SETI founder speaks about Intel P2P cancer
project. “If corporate America was involved in a community PC effort to find
these wonder cancer drugs, who would ultimately benefit?” The Register
“Japan is the global imagination’s
default setting for the future. ” Modern boys and mobile girls: William Gibson explains his fascination with all things Japanese, which is evident when you read any of his writing. And he flatters the British for their unique vantage point on the East. The Observer The little blurb about the author at the bottom, by the way, mentions that the title of his forthcoming book is Pattern Recognition. That‘s been another central concept in all his novels, hasn’t it?
I do miss the BlogVoices discussion capability now that I’ve eliminated it. The blog is loading much faster, and several readers have written celebrating the fact that they can read me more easily now, that BlogVoices broke their browsers in various ways. So it’s history. But I did enjoy bringing up the page and scanning down through the items I’d recently posted looking for the indication that there were comments posted, that this isn’t a one-way conversation. Even though that’s what blogging is supposed to be all about…
Reprinted from Looka! “Horrendous classical music joke of the day: A-one,
and a-two, and a-three … (*bomp*bomp*bomp*)
You say Carmina, I say Carmana,
You say Burina, I say Burana,
Carmina, Carmana, Burina, Burana.
Let’s Carl the whole thing Orff.
— Robert Feiertag, posting on soc.motss”
Cheaper Flat Panels Comin’ At Ya’ The Register
“For healthy people, mind reading is an innate and effortless
ability, even though it’s in fact very complicated. For people
with autism, it’s like doing mental arithmetic.” Mind theory: “The brain regions critical in allowing us to
understand another person’s thoughts are
revealed.” Several years ago, researchers found that, in autistic subjects, facial recognition of others uses the same brain regions as object recognition, not the distinct specialized areas for person recognition. Now, a complementary study shows that patients with Asperger’s syndrome (arguably related to autism) do not use distinctive brain regions, as non-AS subjects do, to solve problems involving figuring out or imagining what another person is thinking or feeling. They have an impairment in the capacity to form a ‘Theory of Mind’; more simply put, empathic ability. Extraordinary to think that specific brain regions subsume this skill; it gives new meaning to the notion of humans as the ‘social animal’. However, reading this research made me wonder (as it turns out in the last paragraph does the study’s author) whether these findings might enable us to probe the claim that other animals — notably chimpanzees — have the capacity for a Theory of Mind. New Scientist
UCSF researchers move in on role of brain’s naturally occurring marijuana: “Nearly a decade ago, researchers determined that the brain contains a molecule that mimics the active ingredient in marijuana, but its
location and role in the brain were unclear. Now, UCSF researchers have discovered that the molecule acts, at least in part, in a region of
the brain that plays a key role in learning and memory.
The study, reported in the March 29 issue of Nature, suggests, the researchers say, that the molecule, known as a cannabinoid, plays a role
in particular cognitive functions within a structure known as the hippocampus. Paradoxically, marijuana disrupts cognitive function and the
likely explanation, the researchers say, is that marijuana disrupts the very cognitive system the cannabinoid normally supports.” EurekAlert!
So Gore Really Won? “One day after the Miami Herald published a story that prompted
national headlines about George W. Bush being the real winner in
Florida, the newspaper effectively recanted.
In a new story in Thursday’s editions, the Herald acknowledged what we also
pointed out: that a careful examination of the Herald’s own data would have
led to a conclusion that Al Gore was the choice of Florida voters under a
reasonable standard judging the “clear intent of the voters.”
The Herald’s data revealed that by looking at the so-called ‘undervotes’ in all
67 counties and counting various markings for president, Gore would have
won Florida and thus the presidency.” The Consortium
Free-Floating Planets — British Team Restakes Its Claim. “An academic tug-of-war over worlds beyond our solar system continued Tuesday, with two British
scientists reasserting their claim to have found free-floating planets that others say are nothing of
the sort.” Departing from the commonly-understood concept of a planet as an object orbiting a star, the argument here is that measurements of these objects — in the Trapezium Cluster of the Orion Nebula — qualify them as planets because they are “sub 13Mjup”, i.e. less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter. Nothing smaller has sufficient temperature and pressure in its core to support fusion. The counterargument is that the calculations are off and that these objects are really more massive brown dwarf stars, “unattached balls of gas.”
I’ve been had! …along with alot of others, it seems. Thanks to a reader who alerted me to this. To be fair, I did ask you if you really believed the “We Deliver” spiel. ‘(T)he
We-Deliver.tv domain name is registered to Sputnik7, a
New York entertainment portal out to grab some eyeballs
by any means necessary.
The We Deliver Web site is a form of “stealth marketing,”
says Sommer Hixson, the company’s public relations director.
“We Deliver is Sputnik7’s first original, live-action ‘webisodic’
about a fictional weed delivery service in New York called
Green Acres,” she says. “The 10-part series will launch on
Sputnik7 on Friday, April 20. We-deliver.tv is a campaign
to create a pre-launch buzz.” ‘ Salon
DOJ: Cypherpunk Threatened Feds. “A federal prosecutor said on Wednesday that an Internet essayist spent
months illegally compiling information about IRS agents through CD-ROM databases and conversations
with members of a mailing list of ‘cypherpunks.’
Robb London, an assistant U.S. Attorney, said in court that Jim Bell was not conducting a legitimate
investigation of government wrongdoing last year but instead was a disturbed person who had never
renounced a political treatise he wrote entitled ‘Assassination Politics‘, (a) long-winded thought experiment predicting how future
technologies including untraceable digital cash, encryption and anonymity should allow
anyone upset with the feds to bet on when a certain government agent will die. The
winner, presumably the assassin, wins the pool of money… Bell has pleaded not guilty to five counts of interstate stalking that allegedly took place
last year, saying he was legally assembling information about government agents he
thought were participating in a conspiracy involving illegal surveillance. ” Wired Wired correspondent Declan McCullagh, who has covered the Jim Bell affair and is covering the trial, was forced to testify over his objections that he might be compelled to reveal the identities of confidential sources of some of his information. The Register McCullagh describes the first day’s proceedings here. cluebot.com
Three New Places to Fight Hate. “Hate speech may flow freely on the Internet, but it just got a powerful rebuttal in the form of a trio of
new websites preaching tolerance.
The three sites will help fill a vacuum left by Hatewatch.org, which closed shop in January after its
founder said hate groups had failed to gain widespread acceptance on the Internet.” Wired
The neural correlates of person familiarity. More interesting and powerful findings from functional MRI. Comparing the brain activation patterns of people seeing familiar vs. unfamiliar faces, and listening to familiar vs. unfamiliar voices, reveals the neural correlates of familiarity or recognition — areas of the posterior cingulate gyrus of the cortex, for those who know neuroanatomy. I have long been interested in the dramatic psychotic symptom called Capgras’ delusion, which involves the belief that familiar others have been replaced by nearly — but not quite — identical duplicates. Extreme cases in which the patient was convinced that their entire city was replaced by a near-duplicate have been described. The deep resonances of this terrifying experience are reflected in such classic films as Invaders from Mars and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which the panic-stricken protagonists cannot convince others that people around them are being replaced or controlled.(Of course, on another level, films of this ilk are talked about in the context of our Cold War societal complex about Communist brainwashing and takeover — which may be coming back into fashion — but that’s a different story; I think they speak to something far more primal.) It has long been observed that the Capgras delusion occurs both in “functional” psychoses (e.g. schizophrenia) and a variety of “organic” conditions (e.g. carbon monoxide poisoning). Back in psychiatry’s dark ages of either/or, this was one of the early suggestions that functional mental illnesses were diseases of the brain as much as of the mind.
I have been suggesting for a long time that the Capgras symptom arises from a disorder of the machinery underlying the sense of familiarity in the brain, and that it might have some similarity to other so-to-speak delusions of unfamiliarity. For example, there is a class of paranoid patients whose concerns revolve around the conviction that people come into their homes while the patient is asleep or out, rearranging or absconding with things there. I suspect that the failure of these patients to retain a sense of familiarity about the arrangement or placement of the objects in their environment is the basis of their belief that things have been meddled with. There is also a particular set of paranoid fears that arises as memory and familiarity fade with the progression of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. There is also a symptom called derealization, in which people have a strange sense that the world around them is not real but a caricature or cartoon version of itself; they cannot articulate percisely what is different, but they know it is. This often occurs in temporal lobe epilepsy, which can involve the cingulate gyrus, and is related to frequent deja vu experiences, clearly a disorder of the sense of familiarity. Now, with the demonstration of neural correlates of the experience of familiarity, even if no new treatment interventions arise, a convincing explanation may at least some of the time be a comfort to the patients so afflicted, or their families. As an aside, I’m curious to see whether the more disembodied familiarity of media celebrities is subsumed by the same machinery as the more intimate experience of the familiarity of our associates, friends and family. Brain
An FmH reader writes that this is probably the real reason San Diego is dropping the use of the word ‘minority’ in its documents. “Yes, I think this should be derided, but not for the reason you give“, he says, alluding to my lampooning such apparent political correctness.
Monsanto v. Percy Schmeiser. A disturbing story to which I was originally pointed by jimwich, here summarized on Tompaine.com. 40% of farmers in Western Canada, including farmer Percy Schmeiser’s neighbors, grow generically modified canola. Pollen from his neighbors’ fields blew onto his land and, when Monsanto took seed samples from his canola crop without his permission and found “their” genes, they sued under Canadian patent law that makes it illegal to re-use patented seeds without a licensing agreement. Now Schmeiser is forced to pay thousands of dollars in royalties on GM seeds found on his land without his having bought the seeds or benefited from their inadvertent presence in his crop (they were engineered to be resistant to a Monsanto weed killer Schmeiser does not use). IMHO, this story, perhaps the first of many in Monsanto’s promised draconian crackdown on “seed-savers”, illustrates the real disaster of agribusiness giants’ taking proprietary control of crop genomes through GM. Placing the burden of assuring non-contamination with GM materials on the individual producer is an insidious means of crushing independent competition. This is far more worrisome than speculative and largely misplaced concerns over direct biological effects of engineered genes on the foodchain.
“…some of the most extremely violent rhetoric, from both sides, that
I’ve ever heard between a government and a terrorist organization…” “Muslim extremists who have been holding
an American hostage for the past eight months threatened to behead
their captive and send the head as a birthday present to President
Arroyo Thursday.
The Abu Sayyaf said the head of Jefrrey Schilling, the 25-year-old
Oakland, California native whom the group has held in the jungles
of Sulu since August last year, will be sent as “a gift” to the President
for her 54th birthday.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Arroyo declared yesterday all-out war against the
Abu Sayyaf rebels and ordered troops to take no prisoners unless the
bandits surrendered.” Phillipine Star A discussion thread on Plastic in reaction to this story suggests that the hostage is apparently an American Muslim who sought out the rebels himself “to hang out with them,” then got into trouble because he couldn’t answer their questions on Islamic doctrine.
San Diego will drop use of word ‘minority’ in its documents. Calling someone a minority implies that he or she is inferior, says sponsor of the measure which passed the San Diego City Council unanimously yesterday. “Schoolteachers and others, often
unconsciously, expect less of those who are labeled members of minority
groups. Those classified as minorities may even expect less of themselves…” No more consciousness-raising; the only politically correct solution these days is consciousness-lowering.
Do you believe this? We Deliver is an online drug dealing service that “got a really, really good idea”, they say, by reading the U.S. Postal Code closely. It turns out that the Netherlands legalized euthanasia in November, 2000. It also turns out that postal inspectors in the U.S. are “prohibited from the internal examination of any
package containing the remains of a human whose life
be deemed legally and prematurely ended from without
the borders of the United States”, a provision originally intended to insure that the remains of soldiers who die abroad are unimpeded in getting back to their grieving families. So We Deliver hooks you up with the ashes of your long-lost and recently-euthanized Dutch relatives, they say. “…For a reasonable fee, we
set it up so that a guy in Amsterdam will send you a
little bit of the deceased’s ashes. And he’ll measure out
the exact amount of ounces (or pounds) of ashes that
you wanna order, put it in a box, slap on an official
Netherlands ‘Euthanized Remains – Urgent’ sticker and
send it to yer address.” You receive your package, open it and, lo and behold, find that the shipper goofed and it is not ashes but an equivalent weight of some other ‘stuff’. “Of course you might still be a little skeptical. You don’t
know for sure if we legit. And that’s why we givin’
away a free joint to everyone who signs up for our
newsletter before 4/20/01. Try it out, see if you like it,
and then see if you don’t come back. We Deliver, y’all.” [via Plastic]
Read Any Good Pictures Lately? In Reading Pictures: a history of love and hate, a sequel to his A History of Reading, Argentinian writer and critic Alberto Manguel “coax(es) every possible allusion from the shadows… deconstruct(ing) the picture’s meaning for the artist while enriching the viewer’s understanding of what we are looking at, and why our responses can be so intense and complex”, in a meandering, eclectic way. The Independent
George Bush is sorely mistaken if he thinks there’s nothing that Britain and the rest of the world can do about US renunciation of the Kyoto accords on greenhouse gas emissions. Boycotts, restitution, withdrawals and expulsions, will follow. And any Briton who visits the US will be expected to drive on the left. The Guardian
Socially inept, self-involved and geeky? Temple Grandin, “perhaps the world’s best known sufferer of Asperger’s Syndrome”, recognized a fellow traveler in Kevin Mitnick when she watched him in a TV interview about a year ago. She, and others, have been thinking about whether AS is an indication that a child is at risk of becoming a hacker. Mitnick himself identified with a fellow hacker imprisoned with him and diagnosed as having Asperger’s. Some counter that Asperger’s is closely associated with rigid rectitude; if not hackers and crackers, how about a link between AS and nerdiness in general? USA Today
Lightly Braised Adverbs. Pay attention to the verbiage of the modern menu to learn when you should run, don’t walk, from that jovial eatery before you waste your money. Irish Times
Distant Supernova Dark Energy. “Light from a star that exploded over 10 billion light-years away is revealed in… a cosmic snapshot of the most distant
supernova. The ancient stellar detonation was detected by digitally subtracting before and after images of a faint, yellowish, elliptical galaxy included in the
Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field image… Remarkable in itself as the farthest known supernova, its measured brightness
provides astounding evidence for a strange universe – one which eventually defies gravity and expands at an accelerating rate. The unseen force driving this
expansion is dubbed dark energy and discovering the fundamental nature of dark energy has been called the challenge of this millennium. Astronomy Picture of the Day
The real computer virus is the Internet’s unmatched capacity for distributing misinformation. When the mainstream media prints an item that seems, in an old newsroom phrase, “too good to check”, it probably is too good to be true.
…In recent months I have found myself quietly
checking the validity of almost everything I find in
cyberspace and whenever possible doing it the
old-fashioned way: consulting reference books in
libraries, calling professors or original sources on the
phone, double-checking everything…Seven years ago, AJR warned that an over-reliance
on Lexis-Nexis was leading to a “misinformation
explosion.” Since that time, the number of journalists
using the data retrieval service has increased
exponentially; at many news organizations, libraries
have been phased out and reporters do their own
searches. This has led, predictably, to an entire subgenre
of phony quotes and statistics that won’t die. American Journalism Review
“How did everything get to be so complicated? For most people,
a rueful exclamation; for Stuart Kauffman, the most interesting
question about the universe.” A review of Investigations:
Kauffman’s approach to explaining how such things can be is
unconventional. A philosopher turned doctor turned theoretical
biologist, he works out of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico,
where the house style is computer simulation of just about
anything. In his last book, At Home in the Universe , he outlined
the power of self-organisation, arguing that there are laws that
can generate order where we don’t expect it. In Kauffman’s
computer-generated universe, stable structures appeared where
intuition predicted a mess. Wherever he looked – in networks of
interacting genes, in vats of chemicals or in the patterns of
decision that tie producers to consumers in the marketplace –
he saw “order for free”.In Investigations, one puzzle he wants to cast in a new light is
how to read the energy exchanges that underpin all these
processes.…The book
is undeniably heavy going in places. Some of the chapters take
for granted science that another writer would explain at length.
Although there are plenty of concrete examples, much of the
core argument keeps trying to turn back into mathematics. Yet
Kauffman’s obsessive probing of the limits of understanding is
pretty gripping, in its way. The book may be science. It may be,
as he suggests hopefully, proto-science. It is certainly a crash
course in how to think like Stuart Kauffman, which is a great
way to see blind spots in the science that already exists. The Guardian
“Holier Than Thou” morality study shows why you probably aren’t as nice as you think. “We knew something had to be wrong when the average person thinks he or she’s a better person than the average person, when the majority of Americans
consider themselves to be members of an elite moral minority. We wanted to know whether people feel holier than thou because they underestimate others’ moral goodness, or because
they overestimate their own.”
Ten Reasons for Reparations: “Conservative muckraker David Horowitz has been verbally mugged for peddling
an ad to college newspapers giving ten reasons why reparations are racist. But the
name callers have done little more than canonize Horowitz as a martyr for truth and
free speech. Even worse, they’ve failed miserably to tell why reparations merit a
serious look. There are ten compelling reasons it does.” AlterNet
Media Gives Bush a Free Pass: ‘The incident occurred in Fort Worth on Feb. 25 when a “very intoxicated” college
student was arrested at a rowdy fraternity party and was, according to the county
sheriff, “very vocal” that his girlfriend was George W. Bush’s teenaged daughter,
who’d also attended the party. After the student used his cellular phone to make a
call from his cell, Secret Service agents quickly arrived to get him out. Bush’s
daughter reportedly waited outside the jail in a Secret Service vehicle.
The White House wouldn’t comment on the matter, and the story disappeared from
the news in a day.’ AlterNet
(Ariana Huffington’s overthrowthegov.com)
“It made me feel like a very cool cyborg surgeon…” It’s in the Eyes. Surgeons complain of being distracted by having to look up from their operating field to view data on a computer screen. Now doctors at the Mayo Clinic are finding “useful and not distracting” a retinal-scanning device that “paints” images and data directly on their eyes, allowing them to review crucial information without ever having to look up from the patient. ‘The main computer sends the needed data to miniature
horizontal and vertical scanners in the control module that then
project the image through the headpiece’s optical element,
where a laser beam places it directly onto the user’s retina.
James says the data looks like it’s being projected onto a “big,
transparent TV screen that’s floating in space about an arm’s
length away from you.” ‘Wired
It reminds me of a scene from Spy Kids, which I saw with my son this weekend. The big sister is outfitting her little brother with his spy gear as they gear up to save their captured secret agent parents. She slips onto his face a set of sunglasses with a computer display on their inner surface superimposed on the visual field. He immediately says “Yecchh!” and she asks him what he sees. “You!” he replies (I guess you had to be there…)
Have You Hugged the Internet Today?. Today has been ‘Back the Net Day’, “a
one-man campaign to revive e-business by
encouraging people to buy online. Or send
online cards, or buy worthless tech stocks
… whatever, just log on now! The Internet
needs you!” Empathize with your local ex-dot.com-billionaire. The Standard
Annals of the Age of Depravity (cont’d.): Stepmother Forces Boy to Stitch Up Mouth
W’s Brave Old World: ‘New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd – who made endless fun
of Al Gore for his earth-tone sweaters, his Palm Pilot and his
connection to the book Love Story – isn’t one for making apologies.
But she’s come close to admitting that her election-year ridicule of
Gore might have helped put a dimwitted reactionary in the White
House.
“Forgive me, Al Gore,” Dowd wrote in a column on Bush’s drive to turn back the
clock on the environment and foreign policy. “I’m going hungry for a shred of
modernity.” With her second thoughts about making a mockery of Al Gore and his itnerest in the future, Dowd might not be alone.’ The Consortium
The Macedonian extremists may be dangerous, but they’re not crazy; peace is not the only option. by Paul Glastris, a senior fellow at the Western Policy
Center, who served as a speechwriter for President Clinton
and covered the war in Bosnia for U.S. News & World
Report. Slate
‘Yeti’s hair’ defies DNA analysis. “British scientists on the trail of the Yeti have found some of
the best evidence yet for the existence of the mythical
Himalayan creature — a sample of hair that has proved
impossible to identify.
Genetic tests on the hair, which was gathered from a tree in
Bhutan, have failed to match its DNA to that of another animal.
The findings, which have surprised sceptical researchers, raise
the strong possibility that the sample belongs to an as yet
undiscovered species.” The Times of London
After a comprehensive look at “Jesus through the ages” to illustrate how the Church has repeatedly reinvented him to maintain popular appeal, Fade to Black does its part “in helping the Church create the updated image of Jesus for the new Millennium”, with its Jesus 2000 Contest.
Memento Mori By Jonathan Nolan —
The short story that inspired the film Memento is available online in its entirety, courtesy of Esquire.
Whoops! An LA Times article on the joys of collecting wild edible mushrooms was inadvertently illustrated with a photograph of an amanita, which can be poisonous. Here’s the erratum.
Tolerance Ads To Infiltrate Web Sites Of Hate Groups. You may recall my coverage of the exploits of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center, on my most-worthy-charities list for many years for their effective work in breaking the back of rightwing hate groups. The SPLC has gotten Yahoo to provide $3 million woth of ad space over the next three years for “in-your-face ads urging tolerance and racial harmony”. While they’re going to be broadly disseminated, the organizers will be positioning them to come up especially for Yahoo users searching for hate sites and extremist chat rooms. Reportedly, Yahoo has allowed more than 100 “white pride and racialism” clubs among the thousands of community clubs it hosts.
The SPLC is also launching a new site, tolerance.org, with content like:
Click-on maps to locate hate groups and human rights organizations in your
city.A hands-on primer on four hate groups on the Web and ”how they disguise
their message under a veneer of respectability.”Tips such as ”101 Tools for Tolerance”; online forums for parents, teachers
and caregivers; and ”Planet Tolerance” for youth.Six do-it-yourself, five-minute ”image association” tests for unconscious
biases: black and white race bias, age bias, gender bias, skin-color bias,
Asian-American bias and body-image bias. Results remain anonymous.
About time the pot called the kettle black? North Korea And Cuba Take Aim At Human Rights In US Genocide. Rape. Murder. Racism. Executions.
Systematic child abuse.
Such was the list of charges leveled Monday against the U.S.during the U.N.Human Rights Commission annual meeting.
And those pointing the finger? North Korea and Cuba.
Flocking & Schooling. A computer simulation shows that flocking/schooling behavior results from the application of three simple rules in a leaderless system. The original principles have been used to program realistic screen animations such as the stampede scene in The Lion King and bats swarming in several movies. There’s a link to a swarming program you can d/l. [via boing boing]
Email ‘joke’ leads to bus strike The Register
D.C. Officers Upbraided Over E-Mails. “Elected officials from Capitol Hill to city hall chastised D.C. police officers yesterday for sending racist, vulgar and homophobic messages on their squad car computers over the last year, and legal experts said the e-mails could expose the department to lawsuits and provide fodder for criminal defense attorneys.” The behavior was reportedly found in routine internal monitoring of patrol computer usage and email traffic, but The Register, in pointing to this Washington Post story, also blinked to this reprint of an alt.radio.scanner usenet group discussion on “how easy it is to intercept the supposedly secret traffic on
the Motorola mobile data terminals used by many police forces to access
criminal history and other sensitive information.”
Hanging Gardens of Where? “Name the Seven Wonders of the World.
OK, name one.
If you think of any of them, don’t worry. Few people besides 6th graders and ancient history scholars can
name them all. In fact, only one of the original ancient wonders survives: the Egyptian Pyramid at Giza, built
around 2600 B.C. and the oldest structures on the list. Over the millennia, the monuments have been
destroyed by earthquakes, fires, sandstorms and marauding armies.
Now there’s a campaign under way at new7wonders.com to pick seven new symbols of humanity’s greatest
achievements. So far, more than 2 million people from over 200 countries have cast their ballots, according to
the site… So far, the Mayan pyramids at Chichen Itza in Mexico top the list. Mexicans, by the way,
have cast 30 percent of the ballots in the poll, which concludes June 30.” Wired
Conan Doyle ghost story resurrected A rough and ready ghost story written 125 years ago by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle when he was an 18-year-old student will be published for
the first time today…
(R)ejected for publication at the time, (i)t has since been considered too
immature to appear in print.
But Conan Doyle’s executors were persuaded to publish after academics
suggested that the story featured characters they considered to be the
precursors of his most famous creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.” Telegraph
Writing Off Into the Sunset. The somewhat serpentine book-to-movie connection. Publishers Weekly
Earthquake As Artist [thanks, Abby]
The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
The reality of the ‘internet toaster’: “An ingenious British student … has designed a (toaster) that grabs the weather forecast and burns it onto a piece of bread.” The Register
Did atheist philosopher Alfred Ayer see God when he ‘died’? The National Post
Tom Rapp is back! I just learned by hearing an interview on NPR this morning that the Sixties songsmith (who once finished ahead of Robert Zimmerman in a New York talent contest) released a new studio recording last year — A Journal Of The Plague Year.. The NPR interviewer commented that Rapp is well thought of by many younger musicians who weren’t even out of diapers when his band Pearls Before Swine — consisting of the loose assemblage of whoever Rapp gathered around him in the studio — was around… but this fan is old enough to remember him fondly from back then, and I still have them on vinyl and a rerelease of the first two, most interesting, Pearls albums One Nation Underground and Balaklava (originally on the venerable ESP Disk underground record label where Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Paul Bley, the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders among others resided) on CD. Sonic Youth and others acknowledge him as an inspiration, and there was a 1997 tribute album by lots of artists I’ve never heard of. Rapp has been a civil rights lawyer in Philadelphia for many years and says his work is too important for him to take time off to tour behind his new recording.
In browsing around for material on Rapp and Pearls Before Swine, I just hit upon this wonderful and encyclopedic site, Fuzz Acid & Flowers, ” (an) extensive guide to U.S. psych(edelic) and garage music 1964-1972.
The infamous Laura Schlessinger recently said on her radio program that as an observant
Orthodox Jew homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22
and cannot be condoned in any circumstance. The following is an open letter
to Dr. Laura which is doing the email chain letter rounds:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have
learned a great deal from your radio show, and I try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual
lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an
abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the specific Bible laws and how to follow them.a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
She’s 18 and starting University. Will the slave buyer continue to pay for
her education by law?c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female,
provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims
that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? …. Why
can’t I own Canadians?e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself, or should this be a neighborhood improvement project? f) A friend of
mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10),
it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?…g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a
defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Would contact
lenses help?h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How
should they die?i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me
unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different
crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two
different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town
together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16) Couldn’t we just burn them to
death like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and
unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.
Update on the Bremerton, Wash. keyless remote mystery [via Robot Wisdom]
News to dance to: Milosevic ‘under arrest’. “Slobodan Milosevic, the indicted war criminal responsible for 10
years of war and bloodshed in the Balkans, was reportedly
arrested by Serbian authorities last night, six months after his
regime was toppled by a popular uprising on the streets of
Belgrade.” Apparently prompted by a U.S. threat of economic penalties if Serbia does not meet an impending deadline for cooperation with the Hague war crimes tribunal, the arrest is the culmination of a power struggle between President Kostunica, a firm opponent of handing Milosevic to the Hague, and Prime Minister Dzindzic, eager to see Milosevic in custody. However, that he is being arrested for his war crimes may be only the egocentric assumption of the West. This BBC analysis enumerates a number of other claims against him which might actually be the basis of the warrants. The Guardian
Scientists Stunned by Gender-Bender Chromosome: “Surprised scientists said Thursday that nearly half of all genes related
to the earliest stages of sperm production reside not on the male sex
Y chromosome as expected, but on the X chromosome, universally
considered the female sex chromosome.
The finding… may cause scientists to have second thoughts about the gender identity of the X chromosome.”
Blogger’s been down for an upgrade for awhile, so there have been no new posts recently. Watch this space…
Anti-abortion activists were exercising free speech rights when they published wanted-style posters branding abortion providers as “baby butchers,” said the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Throwing Out a Major Anti-Abortion Verdict. I’m as vehement a free speech advocate as anyone, and support the ACLU (as you know if you read this weblog regularly), but the court is just wrong here. The court feels that it’s speech, not an action like, say, conspiracy to murder (which is performed by words too), because the publishers can’t be responsible for what an anonymous reader does. “If defendants threatened to commit violent
acts, by working alone or with others, then their
statements could properly support the verdict.
But if their statements merely encouraged
unrelated terrorists, then their words are
protected by the First Amendment.” But it’s impossible for me to see any purpose in publishing the names, home addresses and license plate numbers of abortion providers, as the publishers of the “Nuremburg Files” webpage in question did, unless you’re suggesting that someone in your audience hunt them down and terrorize or kill them. And, as you know, three doctors whose names were on the list were indeed assassinated, their names triumphally crossed off the list after each deed.
March 19-24, 2001 Aurora Gallery The action began Monday, March 19th, when a coronal mass ejection from the Sun hit
Earth’s magnetosphere. Three days later on Thursday, March 22nd, a weak interplanetary shock wave –the leading edge of a
coronal mass ejection that left the Sun on March 19th– buffeted Earth’s magnetosphere. The impact
sparked a period of high-latitude auroras that dazzled Alaskans and other northerners.
Dept. of ‘Heely’ sightings: “I live in the Bay Area, northern
California. Saw my first heel-wheel about three weeks ago. This early
adopter was a boy about ten. Saw my second last Sunday. Another ten year
old boy. Both sighting were in malls. A new thing to ban.” Thanks, and keep those reports coming in. The pushpins are going up on the map.
Hot brains. Researchers in Hong Kong compared teenagers on an attentional taks, and found that the variable that correlated best with whether they did well o rmore poorly was whether they owned a mobile phone. Phone users did better, whether their phones were switched on or not during testing. Previous studies had suggested that cognitive functions are enhanced with exposure to microwave radiation at wavelengths similar to that emitted by cellular phones. But was it their phone use per se that enhanced the performance on this task, or merely some other factor — probably demographic or socioeconomic — that correlates with phone ownership? It would be interesting to see if the degree of performance enhancement in a large sample population correlated with the length of ownership or volume of use — some variable that might get at accumulated lifetime microwave flux — of a cellular phone. New Scientist
The first split second. A mindboggling rundown of ways to look back at the first 1/10^38 (that’s “one over ten to the thirty-eighth power”) second of the universe’s existence. New Scientist
How Secure Is Digital Hospital? A showcase all-digital hospital being built by Oracle and healthSouth in Alabama may have ‘major security flaws’ relative to its electronic medical records. Wired
The MIT Media Lab has created the concept of meme-mail, a way for readers of those frequently-forwarded pieces of “internet lore” we get in our inboxes so frequently to have accumulated anonymous data about who else has seen the message already. “We hope that by providing this information,
these messages will establish a stronger sense of their audience and community.” Here’s what the meme-mail FAQ, which is what the link above links to, answers the question, “Why are you supporting Internet chain letters? Aren’t these a waste of resources?”
We think frequently forwarded email has become an important grass roots way for individuals to circulate meaningful information to a wider audience.
Because messages are only forwarded widely when many people find them interesting, it actually employs a reasonably efficient, decentralized means of
resource allocation. MEMEmail enhances the decentralized nature of these messages by allowing people to get a sense of the messages’ audience. Previously,
this only happened when a centralized, mass medium like TV or a newspaper decided to report on the popularity of some piece of Internet lore.
Did anyone notice whether my post yesterday on E-Prime was itself written in E-Prime? An FmH reader, who writes for a living as a reporter himself, emailed me to say he’s written several articles in E-Prime, including one that can be found online, although his editor inserted an ‘is’ verb in that one and ruined the effect.
U.S. Won’t Follow Climate Treaty Provisions, Whitman Says. Yesterday, I mentioned the New Scientist editorial advising the rest of the world to get on with implementing the Kyoto accords without counting on the US. The editorial mentioned that it was probably too late for the US to get onboard with the accord because of the changeover in administration and the lagtime for Congressional approval of treaties. Now it’s clear that the US won’t even try. New York Times
At the White House, Parse-Fail Grading? Ari Fleischer is stacking up as one of the more disingenuous White House spokespeople in recent history, exerting aggressive spin and semantic hairsplitting to discredit accurate stories that paint the administration in a harsh light. Fleischer’s staff has also started calling the media to complain about photographs depicting the Illegitimate Son in a less than flattering way… which is going to keep him busy, since — recall that series of photos that came out during the campaign juxtaposing a series of his facial expressions with those of our primate cousins? — he continues to strike me as simian-looking every time his picture is taken. Washington Post
South Korea Cool to Europe’s Offer. Reportedly disappointed by a cool reception when he met with Dubya two weeks ago, South Korean president Kim may have signalled the EU that he would welcome their ministrations on behalf of the stalled reconciliation process with North Korea, but a South Korean spokesperson is now backing away from European offers to intercede. Dubya may have been irked by Kim’s standing firm about reservations about the NMD program; in any case, the Shrub appears to have expressed his stereotypical kneejerk skepticism about whether the Communist North could be trusted in the peace process. Attaboy, George, another sophisticated blow for world peace. I’ll bet the U.S. has placed pressure on Kim not to embarrass us publicly by going with the European, more conciliatory view. International Herald Tribune
This, and all foreign policy moves by the Shrub’s admiistration, have to be watched through the lens of the now-well-publicized divisions among his foreign policy team. New York Times Recall, at about the time we were all worried about the Ashworth nomination for Attorney General, I took note of analysts who suggested that Donald Rumsfeld’s accession to the Defense Dept. was really the one progressives should have tried to defeat. It appears that Rumsfeld is collecting a group of hardliners who scoff at Colin Powell’s more thoughtful and, literally, diplomatic — although by no means liberal — approach at the State Dept. Foreign policy theaters in which their doctrinal differences will be tested include engagement in the Balkans, the European rapid deployment force, arming the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein, reform of our sanctions program in Iraq, the destabilization of the arms race with Russia and to a lesser extent China by the national missile defense proposals, selling advanced weapons systems to Taiwan, and the above-mentioned Korean issues, where the Clinton administration proposed the North give up missile programs in return for our provision of several nuclear reactors. VP Cheney may well turn out to be a power broker in this internal conflict, and is assembling a powerful foreign policy team around himself as well. Analysts see him as tilting toward the Pentagon’s position. So far, where Condoleeza Rice situates herself in the hurly-burly is not clear. What’s a poor President to do? It ought to be entertaining to watch, at least … if it doesn’t get us all killed.
“Major League Baseball will begin charging fans to
listen to audio broadcasts of its games over the Internet , a stark
illustration of how content owners are trying to find business
models that work in the online medium.
The subscription plan, which will cost users $9.95 a season,
signals an end to the ability of fans to get radio feeds of
baseball games free on the Web… The decisions, from two of the three largest sports leagues in the
United States, signify that content providers think the Internet,
traditionally a medium for the free exchange of information, is
sufficiently mature for people to begin paying for valuable
services.” The Register
Indictment Charges Pair With Murder in Mauling. Recall this horrific case of a woman mauled to death by two attack dogs kept by the neighboring attorneys who, it turns out, were working for Aryan Brotherhood prison inmates breeding such dogs for a dog-fighting ring and/or to guard illicit methamphetamine-manufacturing operations. Not to mention the fact that the couple’s adoption of their inmate client was finalized just days after his dogs’ victim died. Sounds like a plot from Oz, but unfortunately all too real. New York Times
The psychoexgirlfriend.com site, which I found too pitiful and abit too cruel to blink to, has apparently captured the (too pitiful and abit too cruel?) imaginations of many people, according to The Register: ” The woman, who gets more and more hysterical as the messages
progress, also seems to have captured the imagination of
America’s youth. Students at Boston University have already
devised a drinking game that entails logging onto the site and
knocking back a shot every time they hear the unfortunate ex use the
F-word, spinthebottle.com reports.”
Surfers confused by ‘Dying Cam’ prank: ‘The prankster last week promised to show “a person dying live on
your computer”. But the inquisitive and sadistic elements of
cyberspace were this afternoon disappointed to find the following
statement on the site by Callahan in the place of the promised “Edge
Exhibit”:
“We are all dying. I am, you are (even as you read this)- all of us are.
A clock keeps track of what is lost ( you were viewing me, a person
dying of natural causes).“I believe those who view life in such a way are less likely to waste
time. Life is a terminal illness. Time wears us all away…From the
moment of birth or before, depending on your own views, we begin
the process. Most never realize they are slowly progressing to the
edge, but we are. I believe in making the most of a day and enjoying
it to the best of your ability at the time.” The Register
“This is not a plea for homespun ‘family values’ and virtues. ‘Family values’ discourse may
actually contribute to our cultural apathy about marriage by obscuring the more radical, startling,
and unsettling characteristics of monogamous marriage.” Courtship today: the view from academia. Concerns about the emergence of ‘a new grammar of intimacy’ and the societal, and academic, lack of interest in the study of ‘pathways to marriage’.
The dynamics of initiating and developing close, sexually based relationships are a major
preoccupation of close-relationship theory. Articles and monographs cover a very wide range of
topics: “falling in love,” romantic love, attachment patterns, “love styles,” interracial and
interethnic dating, physical attractiveness (body shape, health status, hair length, height, voice
intonation), age preferences, jealousy, love triangles, dating infidelity, fatal attractions,
family-of-origin influences, socioeconomic status, self-disclosure processes, topic avoidance,
deceit, nonverbal signals, the use of humor, coping with peer and parental criticism, relationship
dissolution, and romance grieving processes.This complex body of theories probing a baffling array of topics might appear to resist general
commentary and review, but certain common themes do emerge: Marriage is knocked off its
pedestal, and its purpose of child-rearing gets short shrift. And the transcendent ideal of love is
replaced by the “love styles” of individual selves seeking sexual satisfaction in episodic
relationships. Courtship, rather than leading to marriage, becomes just one damn relationship
after another. The Public Interest [via Guardian weblog]
Metaphysical Movies. He’s doubly cursed — a beef farmer in the UK, and a Ph. D. in phenomenological philosophy. But he’s made a self-financed short film, Krasny — with characterization and plot, no less (although they sound bizarre, involving an investigation into a strange cult) — that serves as a dense pedagogical tool to convey abstract philosophical concepts about perception, subjectivity and the relationship between mind and ‘external reality’. The essayist comments on the treatment of similar themes in The Matrix last year. The Philosophers’ Magazine
Explore, if you will, the world of E-Prime. Arising from the thinking of Alfred Korzybski and the International Society for General Semantics which he founded, E-Prime consists of the subset of the English language left after expunging it of the use of the verb ‘to be’ in its two major functions of connoting identity (“I am a weblogger”) and predication (“I am nice”). Proponents feel that these uses of ‘to be’ cause major confusion of thought and consequent social problems; to start with, consider how such usage readily obscures the distinction between opinion and fact; and lends itself to stereotypy and inflexibility. This paper claims that using “E-Prime in Negotiation and Therapy” can challenge dogmatic viewpoints, clarify confusion, and defuse conflict in daily life. I don’t conduct myself as a strong proponent of E-Prime in my life; awkward circumlocutory constructions arise whenever I try to write in that way. But the difficulty in using it perhaps speaks to how early we were engrained with the associated thought patterns. Language doesn’t determine what we can and can’t think, but it does readily shape what can be thought with ease as opposed to with difficulty, IMHO. Does the challenge involved in thinking ‘outside this box’ perhaps indicate the importance of doing so? The blinks above have plenty of further links if you want to explore your identifications and predications more thoroughly.
I’ve decided, at least for now, to eliminate the Blogvoices discussion function on FmH. The comments have been sparse and, with some exceptions, have been of limited quality, and it has not apparently served as a medium to get lively discussion going. More than anything else, I found it significantly slowed down the loading of the blog page;there seems to be a long delay in accessing the Blogvoices server at most hours of the day. If you want to comment on a post, consider posting it to the FmH mailing list, where it’ll be seen by at least a handful of other interested parties besides me. You don’t have to subscribe to the mailing list (see sidebar) to post to it, but of course if you don’t, you’ll never see others’ replies. Should I keep the little 
‘discuss’ icon at the end of each blog entry and have it link directly to emailing to the list?
If there’s a raucous outcry from those of you who miss Blogvoices, I’ll consider reinstalling it. Too bad it didn’t work better; it seemed like a bright idea at the time…
Home of the brave? A New Scientist editorial suggests the rest of the world get on with the business of cleaning up greenhouse gas emissions without the participation of the US, now that the Clown Prince has reversed his campaign promise on CO2 emissions.
They said it would be like negotiating with Exxon. And so it is proving. With the redneck sultans of fossil fuel in charge at the White House, George W. Bush has pulled back on even the hedged commitments to control emissions of greenhouse gases that he made during his election campaign.
Last week, he announced that a new Clean Air Act would not, after all, include controls on carbon dioxide. He blamed fears of rising fuel prices and more blackouts, as well as pleading continuing scientific uncertainties about climate change.
Forget the excuses. Bush is doing the bidding of his funders and friends, and the world be damned. His statement does not formally count the US out of the Kyoto Protocol talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But it does mean Bush has vetoed use of the most effective mechanism for the US to meet its promises.
How serious a blow is this? Privately, American negotiators have been saying for some time that it could already be too late for the US to meet its Kyoto commitments for 2010, because of the time it would take to get a Clean Air Act through Congress and into force. Now it’s clear that Bush isn’t even going to try.
At least the rest of the world knows where it stands, and can stop the elaborate game of trying to keep the US on board the climate train. True, the US is responsible for a quarter of the world’s CO2 emissions, but that still leaves the three-quarters that comes from everywhere else. The world can get on with the task at hand–saving the planet’s climate–and is quite capable of implementing the Kyoto Protocol without the US.
In a spin over heeler-wheelers: ‘Heeled wheels, shoes that roll, the footwear to rival scooters
– or “Heelys”, to give them their official, patent-pending title
– are steadily becoming the latest craze in Los Angeles. The
shoes have a single “stealth” wheel housed in the heel of the
shoes, allowing users to walk or run and then change to a
roll. The wheels are detachable, transforming the shoes into
fashionable streetwear.’ Why am I first hearing about these from the Irish Times?! It’ll be interesting to see how (if) this fad spreads. Drop me an email the first time you see someone wearing a pair of these outside Southern California, and I’ll post the news.
Ill Uranium Miners Left Waiting as Payments for Exposure Lapse: “A decade ago, Congress recognized the
contributions of … uranium miners and passed the Radiation
Exposure and Compensation Act of 1990, (which)
established one-time payments of up to $100,000 to miners or their families
and to people who lived downwind from the nuclear test sites in Nevada. Last
year, Congress increased the payout to $150,000, added new medical benefits
and expanded the number of workers eligible.
But after years of smooth operations, the program is broke. Scrambling last year
to pass President Bill Clinton’s final budget, lawmakers never debated the Justice
Department’s request for additional money to cover the expanded program
even as new applications were pouring in, and by May, nothing was left. And
Congress has been reluctant to act until it decides how to apportion the federal
surplus and how much to cut taxes.” New York Times
Human Body Recall! Design Problems : “…Commonplace signs of physical deterioration prompted three
experts on aging to propose a redesign of the human body, inside and out, that
could enhance its ability to last to age 100 without falling apart.” New York Times
Once, in the Jungle. A pair of filmmakers induced the now-80-year-old New York painter Tobias Schneebaum to recreate the journey he made in 1956, hitchhiking to Peru and walking into the Amazon jungle to ‘go native’ with a then-as-yet-undiscovered indigenous tribe, and the terrifying denouement in which his romanticism came crashing to the ground. New York Times Magazine
Free for all: “Should all research papers in the biosciences be
placed in one, free-access, web library? Yes,
say 12,000 scientists.” New Scientist
NYU neuroscientist examines how brain responds to fears that are imagined and anticipated, but never experienced. “Using fear conditioning, the neural systems of fear learning and expression have been eloquently mapped with both human and animal research.
This research has indicated that a brain structure called the amygdala is critical to the expression of a conditioned fear response. But is the
amygdala involved when you encounter a fear-invoking event that you have merely heard about?” EurekAlert!
Fake Fans, Fake Buzz, Real Bucks: ‘The 34-year-old computer whiz in Silver Lake got a
phone call from the friend of a friend–the head of publicity
for a movie studio. The offer was $10,000 a week for an
Internet “project.”
Was he interested? Absolutely.
Details quickly followed from the studio’s department of
new media. The computer whiz discovered he would soon
be “purposely forgetting everything I knew about design.”
The job was to construct a phony fan Web site for a new movie.
He selected ugly lettering, the better to mask his sophistication. He scanned in
photos from magazines, just like fans do. He wrote blushing and gushing copy.’ LA Times
Town has had strict gun control law on the books since 1982 — requiring a gun in every household. Marietta Daily Journal
U.S. High Court to Weigh Death-Row Appeal, reconsider wisdom of U.S. execution of mentally retarded murderers. International Herald Tribune
Ethel the Blog is chockful. Checking in tonight revealed, among other things:
reflections on the California “utility crisis”; concern about the vagaries of Amazon.com’s censorship policy, relating to the Shrub book A Charge to Keep; consideration of how we should treat First Ladies with real, or putative, blood on their hands; the first couple of entries in his project to port his vinyl LPs to .mp3; contemplating The Haggis; vituperation about conservative columnist Bob Novak’s revisionist history; a listing of streaming jazz channels on the web a digression on the avocado
‘Insipid civility’ dominates U.S. politics for good reason, says David Sirota. “…(I)n Washington the compelling motivation has become, as George W. Bush
would say, keeping things ‘civil.’ And the reason is clear: in such
money-flooded politics, it is best for the powers that be to keep politics
boring. That way, politicians never have to really face up to tough questions
about the influence of money, and citizens won’t really engage enough to
care about the fact that their government no longer really represents them.” Tompaine.com
“This year will see the outbreak of price war in the desktop and
notebook PC markets as vendors battle for customers, market
researcher Gartner Group has warned.
To blame are the recession and the depressed state of computer
sales. That, reckons Gartner, will force the direct vendors to cut
prices to build – or at least maintain – their marketshare relative to
the well-known brands.” The Register
Promoting Propagandists. The Illegitimate Son nominates Central American dirty-tricksters for major diplomatic posts. Tompaine.com
Mystery In Bremerton – Why Don’t Keyless Remotes Work?. Starting abruptly last Thursday morning, the keyless remotes of nearly all cars — domestic and imported, new and old, including unsold cars on dealers’ lots — in the Bremerton WA area stopped working. When a car is driven outside the local area, the remote works again. Aircraft carrier U.S.S. Carl Vinson returned to port in Bremerton from seven weeks at sea at almost exactly the time this started, but the Navy says the ship has been swept for emissions and “…doesn’t appear to be emitting any frequencies that might have an effect on these remote control devices,” said a spokesperson. Sunspot and solar flare activity are near their cyclical peak, but there would be no reason any disruption of transmission would be restricted in frequency, geographically localized, or consistent across so long a period of time.
Discovering Archaeology: New clues to the Easter Island mystery… Surprising archaeological accuracy of the Mummy movies …. New light on Herodotus’ accusations of cannibalism among neighboring peoples.
Microscopic midwives “Long maligned as mere blobs, amoebas turn out to have a
caring, sharing side.” New Scientist
Girl of four leads share-buying test. She was given an imaginary £5000 to invest, as were an experienced private investor and a self-described financial astrologer. Her portfolio, picked at random, is worth more than either of her competitors’ at the halfway point in the two-week experiment. Probably not statistically valid over such a short run, though…
Skeletons in the Closet. Renovations of Odd Fellows’ Halls reportedly frequently reveal startling discoveries.
“Skeletons … reside in closets, drawers, attics and crawl spaces in Odd Fellows lodges nationwide. The fraternal order uses the skeleton in its initiation ritual as a symbol of mortality. Interest in the Odd Fellows has waned in recent years, and as lodges have closed more of the skeletons have emerged from their hiding places.” But where do they come from? Local Odd Fellows have cooperated in some of the resulting investigations, in at least one case pledging the police to secrecy. Fox News
85 Ways to Tie a Necktie. Two mathematical physicists from Cambridge University invented a mathematical notation to describe the tying of necktie knots, then generated a list of all possible knots within the restrictions imposed (on the number of loops a knot can have) by the length of a tie. Exactly 85 possibilities exist, and it turns out that 10 of them are “good”, including six newly-discovered designs. Their paper about the issue made it into the scientific journal Nature and is now posted, with diagrams, on the Internet. Since I wear a tie every day to work, I’m game.
