In the aftermath of a rampage by a psychiatric patient who killed a nurse and three patients at a Port St. Lucie, FL psychiatric hospital with his bare hands, a Florida co-conspirator, commenting in part,

“I’ll bet if this had happened in a media capital, the care of
psychiatric patients and the funding of the psych-care system would be a
prominent topic of conversation. People would talk about it on Sunday
morning talk shows. George Will would say that you have to expect a few
deaths on psychatric wards and it would be ridiculous to waste money making
them safer,”

send me this link to a Palm Beach Post feature on psychiatric nurses’ fears of violent patients. I’m of two minds about this. Psychiatric patients are already treated with enough irrational, xenophobic fear and stigmatization by the public that they don’t need anything that’d detract further from the compassion with which they need to be treated. But on the other hand, while statistics used to demonstrate that the mentally ill population is no more violence-prone than the general population, this does not appear to be the case any longer. I blame it mostly on global changes in the delivery of healthcare over the last decade, which can be neatly summarized under the rubric of “managed care. “

The upshot is fewer services, less continuity of care and less familiarity with the patients on an outpatient basis; and shorter lengths of stay and less thorough inpatient treatment when hospitalization occurs. Patients are sicker, and more apt to have been off necessary medications for longer, when they are admitted. A less thorough history to familiarize caregivers with the patient’s issues is available on admission or thereafter. The hospital units are less well-staffed, more chaotic and crowded, than they should be or had been in the past. The stresses of working under such conditions mean that veteran staff are more prone to leave the field, leaving care in the hands of generally less experienced and less well-paid nurses and mental health workers. Hospital administration has increasingly fallen into the hands of fiscally, but not clinically, sophisticated bureaucrats making decisions without firsthand knowledge of mental health care. Clinically astute caregivers such as psychiatric MDs are increasingly marginalized because of their intolerable agitation for quality-of-care measures with less concern for costs. Inpatient and outpatient services are more likely to see themselves as finger-pointing adversaries, pitted against each other competing to do more with fewer and fewer resources, than collaborators. Consolidation of health care delivery has meant that decision-making is more centralized, more removed, more corporate, less local, less responsive. And although this translates into more danger in treatment settings, the patients are largely the victims.

“Sexy emails between a fiancee and an unknown woman in Las
Vegas caused ex-Royal aide Jane Andrews to beat and stab her
lover to death, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.” The Register

Libertarian, or Just Bizarro? ‘Clyde Wayne Crews, the new director of technology studies at
the Cato Institute, the libertarian think-tank, …outline(s) his vision for what he
calls “splinternets,” or parallel Internets that would be run as distinct, private, and
autonomous universes.

Lamenting the flood of regulation over privacy, children’s safety, copyright, gambling,
taxation, and other issues on the Internet, Crews asks, “how about more Internets, not
more regulations?”

The Internet as we know it —- what people are already calling the “Big-I Internet” or the
commodity Internet — “is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons,” Crews said.’ Wired

The Myth of Matriarchal
Prehistory: “One of the more popular accounts of prehistoric human society is
that it was matriarchal: that women ruled globally, for hundreds of
thousands of years, until a patriarchal revolution reversed things
about 5000 years ago. Women were the heads of the households;
they worshipped goddesses, or a single great goddess; men
revered them and acceded to their rule.

It’s not hard to figure out why this theory became so popular among
second-wave feminists in the 70s, many of whom were coming out of
the Wiccan and neopagan movements. In fact, goddess worship had
been proposed as early as the 19th century, and vitalized by
archaeological findings of goddess figurines from early excavations.” Interview with Cynthia Eller, a professor of women and religion at Montclair State
University, who argues in her new book The Myth of Matriarchal
Prehistory that this speculative theory should be scrapped. New York Press

Nothing surprising about actor Robert Downey Jr.’s rearrest for alleged drug charges; or his being fired from Ally McBeal in response. The only surprising thing is that he got so far before going down in flames. This is not a celebrity phenomenon; literally millions in the US are in psychiatric and substance abuse facilities each day on similar, if not far more dramatic, paths of programmed self-destruction.

The actor’s legal troubles began in 1996 when he was stopped for speeding and authorities found cocaine, heroin and a pistol in his
vehicle.

A month later he was found unconscious in a neighbor’s home and hospitalized at a substance-abuse treatment center. Three days later,
he was arrested for leaving the recovery center.

In August 1999, Downey was sentenced to three years in prison for violating his probation by missing scheduled drug tests. He was
released a year later on $5,000 bail.

Last November, he was arrested at a Palm Springs hotel after police received a 911 call reporting someone in a hotel room with guns and
drugs.

He was charged with felony possession of cocaine and Valium and a misdemeanor count of being under the influence of a controlled
substance. No weapons were found. Nando Times

Where’s the prurient interest in their stories?

Drug Warriors Shot Down Planes Before; Law Exempts U.S. from Blame. “Almost immediately after the Peruvian Air Force shot up a Baptist-owned Cessna
bearing nothing more intoxicating than missionaries, the United States — whose
Central Intelligence Agency provided Peru with the Cessna’s intercept data —
moved quickly to put the bulk of the blame on the Peruvians.” AlterNet

FTAA Roundup. Media reports of the FTAA protests in Quebec were short on substance, focusing on the visual contrast between the men in suits inside crafting trade agreements and the clashes outside between masked protesters and riot-clad tactical police. There were more anti-globalization protestors than at the 1999 WTO action in Seattle, and their political critique was more focused. What really happened in Quebec, and should you care? AlterNet

UN lays blame for Timor wave of terror. “A United Nations investigation has found that senior
Indonesian military officers planned mass destruction,
deportations and killings in East Timor two months
before a 1999 vote on the territory’s future.” Sydney Morning Herald

OpenCola, Version 1.0, first open-source soft drink. ThinkGeek

Human foot-and-mouth cases in the UK? A slaughterman from north Cumbria is suspected of contracting the disease from the carcass of an infected cow he was handling. Now there are two other suspected cases. The disease is mild in humans and not life-threatening, causing a flu-like syndrome with blisters on the mouth and hands, and there are no known cases of human-human transmission. CNN

Jammers Jamming The Jammers Jamming The Jammers — Nike’s Purported Propaganda Offense Plastic

Big Blue’s Big Brother Lab: ” Imagine knowing the name of every single person who lived in this
world. One of IBM’s lab scientists shows how existing technology could
make this scenario possible.” Wired

One Smart Bookie:

“In repeated raids the police have seized betting
records and about $700,000 from Weisberg’s house and
safe-deposit boxes. Three times in 1989-1994 Weisberg faced
felony charges of sports bookmaking. The first time he pleaded
guilty and received five years’ probation. Since then judges, a jury,
psychologists, and psychiatrists have determined that Weisberg is
not responsible for his actions because his mental disability
prevents him from distinguishing between right and wrong… One of the most celebrated sports bookmakers in the Midwest, he
is mentally disabled, with an IQ that has at various times been
measured in the mid-50s to the low 70s. Although Weisberg’s
speaking skills, as reflected in court records, appear roughly
normal, he is not, in fact, an articulate speaker, and he has a
sharply limited conversational range. But few people can approach
Weisberg at calculating odds and handicapping games.”The Atlantic [via Spike Report]

And new research clarifies what it is that leads to savant skills, at least in patients with autism if not those, like Weisberg, with retardation. Not surprisingly, they start with the details. Aptitudes in which they excel are strengthened by repetition motivated by the pleasure it brings them. The Independent

UK: Jedi Get Green Light? “The campaign to have ‘Jedi’ recognised as an official religion in the
forthcoming UK census has received a boost. The census form itself
confirms that entering a frivolous faith therein will not result in an
appearance before the courts.

‘Completion of the Census form is compulsory under the
Census Act 1920. If you refuse to complete it, or give false
information, you may be liable to a fine. This liability does not
apply to question 10 on religion.’ ” The Register

Film Critic, Review Thyself. The Mexican film Amores Perros is attracting rave reviews but LA Times critic Kenneth Turan found himself indifferent to this “film that stubbornly refused to end”. He declined to review it, leaving the task to his deputy, but writes a searching confessional about how his reaction troubles him. “If you come out of a film and aren’t sure what
your opinion is, it could well mean you do know but are not comfortable with
your thoughts.”

Upspeak: ‘Declarative statement made with rising into-nation?
L.A. valley-speak is its exaggerated form and possible
source, but upspeak (a.k.a. uptalk) emerged as a
widespread teen practice in the mid ’80s. In recent
years, its distinctive “intonation contour” has threatened to
become a genuine dialect shift. Although the questioning
tone can connote indecision, deference, or apathy, a 1992
linguistic study of a Texas sorority found that upspeak was
used most commonly by group leaders, suggesting that the
tentative sound can serve as a way of getting attention,
involving listeners, and enforcing con-sensus?’

Modern threat to an ancient game: “Orkney islanders angry as
insurance fears may end the
traditional battle of the Ba, …a game peculiar to the
Orkney Islands which involves two teams
of hundreds of players battling to shift a
rock-hard leather ball across Kirkwall.
There are no rules.” Guardian-Observer

Sweet tooth gene found: “The discovery could lead to the development
of new sweeteners and a greater
understanding of why some people have a
sweet tooth.” BBC

WTOP: “Wondering why you can’t listen to your favorite radio station on the internet right
now? Follow the money trail.

Most commercial radio stations in America… have been pulling
their streaming audio off the internet.” And more coverage, from The Industry Standard:

The law of unintended consequences
struck Internet broadcasting last week.
Many large radio stations stopped
streaming their content on the Internet
because of a clause that was negotiated
in the settlement of a two-year-old
strike. A few outlets carried news of the
outage last week; this week, reporters
are still finding new angles.

KPIG’s still streaming, though; they explain why.

“You have to want to experience something different. The
night is for people that are tired of everything being the
same and are bored of events that don’t even have a spark
of originality…” Deep Blue – an
original club concept devised by a Belfast collective of artists,
musicians, DJs, writers and photographers – is not for the nervous. Irish Times [via Robot Wisdom]

Prank heaven: Guardian reviewer likes Onion writer’s telephone-prank book. [via Robot Wisdom]

Bouncing Off The Walls. 20th century concert hall designs have supposedly been informed by acoustical science — often with disastrous results. Has the science finally advanced enough that the halls can be acoustical masterpieces as well as architectural? Lingua Franca

Miles too popular: cutting a cult off at the knees. New Statesman

“…(I)s there something about cinema that leads it to shy away from the spiritual?

Some observers feel cinema is less than ideal for exploring religious or spiritual subjects.
According to one argument, contemporary audiences expect so much spectacle, escapism, and
star power for their ticket money … that sky-high production costs lead studios to avoid anything too
thoughtful or controversial.

Another argument holds that movies are materialistic by their very nature, which makes them
unsuitable for exploring spiritual themes. The acclaimed French filmmaker François Truffaut
believed this, pointing out that nothing can be filmed unless it’s physically present in front of a
whirring movie camera.” Christian Science Monitor

Several decades ago, Jerry Mander made a similar argument about TV, IMHO the most compelling of his 1978 Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, proposing that the exteriority and resolution limitations of the medium make it inherently harder to convey the subtler, more rarified nature of the finer emotions than the more base.

I recently looked at this again because of the item to which I blinked below on chimpanzees being emotionally affected by scenes on television. One reader wondered, in response to that, about the significance of mirror neurons to that process and the bearing that might have on media elicitation of violence. By the way, the mirror neuron piece on The Edge (link above, to which I originally pointed shortly after it appeared in June, 2000) provoked a lovely and challenging discussion thread there. [thanks, Marnie]

And, as long as The Edge is in our sights, here’s what’s there now: Software is a Cultural Solvent:
How Our Artifacts Will Be Able To Interact With Our Biological Forms,
A Talk with Jordan Pollack.

I work on developing an understanding of biological complexity and how we can create it,
because the limits of software engineering have been clear now for two decades. The biggest
programs anyone can build are about ten million lines of code. A real biological object — a
creature, an ecosystem, a brain — is something with the same complexity as ten billion lines
of code. And how do we get there?

Anthropology’s Alternative Radical: ‘ “He’s like a rock star,” said one graduate
student in anthropology. “He’s the professor that all the students think is cool.”

Among his colleagues in anthropology, however, there is no such consensus. (Michael)
Taussig owes his academic reputation to a body of highly unconventional work
on topics like devil worship, shamanism and state terror. Ominous and
otherworldly, his subject matter is inherently provocative. Yet it is his experimental
approach to ethnography, or case studies of other cultures, as well as his
occasional diatribes against the work of more traditional colleagues that have
made him a polarizing figure in the field.’ New York Times

N.Y. to London in 40 Minutes? Wired

Clean Your Fridge – Magnetic, yes. Poetry, no. “April is National Poetry
Month, and here’s a modest
proposal on how to honor it:
a brief moratorium on
Magnetic Poetry, those small
magnetic tiles stuck on
fridges across the country
and arranged in stray vectors
of significant verse.” Slate

Word Imperfect: “…The author of The Professor and the Madman—the best-selling tale of
the making of the Oxford English Dictionary—questions the legacy of the
definitive list of synonyms that the brilliant Peter Mark Roget compiled
150 years ago. Is the name Roget becoming a synonym for intellectually
second-rate?” The Atlantic

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

Sales Growth in Books Online Is Leveling Off. As a snob who would never live far from quality independent bookstores, I welcome this trend that’ll contribute to their continued survival. New York Times

Computer makers are building equipment
on the assumption that we are all
copyright outlaws. Law.com

Disrespecting the beliefs of others is
becoming a trend . Christian zealots disrupt a gathering of peaceful, drum-beating sunset-watching meditators in the Florida Keys, praying to save the heathens from Satan. Little did they realize Satan wasn’t there until they brought him. Sarasota Herald-Tribune

For Activists Today, It’s Marks, Not Marx. Phil Agre says: “Finally, a decent article about the new generation of active citizens.” Washington Post [via Red Rock Eaters]

Get those kids out of here. “Catwalk models may be getting younger, pop singers may be
pre-pubescent and the images of movie stars may be getting
more perfectly airbrushed but, in the world of modern dance,
wrinkles seem to be the coming thing… A surprising number of recent productions… suggest that
choreographers are finding themselves less entranced by the
perfect limbs of 20-year-olds than by the dramatic and physical
possibilities of bodies that have been lived in. The Guardian And: Worldwide Search on for Over-50s ‘Man
Band’ “Up to 5,000 hopefuls from all around the globe have applied to join an over-50s ‘Man Band’ and
prove to the record industry that pop fans are sick of endlessly cloned boy bands.

The London publicity company 15 Minutes has been deluged with applications from Tokyo to Sydney,
from Bangkok to New York.” Reuters But: The new principal dancer at the Royal Ballet is a 19 year-old wunderkind. BBC

I’m Sorry, I’m Not Apologizing, OK? “It struck many Americans as verging on the absurd that the return of the spy
plane crew hinged on protracted negotiations with China over the wording of a
(possible) apology.
If you think the subtle differences among carefully chosen expressions of
remorse are an arcane linguistic quirk of an ancient and hypersensitive exotic
culture, think again. We all play similar linguistic games every day when we
negotiate apologies in English.
The word ‘sorry’ sits right on that fine line between regret and fault.” LA Times

A matter of sex and death: “Ageing and our own mortality could be the price we pay for
human fertility”, says Professor of Medicine and theoretician of ageing Tom Kirkwood.

The distinction between germ-line and soma enabled such
amazing advances in the evolution of life that we might almost
forgive the terrible price we have paid. For it was this, not sex,
that caused us to age and die. … To understand why the soma/germ-line distinction is so
important for ageing, we should know that the germ-line
cannot be allowed to fail in its duty of keeping going
indefinitely. If it did — if, for example, it permitted damage to
build up in its DNA sequence — it would rapidly become
extinct. Some change to the DNA sequence must occur, or
evolution would be stalled, but the kind of damage that builds
up in the somatic cells of our bodies would be intolerable in the
germ-line… But with the soma, there is no
corresponding requirement for somatic cells to keep their DNA
in good shape indefinitely. It does not matter, biologically, if
our somatic cells eventually fall apart. The somatic cells
comprise the individual and that is all that they will be required
to do. Life in the natural world is brutish and short. All that the
organism needs from its somatic cells is that they can keep the
soma in good shape until an age when the likelihood of still
being alive is negligible. When we factor in that the care and
repair of somatic cells does not come cheap, it makes sense to
cut back maintenance of the somatic cells and to divert that
energy into helping with reproduction. The result was that the
soma became disposable, and with that came ageing. The Times of London

“Researchers in Chicago have built a cyborg, a half-living,
half-robot creature which connects the brain of an eel-like fish to
a computer and is capable of moving towards lights.

The device, developed at a research centre owned by Evanston’s
Northwestern University, consists of the brain stem from the
larva of a lamprey, a bloodsucking fish, attached by electrodes
to an off-the-shelf Swiss robot.” The Guardian

ACLU Action Alert: Oppose Covert Attacks on Reproductive Freedom! The newest front in the battle against reproductive freedom is a bill drafted with the assistance of the National Right to Life Committee and called the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act”, H.R. 503, which creates a new offense of injuring or causing the death of a fetus during the commission of a federal crime — an attempt to establish a dangerouslegal principle of the recognition of the fetus as an independent victim of a crime with rights distinct from the woman who has been harmed by a violent criminal act. Under the guise of protecting women, this is an unprecedented assault on a woman’s freedom of choice. Except to undermine reproductive freedom, there is no justification for a new law rather than more robust enforcement of existing laws against violent crime. One-click faxing to your U.S. Representative from this site to register your opposition.

“A difficult home
environment leads to an increased risk of criminal activity. Increased abortion
reduced unwantedness and therefore lower criminal activity.” New Attention for the Idea That Abortion Averts Crime: “John J. Donohue III of Stanford Law School and
Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago… insist, however controversial
its implications, that it is impossible to ignore what they say is a striking link
between the introduction of legalized abortion in the early 1970’s and the drop
in crime about 18 years later.” The argument appears flawed, starting from the inability to fix causation in a web of correlation. The public policy implications are even more convoluted. New York Times

Why it is crucial that elephants have good
memories The Independent

Chimps touched by television: “A new study suggests that
humans are not the only animals to feel
sad or scared when watching television
— chimpanzees are also moved by
video clips of fearful or appealing
scenes.

What’s more, Lisa Parr of Yerkes
Regional Primate Research Center in
Atlanta, Georgia has found that chimps (Pan troglodytes) respond
physically to events portrayed in videos just as they would to the events
themselves. Nature science

Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Inc.: “Our charitable purpose is to bring about the
Singularity – the technological creation of greater-than-human intelligence. We believe that the creation of greater-than-human
intelligence would result in an immediate, worldwide, and material improvement to the human condition.”

“I wouldn’t be
surprised if tomorrow was the Final Dawn, the last sunrise before the Earth
and Sun are reshaped into computing elements.” Making HAL Your Pal. “If a computer becomes sufficiently smart, the argument goes, and
if it gains the ability to harm humans through nanotechnology or some means
we don’t expect, it may decide it doesn’t need us or want us around.” Portrait of a grandiose 21-year-old autodidact who believes the dangers of the Singularity are so imminent he has devoted his life to attempting to persuade others of the necessity to enforce the friendliness of AI entities. Because he’s an avid science fiction fan, his efforts take a form akin to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, of course. Wired

Dr. James Watson as eugenicist; calls for legalization of genetic engineering of humans to rid the species of genetic flaws.

Pleasure has an element of surprise “The brain finds unexpected pleasures more
rewarding than expected ones, and it may have little to do with what
people say they like.” Telegraph UK

Crackers Expand Private War: “American cracker group PoizonBOx has defaced at least a hundred Chinese websites since April 4.
Chinese hackers are now vowing to retaliate with a planned week-long all-out crack attack on American
websites and networks which will start on May 1.” Wired

“Execution enthusiasts will have to wait until Friday at the latest to
find out whether they’ll be able to witness the death of Timothy
McVeigh live on the Web.

A Federal judge yesterday heard a petition from the Entertainment
Network Inc (ENI) which is seeking to change the law so that it can
broadcast the death by lethal injection of the man responsible for the
Oklahoma bombing.

ENI which specialises in online voyeurism (although mostly of young
college girl) claims it has a constitutional right to broadcast the
execution.” The Register

An end to recharging for mobile phones: “The plan is to replace rechargeable batteries in mobile devices with a miniature version of the
hydrogen fuel cell used to power electric cars, and recharge it with a super-efficient solar cell built
into the devices.

Until now, the tiny amount of space available in a mobile phone or PDA was too small to allow
integration of fuel cells and solar cells, Fraunhofer researchers told ZDNet. And it is a race against
time: as mobile electronic devices shrink in size and increase in functionality, they draw more
power. Manufacturers of solar cells meanwhile continue to raise the efficiency of their products —
some have achieved an efficiency of almost 25 percent — but they are still much too expensive for
the mass market.” ZDNet

“These are only preliminary results, but already they look quite interesting. I’m closer now to being
a lot more curious. Something is going on, but I won’t be a believer until we get something on film.” Ghostbusters Probe Phantom Menaces in Edinburgh. Reuters

Study Finds Herbal Remedy Useless Against Depression. “St. John’s wort, the popular herbal
remedy, proved useless in treating
depression in a carefully designed study
being reported today in the Journal of the
American Medical Association. New York Times

Where Did I Come From? “Tracking ancestors who entered the country through Ellis Island used to mean
poring through endless reels of microfilm.

Now, it can be as simple as a few clicks of a computer mouse.

On Tuesday, Ellis Island officials and the Mormon church introduced a new database containing arrival
records for the 22 million immigrants who entered the port of New York from 1892 to 1924. The database, which includes 70 percent of all U.S. arrivals recorded during that
period, will be available to Ellis Island visitors and on the Internet.” Wired A search of the Ellis Island website of the National park Service indicates that, despite publicity promising a Y2K opening, the American Family Immigration History Center is “Coming Soon in 2001: AFIHC

American Family Immigration History Center: New family history research facility that contains the ships’ passenger records on the over 22 million
people who entered through the Port of New York and Ellis Island from 1892-1924, the peak years of immigrant processing at Ellis Island. Visitors will
be able to access 11 fields of digitized information, as well as obtain reproductions of original ship manifests and photos of ships of passage. For more
information please contact the Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island Foundation, Inc., at (212) 883-1986.”

China Incident
Brings Out
Schizophrenia in
U.S. Say
Europeans. “The recent standoff with
China is just the latest in a
series of events that
highlight a schism within the
Bush administration over its
approach to international
relations. And Europeans are
worried…” about the disarray within the Bush administration, the U.S. tendency to act more and more unilaterally without concensus with European allies, and the increasing foreign policy focus on the Pacific and away from Europe. Utne Reader Meanwhile, the U.S. press is falling all over Li’l George‘s supposed combination of humility and resolve. “The national news media can’t make up its mind if George W.
Bush is Gary Cooper, John Wayne or a reincarnation of John F.
Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis.” The Consortium

Annals of Overreaching Intellectual Property Rights: Owning the Future: PB&J Patent Punch-up: “Hold on to your lunchboxes, Technology Review readers. This legal squabble pits J. M. Smucker, beloved maker of jam, against tiny, Gaylord, MI-based
Albie’s Foods. For reasons that elude me, Smucker’s lawyers decided to try to enforce the firm’s exclusive rights to—I’m not making this up—its patented
version of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” Technology Review

Net Access: Socket to Me. “Imagine surfing the Internet by simply plugging your computer into the wall outlet.

That’s the idea behind power line communications, which use low voltage electrical lines to transmit
voice and data signals.

Proponents say the technology beats the socks off other broadband methods by offering transmission
rates up to five times faster than cable modems for about half the price. Fast, cheap, ubiquitous
Internet. It’s a geek’s wet dream.

But before you start the heavy breathing, consider this: Although the technology has been hyped since
the late ’90s and companies from Argentina to Israel have been racing to get it up and running, the
future of powerline seems murky at best. And if you’re an American, your possibilities of ever getting broadband access through
the outlet next to the john are next to zero.” Wired

Narco News site being sued by prominent Mexican banker it accuses of being drug trafficker.

Narco News (was) launched a year ago to cover the war on drugs
in Latin America. For the past year, Giordano’s been producing Narco News from
“somewhere in a country called América,” as he signs his dispatches, taking on
powerful icons ranging from the New York Times and the Associated Press to the
governments of the United States and Mexico.

Among the icons with whom Giordano has tangled is Hernández, the principal
owner of Banco Nacional de Mexico, more commonly known as Banamex, which
Hernández bought from the Mexican government in 1991. Last August, Hernández
and Banamex sued Giordano, the Narco News Bulletin, and Mexican journalist
Mario Menéndez Rodríguez, accusing them of libel, slander, and “interference with
prospective economic advantage.”

The reason: Giordano and Menéndez, both in interviews last year with the Village
Voice and WBAI Radio and in a public appearance at Columbia University,
charged that Hernández is a drug trafficker whose profits helped to finance the
purchase of Banamex. Giordano also published those charges in Narco News. Boston Phoenix

Lone Guns Set Sites on Spam: “A self-appointed global army has taken on the mass Internet mailings that
annoy users and crash systems. It is a demanding and risky hobby.” LA Times

Emerging Disease News: States Regroup on West Nile Disease: “It is spring, and an epidemiologist’s thoughts turn
to the West Nile virus – the germ that arrived in this
country two years ago, imperiling lives and causing alarm along the
East Coast.” I had been wondering whether concerns about WNV would re-emerge this spring. The article has links to other coverage of West Nile worry.

Despite Appearances, Whitman Says She and Bush Agree on Environment: ‘(In) a recent interview in her office, she argued that she had felt
nothing at all after learning of the president’s reversal.

“It had nothing to do with me personally,” she said. Conceding that she “had
been in a different place” at first, she said she had come to accept the
president’s view that such regulation would be too costly to the economy and to
consumers.

“He was right, all things considered,” Mrs. Whitman said. “We’re in an energy
crisis, no two ways about it.”

She never considered resigning, she said.” The lady doth protest too much?? New York Times

Joey Ramone, Punk’s Influential Yelper, Dies at 49. He and I graduated from the same high school in the same year, but were only faces to each other.

Blogger, the tool I use to produce FmH, has struck a deal with Trellix that sounds like it will assure Blogger’s survival and, hopefully, improvement. Blogger functions will be packaged with “other (Trellix) site- building tools, bringing the
Web log concept to a wider audience”, as The New York Times (link above) puts it… for better or worse. The renowned Dan Bricklin was apparently instrumental in getting this to happen; here’s his account, from his (non-Blogger) weblog. While we’re on the Blogger subject, The Guardian UK has a step-by-step guide to the simple act of creating a weblog with Blogger.

The dialogue among four real-life psychoanalysts about the psychotherapy subplot on The Sopranos continues.

The four of us, as professional shrinks, keep raising a nagging
question, but none of us has thus far tried to answer it in detail.
Namely, does it make sense to try to treat a sociopath like Tony
in therapy? For one of the maxims of clinical experience that
everyone repeatedly hears in their training is that it is extremely
difficult, if not impossible, to treat sociopaths
psychotherapeutically. Although the meaning of this adage may be
clear to us–and I’m not sure that’s even true–we can’t just
assume that the readers of our exchanges know what we are
getting at.

So I will take a stab at trying to put the problem in nontechnical
terms. The question we have to ask ourselves about all our
patients is whether there is a healthy enough core to their
personalities–formed through the experience of being loved and
cared for as a small child–for them to become engaged in a
psychotherapeutic relationship.

The way analysts think about treatment is that it is the elucidation of unconscious processes — motives, conflicts — that improves a patient’s life, but that there is profound resistance (also unconscious) on the patient’s part to examining such issues. In psychoanalytic psychotherapy and classical psychoanalysis (which is not depicted on The Sopranos, and is more intense, involving sessions several times a week often using the “classical” couch, free association, the silence and impassivity of the analyst etc.) the therapist’s skill lies in knowing how to help the patient to get better despite her/his profound attempt to subvert the effort. This relies in large measure on entering into a relationship with a patient which will inevitably recreate all the patient’s dilemmas and conflicts in negotiating all their relationships, while the therapist remains aware enough of her/his own unconscious issues in doing business with others that they do not interfere. The shorthand terms for these two aspects of the relationship are, respectively, transference and countertransference. Examination of the patient’s complexities of feelings and reactions in this context is how learning and change take place.

These four psychoanalytic commentators find the TV depiction, in a sense, trite, because there is so much “acting out” on the part of the patients —

in other words, they are avoiding any sort of in-depth
look at their complex feelings (envy, hostility, dependency,
longing, etc.) toward their therapist and the therapeutic
relationship by seducing someone who’s the “next best
thing”–another patient of their therapist’s.

— but also on the part of the therapist, who “inadvertently” double-booked Tony and the Annabella Sciorra character, with predictable consequences. One would interpret this as representing Dr. Melfi’s unconscious way of extricating herself from the erotic bind between herself and Tony, and it compounds her actions of the previous week in sending Tony’s wife Carmela to a “hatchet man” therapist who, in premature bluntness unthinkable to any seasoned therapist (but presumably expectable to Dr. Melfi, as he was her teacher), pushed her to leave Tony.

The question is raised whether the writers are competently depicting an unsophisticated and out-of-control therapy or incompetently attempting to depict a sophisticated one. In any case, if you’re interested, you’ll learn alot about how psychoanalysts think by listening to them muse about the same show you’ve watched; scroll down to the first of the readers’ comments at the bottom of the column for an astute comment about what you might learn about yourself too. [Is this — by which I mean both the psychiatric plot and reading the commentary on it — interesting to any viewers of this show besides mental health professionals like myself? One FmH reader has already weighed in emphatically in the negative…]

Slate

Windows XP Hits Home. I don’t know who Andy Patrizio is, but he really likes the public beta of the Windows XP Home Edition. “Windows XP in its current state is an improvement over Windows ME
and a much better choice for a stable OS than Windows 2000. When it’s
finally released this fall, it will likely be worth the upgrade.” Wired

Not Quite What the Doctor Ordered: a testament to an obsession with Dr. Pepper; lists and rates the dozens of imitators, most of which are named “Dr. something-or-other“. Who knew??

Pulitzer Prizes in Arts Awarded: composer John Corigliano, playwright David Auburn (Proof), W.E.B. DuBois biographer David Levering Lewis, historian of the American Revolution Joseph J. Ellis, poet Stephen Dunn (Different Hours), novelist Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay), and Herbert P. Bix for Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan in nonfiction. The interesting thing about this New York Times article is that it dwells in an unprecedented gossipy manner on descriptions of the winners’ reactions to the news.

The early-adopter wars: “Stodgy companies are
paying big bucks to
learn about the
trendsetting tastes of
‘alpha consumers.’

The problem with all this is fairly obvious. There’s no doubt
that trendsetters (if any still exist after the bursting of the
new-economy bubble) are swell people: They create cool
art, sell ingenious drugs and open boutiques on Elizabeth
Street that specialize in things like inflatable burlap dresses.
What’s less clear is why mainstream conglomerates like
Taco Bell and Motorola should use their recondite
preferences as a basis for brand positioning.

[The article gives a rundown of what you ought to be finding ‘wired’ and ‘tired’ if you’re a trendsetter. Me? never heard of virtually any of the cool stuff…] Salon

“Crisis Inflames Bias Against Asians; Ethnic stereotypes in broadcast, print media prompt protests.” David Anderson at Metaforage pointed to this article in the same breath as he reflected on my coverage of Johnny Hart’s fundamentalist boldness in “B.C.” . He finds it all a sign of things to come now that the likes of Li’l George rule the roost. But the jingoistic anti-foreigner vitriol which makes me feel so embarrassed to be an American has happened every time there’s an international crisis with a nation whose people don’t look, talk, or worship like us. I still cringe when I think of the anti-Arab sentiment I heard during the Gulf War. And we have never seemed to grasp the distinctions between a people and their rulers, hating the one for the evils or failings of the other. Hating, and usually killing them with our sanctions…

Bush’s Budget: The Winners and The Losers. Washington Post

“To rely on the
[Federal] Reserve as a remedy for an emerging recession is optimism carried to
the point of foolishness.” — John Kenneth Galbraith. The Cult of Greenspan: He’s been worshipped as a god since he became Fed chairman in 1987 and, even though extremely offensive to populist sentiment, seemingly above criticizing. But it seems to be coming apart at the seams abit. Boston Phoenix

Field Guide to the FTAA Protest in Quebec City: ‘If you want to join us in Quebec City from April 20 to 22 (2001) to protest FTAA, this guide is for you. We suggest that you print it and bring it with you to Quebec
City. Make sure to have the latest version of this guide as it will evolve over time. We also suggest that you print the guide “Guess What We’ve Got Rights!”. ‘

Warm water. Because thermal transfer to the oceans has been hard to model, climate scientists until recently focused for evidence of global warming on the atmosphere, and failed to find that its higher levels have warmed significantly. This discrepancy cast doubts on the doomsayers’ scenarios. But now a new model can account for the heat absorbed by the world’s oceans. This reveals that the waters of the earth are indeed “the dominant part ofthe Earth’s climate system for storing heat,” according to the NOAA scientist who led the study. The observed rise in the oceans’ temperature over the past four decades ‘matches greenhouse predictions better than the smaller heat sink of the atmosphere’ and ‘adds up to “strongest evidence to date” that humans are causing global warming.’ New Scientist

Hearing is Believing: The blind writer describes his aurally-based awareness.

“Those of us who are born blind discover, as we grow up, that we can tell a
great deal about our environment. Usually at about seven or eight years
old we begin to put this knowledge into practice. When we tell sighted
people about this skill they usually misunderstand and often think we
possess some remnant of sight. When I was a small child I was guided by
my mother, my aunts, and occasionally my dad, who was less comfortable
with the task. Before long I began to notice that I could tell certain things. I
could tell when I was passing a car, when there was an open space near
me, when I was heading straight for a wall, or when there was a big
obstacle like a truck in my path—and I could tell all these things without
knowing how.” bent

Field Guide to the FTAA Protest in Quebec City: ‘If you want to join us in Quebec City from April 20 to 22 (2001) to protest FTAA, this guide is for you. We suggest that you print it and bring it with you to Quebec
City. Make sure to have the latest version of this guide as it will evolve over time. We also suggest that you print the guide “Guess What We’ve Got Rights!”. ‘

Just coming up: Navy Panel Urges No Court-Martial for Sub’s Skipper. “The Navy’s court of inquiry into the collision between an
American submarine and a Japanese vessel has recommended
that the submarine’s skipper not be tried by a
court-martial, senior Pentagon officials said.” A reprimand and early retirement are likely instead. It makes sense to me not to scapegoat the commander too directly, but not for the Navy’s reason, which is to maintain morale in the Pacific Fleet. The blame probably lies higher up, with those who turned a lethal high-performance war machine into an amusement park ride for high-rolling political campaign comtributors.

The testimony indicated that the submarine went to sea that day only for the
sake of the 16 civilians on board, three of whom were seated at some of the
controls at the time of the collision.

The Greeneville’s regularly scheduled training mission had been canceled as
unnecessary, so a third of the crew stayed in port during the exercise, and the
commander did not take measures to reassign other members of the crew to
cover the absentees. He was also unaware that 9 of 13 sailors manning watch
stations had switched positions without telling him.

Some equipment was not functioning properly, but the commander did not
discuss that with his senior officers, according to the testimony. Because of a long
lunch with the visitors, the submarine was running behind schedule, and was
rushing to make up time. As a result, four safety procedures, ranging from the
way the Greeneville tracked nearby ships to the way it surfaced and used its
periscope, were skipped or abbreviated.

After the accident, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a halt to the
practice of letting civilians take the controls of military equipment.

How to mollify Japan, with which we could never get away with the brand of lying diplomacy we recently perpetrated on the Chinese in the spy plane incident, will remain an interesting challenge. New York Times

The B.C. comic strip flap: Here is the Jewish Defense League’s call for adherents to appeal to local newspapers “not to allow this insult to be printed”, as it is scheduled to be tomorrow. Of course, the color supplements to the Sunday papers were printed a long time ago and the strip cannot be pulled at this late date, respond the newspapers. A copy of the strip appears on the site. The JDL says:

B.C. is pushing Replacement Theology (the theory that
Christianity has replaced Judaism as “The Chosen” because the Jews do not accept Jesus
as messiah) down the throats of the readers — many of them children — of the Sunday
comics. As the candles burn, the menorah (a sacred and venerated symbol of the Jewish
people) is obliterated and turns into a cross (the symbol of Christianity).

The Anti-Defamation League, at a different place altogether in the Jewish spectrum, does not call for the retraction of the strip but finds it

insensitive and
offensive. While not anti-Semitic, the comic
strip’s message is reminiscent of the
theology of contempt, which for centuries
played a central role in fomenting Christian
violence and hatred against Jews. It is even
more troubling because the comic strip
appears during Passover, a season that
Christianity had historically used as an
excuse to defame the Jewish religion with
charges of blood libel, Jews as
“Christ-killers,” and pogroms. Sadly, we
thought that the Christian-Jewish dialogue
had moved us beyond such crude
expressions of contempt.

Time magazine has some background on Hart’s proselytizing here.

A Google search on (“Johnny Hart” and B.C. and Christian) looks like this.

1000journals Project distributes 1000 blank journals, they pass around the world with each recipient adding documentation of time and place, stories and drawings and then passing them along. Would love to hear what becomes of this. [via boing boing]

Keyless mystery returns: “Bremerton (Wash.) residents and businesses
once again reported a mysterious failure
of vehicles’ keyless entry devices for
several hours Thursday afternoon…

In March, the keyless entry failures began
at the same time the aircraft carrier USS
Carl Vinson returned to Bremerton.
Thursday, the outages began one day
after the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln
arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.” Bremerton Sun [via Robot Wisdom]

The following is a very early draft of the letter sent by United States Ambassador to China Joseph H. Prueher to Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Tang prior to the release of the crew of the American surveillance plane. The letter was obtained by Rough Draft from sources in an alternate universe. (By Joel Achenbach, Washington Post)

Dear Mr. Minister:

We are sorry that our plane crashed on your island without obtaining the expressed written consent of your government at least 48 hours prior to the emergency.

We are very, very sorry that your brave pilot attempted suicide by flying his nimble fighter jet into our lumbering surveillance plane as it cruised through international airspace on autopilot.

We regret that aerodynamic principles required that we construct our plane out of metal, rather than out of cotton or silk or polyester or some other lightweight fabric that would have caused less damage in the collision your pilot instigated.

We are extremely sorry that this incident has strained the great friendship that has existed between our countries as a diplomatic fiction since the Nixon administration. We look forward to the resumption of the trust, good will and intensive espionage that is the historic foundation of our relationship. We are pleased that this unfortunate episode did not culminate in World War III, which we would have won easily.

We are a tiny bit sorry, but not really all that sorry, that we destroyed the electronic gear on our jet before allowing it to fall into your possession. We merely did not want you to feel sorrow yourself when you discovered that our military technology is not nearly as sophisticated as we claim it is in the written documents your spies have previously stolen.
Do what you will with the Polaroid cameras, sketch pads, binoculars and opera glasses we left behind. Note: The 24 pairs of “X-ray vision” glasses on board were obtained from the back of a comic book, and do not work worth a dang.

We are very sorry that, in a moment of overreaction to the crisis, we transferred the giant pandas from the National Zoo to the Sing Sing prison in New York State. We assure you that the conditions in the prison laundry and the license-plate manufacturing plant were relatively humane.

We are very happy to reflect that our countries share many similarities, such as the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when our professors lectured naked before marijuana-addled long-hairs, and your professors were exiled to “re-education” camps in a spasm of totalitarian horror. We are very, very sorry that you had that little problem with the Gang of Four. We’ve had some characters on our side, too.

We are pleased to report that, as a cultural gesture, Mao’s Little Red Book will finally be published in our country in Large Print Format.

We sympathize with your need to translate any and all portions of this letter as you see fit, even if it means turning the phrase “we did nothing wrong and wish you weren’t so paranoid” into “we prostrate ourselves before your mightiness and beseech your forgiveness.”

We are very, very, very sorry that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon did not win Best Picture.

Sincerely,

Ambassador Joseph H. Prueher [thanks, Paula]

(“I confess that this
psychographic niche — the Christian,
free-software-writing, Emily Dickinson-identifying
raver on the attack sub — was new to me”, says the essayist.) What Is It Like to Be a Bat Listening to Santana? “The latest crop of MP3
plug-ins give you a whole
new way of looking at
music. Will anyone ever
drop acid again?” Feed The title is a play on the classic 1974 philosophical essay by Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (and the thematic relationship is not trivial).

Rules of Disorder: on the American obsession with self-help books. “If the German craves discipline, the Italian
loves women, and the Russian lusts for vodka,
what does the American desire? Freedom comes
to mind, but judging by our cultural exports —
and the choice between Coke and Pepsi
notwithstanding — it’s not absurd for foreigners
to conclude that what Americans really love are
rules. Stretching from Dale Carnegie to Dr. Spock
to Ellen Fein, the modern tradition of rule-based
self-help books has edged out the short story as
the nation’s greatest contribution to world
literature.” Feed

Continuing my intermittent theme of the effect of language, this is an interview with Jonathan Miller in which he reflects on the book that would shape his worldview for the next forty years, philosopher JL Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. ‘ “For me, reading How To Do Things With Words is like having
a very, very good Swiss army knife with lots of blades and
scissors and things for getting pebbles out of hooves. Armed
with this, you can unpick an otherwise impenetrable problem.”

Austin’s breakthrough has had far-reaching effects on
post-1960s anthropology, child psychology and the legal
system. Miller applies his mentor’s teaching “at least daily, and
to every aspect of life” and finds it particularly illuminating
working in the theatre. ‘ The Times

Magic study scientists disappear to Las Vegas. “Two British scientists are to fly to Las Vegas to investigate magicians’ use
of psychology.

Dr Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire and Peter Lamont of
Edinburgh University believe that magicians exploit subtle details of how
the brain perceives the world to mount elaborate deceptions…

The magicians, who include Lance Burton and Max Maven, will be
videoed. A specialised eye tracker will then be used to investigate how
they manage to distract the attention of their audience with pacing, eye
contact and deliberate gestures. Dr Wiseman said: “This is their greatest
skill – attention manipulation. Close-up magicians doing coin and card tricks
are superb at making us look where they want us to.”

They will also study the magicians’ talent for lying to investigate if they
have better control over the subtle cues that we use to detect deception. Dr
Wiseman said that it was once thought that sleight of hand was all about
speed of movement. But it turns out that magicians do not rely on the hand
being faster than the eye, but on using slower – and less obvious –
strategies.

These are related to visual illusions, which occur when there is a breakdown
in the rules used by the brain to create a seamless 3D picture of the world
from the 2D information received by the eyes.

The Telegraph

Nursing neurons: “The first gene therapy trial for Alzheimer’s
disease begins.”

In treating neuro-degenerative diseases, gene therapy
provides an alternative to implanted neurons derived from
human embryos or fetuses. Gene therapy avoids this ethical
problem, but was severely tarnished by the death of teenager
Jesse Gelsinger during a 1999 gene therapy trial, which aimed
to correct a liver defect.

New Scientist

Safety in numbers: “Biodiversity is not just good for the soul – it
could help save the planet from global warming
too.” A University of Minnesota scientist warns that human destruction of biodiverse ecosystems destroys the potential escape valve from buildup of greenhouse gases. New Scientist

World’s most thrilling games you can play involving your search engine

Before the Big Bang BBC

Children attending the annual White House Easter Egg
Roll — a custom that dates from the 1870s — will be frisked
for stun guns by the Secret Service. The Times of London

School’s Mathematics Don’t Add Up. “I walked out of there, and I
tell you, my head was spinning. It
was like a cult. It was like they
were selling Amway or
something.” New York Post

Unsavory Practice. A homophobic Arkansas viewer received a rude reply when his complaint about a lesbian plotline on the ABC TV show The Practice was routed to the webmaster of ABC’s site. He threatened to publicize it broadly, and ABC management apologized deeply and fired the respondent.

The Name Game. The US Supreme Court ruled that Missouri couldn’t exclude the KKK from its adopt-a-highway program, but few would argue that the state doesn’t have the right to rename the highway the Klan is sponsoring!

Blogging may be passé for the most vainglorious among us; now you can host your own Internet Talk Radio show, with real callers, for free. Lycos

Harry Potter trailer not free at cinema chain. “General Cinemas movie theaters, which have been showing a new trailer for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, will not give refunds
to impatient fans who go to theaters, watch the trailer – which is less than two minutes long – then ask for their money back.” AP

The Wisdom Trap: A little self knowledge may be a dangerous thing; if you’re weak-willed, for example, it may be better to be naive about your failing than sophisticated, two economists argue. Lingua Franca

Not-so-free speech: 10 given ‘Jefferson Muzzle’ awards Nando Times

Why Mathematicians Now Care About Their Hat Color. “It takes a
particularly clever puzzle to stump a
mind accustomed to performing mental
gymnastics.

So it’s no ordinary puzzle that’s spreading
through networks of mathematicians like a
juicy bit of gossip. Known as the hat
problem in its most popular incarnation, this
seemingly simple puzzle is consuming brain
cycles at universities and research labs
across the country and has become a
vibrant topic of discussion on the Internet.” New York Times

Writers at Work: how to write the perfect author bio for the back flap of your book jacket… or maybe your weblog? Moby lives

Footnotes to History: “The nations you didn’t learn about in high school geography.”

How Bush Had to Calm Hawks in Devising a Response to China ‘Within his party, and even his administration, many chafed at China’s obstinacy,
and even at the administration’s decision to use the words “very sorry” to
describe Washington’s reaction to an incident that the Pentagon painted as
entirely China’s fault.

Yet in his first serious foreign policy challenge, Mr. Bush quickly suppressed his
initial instincts — which had led him to step out of his office and demand the
immediate release of the crew and the plane, with barely a nod to China’s
sensitivities.

He quickly took a more conciliatory approach that required tamping down some
of his administration’s hawks and many uniformed commanders. He even kept
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose troops were being detained,
from having any public role.’ New York Times

Doctor at Antarctic Station Is Stricken. For the second time, the only physician working at the Amundsen-Scott station at the South Pole has been stricken and had to do self-diagnosis. Dr. Ronald Shemenski appears to have acute pancreatitis, has done an abdominal ultrasound on himself, inserted a nasogastric tube, etc. Recall Dr. Jerri Nielsen’s October 1999 emergency evacuation after she was stricken and diagnosed her own breast cancer. New York Times

Fury.com: AOLiza. Hilarious transcripts of AOL chat-room denizens trying to engage a version of ELIZA. ELIZA was Joseph Weizenbaum’s 1966 creation, a program that simulates a Rogerian therapist by parsing excerpts from its interlocutors’ comments and reflecting them back as questions.

Using a publicly available Perl version of ELIZA, a Mac with nothing better to do than
play psychoanalyst, a few applescripts, and an AOL Instant Messenger account that has a high rate of
‘random’ people trying to start conversations, I put ELIZA in touch with the real world. Every few days
I’ll put up the latest ‘patients.’ Names have been changed to protect the… well, everyone.

Some claim that ELIZA passes the Turing Test, in which subjects cannot determine if they are talking to an actual human being. I’m not sure these AOL chatters pass the Turing Test themselves, though, after reading this…