarette ads on television and requires warning labels on packages, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” Washington Post

NoMoPoMo! Ftrain

Mad Poets Society: McLean Hospital, in suburban Boston,

is not the nation’s oldest mental hospital; that distinction belongs to the Pennsylvania Hospital, in Philadelphia. Nor is it generally considered the country’s best; most professionals would probably rank the Menninger Clinic, in Topeka, Kansas, above McLean. But before the advent of diagnose-dose-and-discharge mental-health care, McLean, which sits on a gorgeous 240-acre campus in the town of Belmont, was probably the country’s most aristocratic mental institution and definitely its most literary. Ralph Waldo Emerson complained in a letter about the high costs of treatment for his brothers. In the late nineteenth century Henry Adams’s sharp-tongued wife, Clover, remarked to her father that McLean “seems to be the goal of every good and conscientious Bostonian.” Her brother, the treasurer of Harvard University, ended his life there. Reputable historians and even a former chief administrator of McLean insist that the father of American psychology, William James, was a patient there, although there is little evidence that this is true. Frederick Law Olmsted, who also died at McLean, chose the land for the campus. Atlantic Magazine

The essayist focuses on the three most famous latter-day McLean sojourners — Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. No mention of that other famous alumnus, James Taylor. McLean is where I had one of my first mental health jobs — as a ‘mental health worker’, previously known less gloriously as an ‘attendant’, when I was just out of college — and where some of my closest psychiatric friends and associates work. It’s certainly neither aristocratic nor literary anymore, and it’s dying as a clinical institution, surviving largely on expanding its research activities and bringing in grant funding. It’s about to sell off a large portion of its exquisite wooded grounds to developers, after a long and bitter battle with residents of its neighborhood and the town of Belmont in which it is situated.

Are you a classical music snob? You may have a right to gloat. Neuroscientists begin to suspect that appreciating classical music takes more grey matter. As aficionados develop dementing disease, one study shows, they lose their appreciation of classical music and begin to like pop; apparently it never goes the other way ’round. One expert concedes, however, that there are some ‘highly academic’ people who like pop music,

I have to say, however, that this goes against the grain of my own clinical experience. In my work with demented patients, most still appreciate and take comfort in classical music if that was previously their musical choice. Mere force of habit? Perhaps the emergence of new tastes in senescence is not a sign of diminished capacities but, in a paradoxical way, capacities enhanced by dementia, another study suggests. BBC

Netizens: On the History and Impact of the Net, Michael Hauben’s and Ronda Hauben’s on-line and paper book, coined the term netizen and “presents the history and impact of various aspects of the Net: the Internet, ARPANET, Usenet, etc. We hope to provide information which will help readers to understand where the Net has come from so as to help preserve its value throughout future developments and changes.” I learned on MetaFilter that Michael Hauben has just died at 27.

Kendall Clark: The Global Privileges of Whiteness — “White racism, and the White supremacist ideology it reflects, and the network of White privilege it maintains, are alive and well.

Racist expressions of White supremacist ideology maintain three particular nodes in the vast network of White privilege: White empire, White corporate profits, and aggrieved White victimhood…” monkeyfist

“The studies are very significant in that we have a group of people with no brain function … who have well-structured, lucid thought processes with reasoning and memory formation at a time when their brains are shown not to function.” Scientist Says Mind Continues After Brain Dies — “A British scientist studying heart attack patients says he is finding evidence that suggests that consciousness may continue after the brain has stopped functioning and a patient is clinically dead.

The research, presented to scientists last week at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), resurrects the debate over whether there is life after death and whether there is such a thing as the human soul.” Reuters

Japan rape report worries US: ‘The United States says it is taking reports that American soldiers may have been involved in the rape of a woman on the Japanese island of Okinawa “very seriously” ‘… yet again. BBC

Ahhh, <a href=”http://abuddha.terrashare.com/bookmark.htm

“>Abuddhas memes has moved, IMHO well worth your while to follow it to its new location…

Love Shack – an Interview with Alexa Albert — “What is life like inside a brothel? Harvard-trained physician Alexa Albert went to

Nevada’s Mustang Ranch to conduct a safe-sex study, but found herself caught up in

the lives of the women who worked there. She ended up staying for seven months.

The book that came out of the experience, Brothel: Mustang Ranch and Its Women, is

the best kind of accessible sociology — full of empathy, detail and the unique

perspective of an outsider who got deep inside.” Nerve

A Pledge Broken. Foulmouthed racist, sexist, homophobic radio shockjock Don Imus pledged to clean up his act in May, 2000 after journalist Philip Noble’s “Imus Watch” series in Tompaine.com documented his repulsive content. Noble returns to see how Imus’ pledge has fared in the ensuing year. Can you guess? How does one of Time magazine’s “twenty-five most influential Americans” get away with it?

State Farm Insurance’s ten most dangerous intersections in the U.S.

Geologist says Nessie just a trick of tectonics: ”One can imagine [a] peasant feeling a rumble next to the shores of Loch Ness,

turning to the water, and seeing roiled water and bubbles. It is not

likely that the peasant would conclude that he had witnessed a manifestation of

plate tectonics – more likely a sea monster.” [Science knows everything and only backward simpletons believe in the uknown.] Boston Globe

Thomas Book Author Says He Lied in His Attacks on Anita Hill. David Brock’s high-profile repudiation of his right-wing unscrupulousness more than makes up for the former leftie, now-rabid DavidHorowitz! Brock confesses his character assassination of Anita Hill and a witness who corroborated her allegations of harassment by Clarence Thomas… and he had Thomas’ help in the disinformation campaign. New York Times

Now showing: beta of Google image search; returns thumbnails of the ‘hits’ for your search.

Honey, I kidded the shrink… A brief history of the intertwining of psychoanalysis and cinema on the occasion of the Guardian-Observer‘s psychoanalytic film festival.

Results of the Illuminated Keyboard Competition are in. The Register

Virtually human — “I’d like to

subject it to carcinogenic materials. I think you

should be able to give it a suntan or a blister. I’m serious. I

mean, you should be able to cut it. You should be able to have

it cough up a hairball if you want to.” Disappointingly, but realistically: ‘…even the most ambitious modellers are steering clear of

one important organ: the brain. “There is every possibility of

modelling a human neuron, and perhaps a cluster of neurons,”

explains (its developer), “but modelling the human brain is outside the

realm of our reality.” ‘ New Scientist Still, might ethical dilemmas arise about whether to afford it the protections customarily reserved to things we call alive?

My Life as a Stunt Bum: “It seems like her only driving force is the desire never to let

Hurley, Crawford and Anderson down by having a

less-than-perfect butt.” The Sunday Times of London

For those who have been wondering what he’s been up to, an op-ed piece from Sunday’s Washington Post by Bill Clinton — We Can Win the War on AIDS — “The question is no longer whether we can or can’t win the war on AIDS. Of course we can. The question is: will we, or won’t we? Besieged by a common enemy, we must join together in common cause — in memory of 22 million human souls, and for the future of many millions more. Our humanity requires it.”

Survey finds two in five Bush appointees worked for his father Boston Globe

Self-Cleaning Windows to Be Sold in U.S. This Year — “Window washing ranks high on the list

of most hated household tasks, and

some glass makers are hoping that this

loathing runs deep.

Today, Pilkington, a British glass maker, is

set to outline its American sales plans for a

new technology: window glass that cleans

itself.” A coating of titanium oxice is apparently the key. New York Times

One of the more ridiculous examples of the self-serving, disempowering medicalization of everything: “Parents who want the best for their offspring, say

experts, must become amateur therapists. It’s no longer enough to be attentive, loving and caring to

children.

‘Parents don’t instinctively know how best to raise children,’ said

Jane Askew, co-founder of a parenting course in cognitive

behavioural therapy (CBT) at the faculty of health at De Montfort

University in Leicester. ‘If parents want to raise their children in

as positive a way as possible, they should all have some

training in CBT.’ ” Guardian UK

Alt-log — “ Salon used to run a column called Alt, which highlighted stories from that week’s crop of alternative weeklies from all around

the country. I loved it. They’ve stopped running it, so I’ve decided to highlight my own favorites from the week here.” –Gael Fashingbauer Cooper (who also maintains the Pop Culture Junk Mail blog and the weekly Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune weblog). Recent items in alt-log include a critique of Zagat, a pointer to “my dinner with an etiquette expert”, coverage of a “pet communicator” ‘s intervention with the reporter’s troubled cat, and an account of the attempt by the arts section of a “Mormon-stronghold Utah” newspaper to ignore a local production of The Vagina Monologues. Just for starters. Many of the links receive little more commentary than “I liked…”, “I really enjoyed…”, or “I’m a sucker for…”, but she does her footwork.

Calls to kill off living goddess: “During the past 300

years, a succession of small girls have been chosen to become kumari, or Nepal’s living goddess – a job that entails living in an ornate cloister, appearing at religious

festivals on a chariot and retiring at the age of 11 with a small pension.

But human rights activists are questioning the tradition now that the current kumari has reached puberty, obliging her to step down, and the search for her successor is

about to begin.

‘Nepal has ratified the convention on the rights of the child. It says that you can’t exploit children in the name of culture. And yet the kumari is forced to give up her childhood. She has to be a goddess instead. Her rights are being violated.’

Opponents of the tradition point to the “horrifying” ritual involved in selecting the kumari and the bizarre lifestyle the new goddess is expected to lead.

Potential kumaris, aged four or five, are taken to Kathmandu’s royal palace and locked in a darkened room filled with freshly severed buffalo heads.

The true kumari, who is believed to be an incarnation of the blood-loving goddess Durga, is said to identify herself by emerging unperturbed from the ordeal.” Guardian UK

“…a total suspension of common sense”: ‘Ministers ordered the slaughter of up to two million healthy animals despite being told by their leading foot and mouth expert that the killing was not needed

to control the disease… Officials now admit that some of the assumptions that led to the cull may have been wrong. But at the time, says Dr Paul Kitching – then head of foot and

mouth at the institute’s Pirbright Laboratory, the world’s leading centre for research on the disease – his objections were ignored.’ Independent UK

I’ve told lots of people this story by K r i s t i n T h o m a s about her replacing her Tide with RIT dye to get back at the neighbors who were helping themselves to her detergent. Most of the people I tell it to are appalled (some have asked me if I heard it from one of my patients). But IMHO her whimsical vengefulness is justified well … not the least by the fact that her antagonists kept using the bottle with the dye in it again and again and again!

Pentagon Study Casts Doubt on Missile Defense Schedule. ‘Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has indicated a willingness to

deploy a system before tests have been completed if an attack seems imminent,’ but here’s where we are so far:

‘…An October 1999 test in

which a Global Positioning System inside a mock warhead helped guide an

intercept missile toward a target over the Pacific…was successful, but two

more recent flight tests failed.

None of those tests used the kinds of sophisticated decoys that a real ballistic

missile would use to confuse an antimissile system, the report said. Instead, the

decoy in each test was a large balloon that did not look like a warhead and that

the kill vehicle’s sensors could easily distinguish from the target.

The report also asserted that the Pentagon had not even scheduled a test

involving multiple targets, the likely situation in an attack. And it found software

problems with a training simulator that made it appear as if twice as many

warheads had been fired at the United States as had been intended in a 1999

exercise.

The simulator then fired interceptors at those “phantom tracks,” and operators

were unable to override it, the report said.’ New York Times

Birth in Boston Riches, Death in Idaho Ruins: “It was an unlikely ending for a man who

had been born into a Boston Brahmin

family, who had started out with money,

charm, status and an elite education. One of

the enduring American myths is that of the

pioneer who heads West and strikes it rich.

Michael McGuckin’s story is the opposite. He

came to Idaho with everything and lost it

all, leaving behind a penniless family that so

mistrusted outsiders that his children

barricaded themselves inside their squalid

house for five days while the international

news media camped down the road.” A descent into madness, perhaps potentiated by his multiple sclerosis, propels the tragic story. New York Times

Review of this-page-intentionally-left-blank.org: “…(E)veryone has a website. And some of

these people would like to point out that we

are (they are, that’s where the

self-examination comes in) spending too

much time on the Web. Or that the Web is

not the only thing, not even the only

medium, out there. Or maybe just that the

Web is a medium.

So there’s The Last Page of the Internet. A Day

Without Weblogs. And now, taking it all one

step further, we have

this-page-intentionally-left-blank.org, a site devoted

entirely to urging webmasters to put up

blank pages on their sites in the hopes of

spurring self-reflection.

Perhaps you were expecting this review itself

to be blank. That would be too, too easy.

But, more to the point, the TPILB-Project (as

they call it) site isn’t blank, so my review

doesn’t have to be either. The TPILB-Project

engages in wispy speculation about the

nature of the Web, so I get to do it too.” Flak

An Arthur Machen Gallery — ‘Presenting a few interesting Arthur Machen editions. Most of these were contributed by Machen collectors, a

few are from my own collection, and others are “found scans”.’ Delve deeper into Machen’s life and work, which inspired among others H.P. Lovecraft and the contemporary psychogeographer Iain Sinclair, here.

I continue to be appreciative of David Anderson’s kind comments. Increasingly, I turn to Metaforage as one reaches for a daily paper, and click on an extraordinarily high proportion of his blinks. Now I’ll be even more eager to read him, waiting for further installments in his affair with Dana Scully. And don’t fail to click on the link within that story.

How Cheney Lost His Cool — “California’s energy crisis sends the veep over the edge.” Newsweek

How to Avoid a Blackout. Is the New York Times supporting utility hacking? (Scroll to the bottom of the article.)

Surprisingly, Li’l George announces support for limits on use of DNA tests to prevent genetic discrimination. “Mr. Bush may have acted

now because two senators who have long pressed for federal restrictions on the

commercial uses of genetic indicators — Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the

majority leader, and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts — said when the

Senate switched to Democratic control that they would push the legislation

through in a few months.” New York Times

The University of Virginia mounts a special exhibition on the ‘Psychedelic 60s’ — literature, art, historical context and precursors. I was there and I do remember. I feel a certain mournfulness at those who look back at the ’60’s as if at a dead artifact, frozen static in time, rather than understanding the way in which there is an ongoing living presence of its virtues in some of our lives. Even if I wear a shirt and tie to work…

Mistaken identity Researchers cast doubt on the assumption that the 300-year rampage of the Black Death through Europe was bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The pattern of its emergence, spread, symptoms and disappearance is more consistent with an Ebola-like virus, they say. Ironically, exposure to this virus may have given some Europeans resistance to HIV infection. Guardian UK

Japan PM’s Million-Human E-Mail. Wildly popular new Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has just begun publication of his own e-zine, with over a million Japanese subscribers to the first issue. No English translation available so far of this unprecedented use of the web by a world leader to communicate to his constituency. Wired

Japan PM’s Million-Human E-Mail. Wildly popular new Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has just begun publication of his own e-zine, with over a million Japanese subscribers to the first issue. No English translation available so far of this unprecedented use of the web by a world leader to communicate to his constituency. Wired

Japan PM’s Million-Human E-Mail. Wildly popular new Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has just begun publication of his own e-zine, with over a million Japanese subscribers to the first issue. No English translation available so far of this unprecedented use of the web by a world leader to communicate to his constituency. Wired

Japan PM’s Million-Human E-Mail. Wildly popular new Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has just begun publication of his own e-zine, with over a million Japanese subscribers to the first issue. No English translation available so far of this unprecedented use of the web by a world leader to communicate to his constituency. Wired

“Windows Minesweeper (Winmine) is an offence against the victims of the mines and those who risk or sacrifice their own lives to clear them,” according to the International Campaign to Ban Winmine (ICBW). You can support their campaign to abolish Minesweeper by deleting it from your machine and helping pressure Microsoft into leaving it out of future Windows versions. The Register

The TV’s Eye Is Set on You “Americans have been watching television commercials for more than 50 years. Pretty soon, commercials will be watching them.

Cable and satellite giants are installing technology that will enable them to zap targeted TV commercials to different homes based on the occupants’ age, gender, ethnicity, income and other personal details, including what shows they watch.” LA Times

This is how Microsoft will end up running the

Internet

Dear The Register

Your Internet licence is due for renewal in two

weeks. Please contact your local Microsoft branch

for an extension. If you do not pay within 30 days

of the termination date, we will downgrade your

connection. There will be a $500 reconnection

charge.

Yours,

Microsoft Corporation

The Brain Basis of a “Consciousness Monitor”

Surgical patients under anesthesia can wake up unpredictably and be exposed to intense, traumatic pain. Current medical techniques cannot maintain depth of

anesthesia at a perfectly stable and safe level; the depth of unconsciousness may change from moment to moment. Without an effective consciousness monitor

anesthesiologists may not be able to adjust dosages in time to protect patients from pain. An estimated 40,000 to 200,000 midoperative awakenings may occur in

the United States annually. E. R. John and coauthors present the scientific basis of a practical “consciousness monitor” in two articles. One article is empirical

and shows widespread and consistent electrical field changes across subjects and anesthetic agents as soon as consciousness is lost; these changes reverse

when consciousness is regained afterward. These findings form the basis of a surgical consciousness monitor that recently received approval from the U.S. Food

and Drug Administration. This may be the first practical application of research on the brain basis of consciousness. The other John article suggests theoretical

explanations at three levels, a neurophysiological account of anesthesia, a neural dynamic account of conscious and unconscious states, and an integrative field

theory.

Memory, whose accuracy is a pillar of common knowledge, is actually quite synthetic and unreliable for the sake of making sense of things, as several studies reviewed at the website of the American Psychological Association show. First: People make sense out of stand alone effects by thinking they “remember” seeing their probable causes —

Memory “illusions” may result from the basic human need to make

sense out of events. A series of experiments has provided the first scientific evidence

that when people see effects (a student toppling onto the floor) without also seeing

its cause (a student leaning back in a chair), they automatically “fill in the blank” with

that probable cause — even if they haven’t actually seen it with their own two eyes.

The result: a memory that seems real, but isn’t. The inference may be correct, but

it’s not based on actual perception, suggesting that memory helps us to make sense

of the world, perhaps at the expense of a complete reliability.

And: Jurors distort evidence to favor their tentative verdict as they move through the course of a trial —

Presenting further proof that jurors are vulnerable to human error,

psychologists … found significant

evidence of a deep bias affecting both students and prospective jurors…, hypothesiz(ing) that “predecisional distortion” of new information

could cause a juror to evaluate trial evidence with a bias toward supporting

whichever party that juror currently favors. Already known to sway consumer

decisions, predecisional distortion would then bias juror decisions as well. Such a

finding could raise questions about the adequacy of conventional jury instructions to

not reach a verdict prematurely.

Sophisticated psychotherapists have known this for a long time. Clients in therapy, ‘remembering’ the past to make sense of their lives are actually synthesizing coherent stories, inventing mythologies for themselves, under the influence of a therapist whose job it is, whether consciously or unconsciously, to shape them so that they are most helpful.

I’m sure it’s a spoof (although I haven’t dug down to see who owns the domain), but the self-proclaimed Net Authority is keeping us off-kilter by announcing it’s keeping a database of weblogs reported to be in violation of its Acceptable Internet Usage Guidelines. Some webloggers are all puffed up when they receive notification that they’ve been reported and investigated. While I uphold several of the guidelines, a few others deserve to be broken liberally. By the way, is it blaspheming to send up the Net Authority? If so, report me…

The ever-excellent Random Walks captures the enraging and worrisome absurdity of the Gap expropriating anti-globalization anti-corporate sentiment to market its jeans.

“…(D)ue to the tremendous power of corporate advertising over consumers, Gap might just pull it off, trivializing the movement… and selling jeans at the same time.

The effect that this new marketing could have on the movement is tremendous. If Gap

succeeds, it will mean that every protest that is staged will be building on their new

image, in effect turning protestors and activists into living, walking ads for Gap.”

Gapsucks.

I hated Archie Bunker. I hated all TV during the All In the Family era, come to think of it, but I especially hated Archie Bunker. Getting a little confused between the character and the actor (“The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon”, the saying goes), I didn’t think too much about Carroll O’Connor’s passing until I read this arresting quote, also from Random Walks:

“As James Baldwin wrote, the white man here is trapped by his own history, a history that he

himself cannot comprehend and therefore what can I do but love him?”

R.I.P. O’Connor.

Lynnette Millett at Medley considers a Scripting News post calling “weblogs without discipline” a waste of time, thoughtless “impulse journalism” with narrow “expressive bandwidth”. She doesn’t agree that every post ought to say something affirmative, as she puts it, about the item linked to. Millett goes on: “If you want to hold me to a standard beyond ‘she links/quotes stuff she finds interesting and/or worthy of note’ then you should probably go elsewhere,” and she gives a sympathetic nod to my wry sidebar disclaimer,

“For entertainment

purposes only.

All content is provided as is, with no

warranty stated or implied

regarding the quality or accuracy of any

content on or off this website.

Absolutely no responsibility is taken for

the content of external pages to which I

link.”

While I’m cited as an authority here [grin], I have to say I don’t fully agree. I feel my weblogging is more “on” when I can give you my own take on things, and most of the posts at FmH to which readers respond are those, rather than the ones I excerpt or point to without exposition. I sometimes barrage you with alot of frantic webclipping, and I often feel I’d rather slow it down and be more thoughtful. But, on the other hand, I’m driven… and I do feel, rationalizing, that I am being expository when I merely post something. It’s usually more than just saying it’s “interesting.” FmH is polemical; 90% or more of my posts make a point I want to get across, whether I say so or not. And I trust you’ll be curious about what the significance of any post was to me, or at least what significance it’ll have for you.

For a slightly different flavoring, consider this post of Matt Rossi’s I just happened upon again, coincidentally on the one-year anniversary of his posting it:

Lately, it seems as though you might as soon admit to consorting with Lucifer as

maintaining one of these sites. Everyone’s tired of it, it seems. Everyone’s sick of

the link economy, or the cookie cutter nature of 9/10’s of the content of these

‘blogs’ as people have taken to calling them. Everyone wants to get back to the

purity of maintaining a site just for them.

Well, not me, baby. Me and my diseased imagination are gonna keep on keeping

on till they pry our cold dead fingers away from the keys. Let me bare myself to

my limited readership for an instant; I am fully aware of how unique I am, and I

like it. I like that I’m smart. I like that I’m erudite. I like that I read and think about

what I read and melt my disparate reading into mental alloy. I am, in short, not all

that humble about this page, or what it is I do on it. Is it Earth-Shattering? Nope.

Does anyone care? Well, a few people do, and they’ve been very nice about it.

To everyone who has bothered to come by and send me a nice email, I thank

you kindly. Your simple generosity has been appreciated.

But I do not do this for you, and I never did.

And he concludes later on, lovingly: ” I admit it! I consort with Lucifer! Whew. That was a load

off. Well, back to the salt mines…I got nuggets of strange glowing gold to wrench

from the rock. It’s my task, and it isn’t by far unpleasant. Oh my no. I do so love

shattering reality.”

Boy Testifies Dog Raped Him: “For seven years, she’s maintained

her innocence, insisting that she did not brutally sodomize her

7-year-old son, injuring him so badly that doctors considered

removing part of his bowel.

It was the family dog, Bugsy the pit bull, that raped the boy, she said.

Now, the woman, who is serving a life sentence in an Ohio prison for

felonious penetration, may get a shot at freedom, after her son, who

has remained silent for seven years, testified in court Tuesday that

the woman’s story is true.” APBnews

Do People Aggress to Improve Their Mood? “…people who had been induced to

believe in the value of catharsis and venting anger responded

more aggressively than did control participants to insulting

criticism… (R)esults

suggest that many people may engage in aggression to regulate

(improve) their own affective states. ” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, July 2001 Abstracts