David Brake is back he wrote me to say, although this most recent post on his weblog is dated April 20: “Apologies for the seemingly erratic updating of this blog. It is moving from one server to another – a process I thought
would be straightforward but which turned out to be a little trickier than I had bargained for. I’ve brought this copy up to
date now and soon you will be getting blog.org from an all-new and hopefully greatly improved and reliable location.
Hurrah!”
Weblog Madness: Other Media; here’s a list of media coverage of weblogs and weblogging.
The critics ring in: The Sopranos: Violence Rises on TV, but on This HBO Show, It Makes a Point
“But while the blood, beatings and deaths have kept everyone buzzing, from
ordinary viewers to the president of NBC, the more important issue goes beyond
how much splatter appears on screen. For the first time, this season’s Sopranos
relied heavily on violence directed against innocents, especially women,
characters not involved in Tony’s mob career.And Tony’s explosion against his girlfriend put him in the center of violence
outside what his business demands. By daring to put Tony in such an
unsympathetic position, the series’s creator, David Chase, has done more than
escalate the brutality. He has kept the series honest, true to the lethal
consequences of a mob boss’s life, and refused to let audiences feel comfortable
with Tony’s career choice. In giving new meaning to the phrase brutally honest,
this season matched the awe-inspiring artistry of the first.” New York Times
And the psychoanalysts:
‘For 13 weeks the debate has intensified about what makes The
Sopranos so compelling. With tonight’s final episode for the
season–which was indeed anticipated in much the same manner
as the Super Bowl–we can answer the question. We are drawn
to the show because it is so radical in the sense that it explores
in an unflinching way some of our most troubling and deep-seated
sociocultural problems…Kafka said that psychoanalysis provided a means for secular Jews
to try to orient themselves in the modern world. Tony is in the
same position as the newly secularized Jew was of Kafka’s time.
The traditional solutions don’t work, and the best place to turn to
get one’s bearings is some form of psychotherapy. Therapy
certainly can’t provide the certitude and the consolation of
traditional religions. Like life itself, it is an imperfect process
practiced by imperfect people, and we shouldn’t pretend
otherwise. And while Dr. Melfi has come in for her share of
criticism at our hands, she has turned out to be one of the most
constructive figures in Tony’s life. At times, it seemed she wouldn’t
make it through this treatment. But she persisted, battling her own
demons along the way. And now–psychologically
speaking–we’d have to say that Tony is in a much different
position than he was when he first walked though her doors three
seasons ago. Whether he is at the same time politically weakened
as a mafia don is another story.’ Slate
Like “… jazz musicians collecting themes that sound good for a
work in progress”: Before the Big Bang, There Was . . . What? ‘…(L)ately, emboldened by progress in new theories that seek to unite Einstein’s
lordly realm with the unruly quantum rules that govern subatomic physics —
so-called quantum gravity — (cosmologists) have begun to edge
their speculations closer and closer to the ultimate moment and, in some cases,
beyond it.
Some theorists suggest that the Big Bang was not so much a birth as a transition,
a “quantum leap” from some formless era of imaginary time, or from nothing at
all. Still others are exploring models in which cosmic history begins with a collision
with a universe from another dimension.’ New York Times
To Err May Be Human, But to Forgive Is Good for You. A psychologist thinks about the crucial, and often overlooked, significance of the complex internal process of forgiveness. New York Times
Solomon Snyder, one of the founders of modern psychopharmacology, reviews Psychedelics, psychosis and dreaming by Allan Hobson, a preeminent and synthetic neuroscientist of consciousness. ” All in all, Hobson succeeds in providing a fresh
perspective on the mental alterations that are
common to dreaming, psychosis and psychedelic drug
actions. The book is written in a lively style with
complex neurophysiologic and pharmacologic analyses
made lucid enough for any intelligent lay reader. It is
one of those rare books that will be of importance to
the most sophisticated researchers and clinical
practitioners and yet an accessible and a fascinating
read for many non-specialists.” Nature Neuroscience
An objection to the memetic approach to culture by Dan Sperber, French anthropologist and cognitive scientist. Note the ‘strong’ definition of memes — cultural elements non-genetically transmitted and subject to a process of selection; selected for because transmission benefits themselves, not necessarily their human carriers. Sperber’s objection to a memetic notion of culture is the low fidelity of reproduction of memes when they are transmitted, i.e the ‘Lamarckian’ reproduction of characteristics acquired in each generation. If, cultural patterns have high stability despite this low copying fidelity, something other than the meme, ‘behind it’ in a sense, is being transmitted and shaping consistency. He concludes:
Memeticists have to give empirical evidence to support the claim that, in the micro-processes of cultural transmission, elements of culture inherit all
or nearly all their relevant properties from other elements of culture that they replicate (i.e. satisfy condition 3 above). If they succeeded in doing
so they would have shown that developmental psychologists, evolutionary psychologists and cognitive anthropologists who argue that acquisition
of cultural knowledge and know-how is made possible and partly shaped by evolved domain-specific competencies are missing a much simpler
explanation of cultural learning: imitation does it all (or nearly so)! If, as I believe, this is not even remotely the case, what remains of the memetic
programme? The idea of a meme is a theoretically interesting one. It may still have, or suggest, some empirical applications. The Darwinian
model of selection is illuminating, and in several ways, for thinking about culture. Imitation, even if not ubiquitous, is of course well worth
investigating. The grand project of memetics, on the other hand, is misguided.
More about Sperber here.
Brain Damage Case Reveals Mind’s Filing System — “A woman who could not tell you whether an
orange is orange has led to new insights into how the brain organizes its
thoughts. Researchers say her case illustrates how the brain files away
the different details of individual objects so that we can know them
inside and out.” The punchline is that it appears that the attributes of an object — its color, size, shape, function, etc. — are stored in distinctive places. Here’s the abstract. Nature Neuroscience
Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: the functions of social exclusion. From the abstract: “The authors propose that phenomena currently placed under the general rubric of stigma involve a set of distinct
psychological systems designed by natural selection to solve specific problems associated with sociality. In particular, the
authors suggest that human beings possess cognitive adaptations designed to cause them to avoid poor social exchange
partners, join cooperative groups (for purposes of between-group competition and exploitation), and avoid contact with
those who are differentially likely to carry communicable pathogens.” Psychological Bulletin
Taleban to mark Afghan Hindus — “Hindus will be required to wear an
identity label on their clothing in
Islamic Afghanistan to distinguish
them from Muslims, a Taleban
minister told Associated Press on
Tuesday.” CNN Shades of Nazi pogroms?
Tree Slackers. With Shrub’s intention that environmental quality be damned as clear as he makes it, why can’t the environmental left get its act together in opposition? The American Prospect
McVeigh’s Last Message: “If the FBI can “misplace” a cache of
documents in the most notorious death-penalty
case since the Rosenbergs, is it any wonder that
nearly 100 factually innocent people have ended
up on death row in recent years?” The American Prospect
Product Images to be Inserted in Law & Order Reruns: “Turner Broadcasting System has reached a deal to allow it to
insert virtual product images in reruns of
Law & Order when the hit show moves to
TNT in syndication next month. Virtual
product placement allows images of
products to be inserted into scenes to
appear as if they were originally part of
the setting.” Advertising Age
Escaped kangaroo lived for year in Dutch woods: “A kangaroo who has been on the run for a year after
escaping from its owner has been found living in a Dutch
wood.” Ananova
Never mind rogue states, how about rogue superpowers? asks Noam Chomsky. BBC
There’s more to vision than meets the eye.
Although unable to see, mice lacking rods
and cones in their retinas can tell day from
night. And their pupils still respond to
bright light.These latest findings suggest that
mammals’ eyes contain another
light-sensitive pigment not found in rods
or cones. The pigment may regulate
circadian rhythms that govern sleep
patterns and other behaviours, such as
eating, that are related to general light
levels. Nature
Plan to clone Dracula ‘sucks’ says Dolly scientist: “The Scottish researchers who cloned Dolly the sheep say a
plan to clone Dracula is doomed to failure… A group of US businessmen came up with the plan to clone
Vlad the Impaler, who inspired Bram Stoker’s tale, after
hearing he was buried in Romania. ‘It is just a wonderful way of spending
a bit of money and getting a lot of publicity.’ ” Ananova
You only live twice: “A decade ago, Robert Brault survived a crash in his home-built airplane near Austin Straubel International Airport. A crash Wednesday — in
the same aircraft — killed him.” Green Bay Press Gazette
Shamans set up a code of ethics to fight shams— “For the first time, Amazonian medicine
men have drawn up a code of ethics and
established a union to police themselves,
complete with membership cards. The union of
Colombian shamans is trying to weed out
people who are exploiting traditional ways for
big profits and cheap thrills.” MSNBC
“General Motors Corp…will donate $10 million to restore
and protect an endangered tract of Atlantic Coast rain
forest in Brazil, an environmental group said
yesterday.” It would be likely GM would receive ‘pollution credits’, in any future Kyoto-like international agreement, for the role such a forest preserve can play in buffering against global climate change. Planet Ark And “Shell renewed a pledge Thursday to stay
away from Bangladeshi forests inhabited by the endangered Royal Bengal
tiger in the face of protests from environmentalists at the oil company’s
annual meeting.” CNN
Kicking the Hobbit: The December film release looms, and critical dispute about the merits of J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation flowers. “Still, Tolkienists have the staggering popularity of The Lord of the Rings on their side–a key
factor in the literary reputation of Charles Dickens, for example. Some Tolkienists observe
knowingly that the upcoming films will no doubt hook the Harry Potter generation on The
Lord of the Rings (though purists may secretly be a bit nervous about Hobbit Happy Meals).
Meanwhile, Tolkien criticism is already a substantial body of work, much of which cannot be
dismissed outright as fan pamphleteering. When it comes to Tolkien, says Jane Chance, “the
popular has become canonical”–or at any rate, it is becoming more and more so. Ultimately,
Tolkien’s literary stature may be assured by sheer momentum.” The American Prospect
Rules of TV Business Change as Network Race Tightens. The four networks end the season in a closer race than ever, and it will force them to abandon tried-and-true rules next year. The made-for-TV movie is all but dead; repeats are the latest breakthrough idea in programming; comedy is eclipsed by law-‘n’-order shows and reality TV. In short, there’s a whole lot more of nothing to watch. New York Times
Sad sad news, Susannah McCorkle, Pop-Jazz Singer, Dies at 55, apparent suicide.
Wake up and smell the genetically modified coffee. If the coffee berry ripening process could be more precisely controlled, berries wouldn’t ripen at different times and require handpicking. That’s what an American biotech company has figured out how to do, and it’ll take away absolutely essential jobs in the developing world and centralize coffee production even more firmly with large industrial plantations. And don’t you bet Starbuck’s will be one of their best customers?
Elvis Costello: ‘Let’s make some music, and see if anybody likes it’
Describes his recent ‘crossover’ activity (he hates the word, BTW) and particularly his collaboration with mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. I have to say that Costello’s recent collaborations — the Brodsky String Quartet, Burt Bacharach, and now von Otter — have taken away the Costello whose music really moved me. I searched the article in vain for an indication that he’s going to go back to doing his own thing anytime soon. New York Times
Myth in Journalism: review of Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological Role of Journalism by Jack Lule. “By analyzing case studies involving Black Panther Huey
Newton, Mother Teresa, baseball player Mark McGuire
and Hurricane Mitch, among others, Lule — a great
storyteller himself — demonstrates seven master myths
in the news that shape our thinking about foreign policy,
terrorism, race relations, political dissent and other
issues. He calls them The Victim, The Scapegoat, The
Hero, The Good Mother, The Trickster, The Other World
and The Flood.” The Media Channel
Polio Virus Targets, Kills Brain Tumors: Study. It turns out, fortunately, that malignant glioma cells abnormally express a certain protein, CD 155, to which the polio virus is specifically attracted in the CNS. So researchers have succeeded in using a genetically crippled polio virus (incapable of causing polio) to kill the glioma cells, leaving adjacent normal cells alone. Reuters
oneworld.net: guides “These guides aim to start you thinking about the key topics of human rights and sustainable development.
You will find here a range of views from named writers around the globe. And you may find some of the views
surprising, unfashionable or unfamiliar, because OneWorld has a commitment to including points of view that are
ignored by the mass media. You won’t agree with them all, any more than we do. ” OneWorld
Danny Schechter: Where do you go when PBS says no?
Critical filmmakers like myself, who are shut out of
commercial TV for all intents and purposes, need robust
public television because it is often the only game in
town when you want a program you’ve made to be seen.
And when you do, you want it on their national program
service, what they call the “hard feed,” because that
guarantees it will be carried by all public stations
nationwide. If the keepers of the PBS gates turn you
down, you can still get your show on the air, but you
have to try to sell it, or more likely place it for free, on a
“soft feed” that gives stations the discretion to run it or
not. This can mean it’ll be on at different time periods,
making a national promotion campaign very difficult. You
have to lobby station by station across the nation like a
beggar selling his wares. The Media Channel
Finding News About China, a collection of sources assembled by James Miles, former BBC Beijing bureau chief.
“People become so obsessed by hating government that they forget it is meant to be their government and is the only powerful public force that have
purchase on.” — John Ralston Saul. Nedblog pointed me to this entry in At the Margin:
John Ralston Saul’s novels are not his most influential work. His nonfiction — Voltaire’s Bastards (1992), The Doubter’s
Companion (1994), and The Unconscious Civilization (1996) — constitute the most articulate and powerful indictment of modern global society ever
published. Voltaire’s Bastards is subtitled “The Dictatorship of Reason in the West,” and it is over 600 pages (including footnotes) that document how it
was possible for the promise of 18th century Enlightenment to culminate in a society so simultaneously undemocratic and ungovernable as ours. The
thinkers of the Enlightenment, according to Saul, used reason as their principal weapon in the struggle against medieval darkness. Once the revolution
was underway, however, instead of retiring reason to its normal place among the other human faculties (Saul lists common sense, creativity, ethics,
intuition, and memory), we enshrined it as our governing principle. By elevating it over other human faculties, we have succeeded in converting it to
unreason.
Basing our society on reason, Saul argues, has resulted in corporatist politics, the cult of expertise, and our highly structured lives. And it has produced
a number of interesting contradictions and anomalies. One of these is that the arms trade is the largest single industry in a world supposedly at peace.
Another is that our so-called democratic societies are governed by entrenched elites. Still another is that we elect people to grapple with our public issues
based on their personalities rather than their abilities.
Saul points out that we call ourselves a democracy but we have built no time into our lives for citizen participation: “The only way a citizen can
participate is voluntarily, which means giving up going to the bathroom, give up making love, give up sleep, give up eating dinner with your family. In
other words, we have structured citizen participation out of our society.” Note that I’m only giving you the highlights here. Saul takes 171 pages to
position himself and lay out the argument, then follows that with over 400 pages describing what might be considered the everyday atrocities of
modern “democratic” corporatist society.
Psychiatrist says Monkey Man mystery is like penis panic. Fred Lapides of Bush Wacker (which has moved here) pointed me to this update on the Monkey Man matter, to which many webloggers have blinked.
An Indian psychiatrist has compared the Monkey Man
mystery to a penis-related panic among Nigerian men 10
years ago.Doctor Sandeep Vohra, president of Delhi Psychiatric
Society, explains the Monkey Man panic as mass delusion.Ten years ago, groups of Nigerian men became convinced
their genitals would disappear if they touched a stranger. Ananova
A male patient’s desperate fear that his genitals will shrink and retract into his body, causing his death, is a long-recognized ‘culture-bound syndrome’ appearing in most psychiatric textbooks alongside such entities as amok, latah, piblokto, and wihtigo. Called koro, it is described as common in the Malay archipelago and southern Chinese folk belief but occasionally reported in other cultures. Often, the affected person has secured a strong physical hold on his penis by tying or clamping it. Usually, it affects a single person at a time but occasional epidemic outbreaks have been reported around the world. I used to give an entertaining talk about unusual psychiatric syndromes.
Dying Comet Gives Rare View of Space: “It was like watching an autopsy on a comet.
Comet Linear, falling toward the sun last summer, peeled off layer
after layer, revealing its structure and composition to astronomers
watching with some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Yahoo!
Dying Comet Gives Rare View of Space: “It was like watching an autopsy on a comet.
Comet Linear, falling toward the sun last summer, peeled off layer
after layer, revealing its structure and composition to astronomers
watching with some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Yahoo!
Dying Comet Gives Rare View of Space: “It was like watching an autopsy on a comet.
Comet Linear, falling toward the sun last summer, peeled off layer
after layer, revealing its structure and composition to astronomers
watching with some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Yahoo!
Going Out With a Mobster’s Son? Follow the Code of Silence. The New York Times gives us some real mob-watch details on the morning of the season finale of The Sopranos.
For Hindus and Vegetarians, Surprise in McDonald’s Fries. A lawsuit claims MacDonald’s deliberately misled consumers in boldly proclaiming a switch to cooking its fries in “100% vegetable oil”. It’s true, but the fries are apparently seasoned with beef fat before leaving the factory. New York Times IMHO, it serves anyone right for believing anything MacDonald’s tells them. By the way, if you haven’t read the book, Robot Wisdom points to this reasonable summary of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation (from the London Review of Books via the Guardian).
Reno’s Hint at Florida Race Catches Some by Surprise: “Florida and
national Democratic Party officials
today were polite but skeptical that former
Attorney General Janet Reno could raise
their chances of unseating Gov. Jeb Bush,
the president’s brother, in next year’s election.” New York Times You have to believe that the Democrats are targeting this race with all the heavy artillery they can muster. Reno’s liabilities are considerable — think about how the South Florida Cuban exile community must think of her after the Elian Gonzalez case, to start with — and she could end up a ‘spoiler’ in such an important race. New York Times
Dying Comet Gives Rare View of Space: “It was like watching an autopsy on a comet.
Comet Linear, falling toward the sun last summer, peeled off layer
after layer, revealing its structure and composition to astronomers
watching with some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. Yahoo!
Lean & Mean — codeine abuse is coming back, reportedly. Calling it “liquid crack”, however, is a simile based on basic drug ignorance. They couldn’t be more different. Houston Press
Utah polygamist found guilty: A Mormon, not surprisingly, he has five wives and 29 children. Convicted of failure to pay child support as well. This is the first big bigamy trial on more than half a century. One of his wives was a 13 year-old in 1986 when he allegedly had sex with her. He subsequently married her, and now faces a felony rape charge as well. CNN
Student minces no words with new sign language — “A college student’s thesis
examining sign languages from around the
world could provide autistic children or
stroke-impaired adults with a new method
to communicate.
The gestures are simple, mime-like and
require a minimal number of separate
movements. Those components, the thesis
adviser said, make signing easier for people
who might have finite motor skills or limited
memory.” CNN
A comprehensive listing of US secession movements — “Discover the fault-lines where political self-determination and the increasingly Corporate nation-state clash.” disinformation
Radical Ideology Points the Bushites Toward Avoidable Trouble —
“What is worrying is the combination of three factors that could
produce a perfect political storm.First, the Bushies came into office with the attitude that
everything Bill Clinton did was wrong and needs to be
reversed.Second, they bore Republican theological positions on tax cuts,
the environment and missile defense, positions that were
hatched in conservative think tanks and chanted with religious
devotion but were never tempered by the real world as it has
evolved in the last eight years. Yet early signs are that the
Bushies will say or do anything to get their radical tax cuts
made, their oil wells drilled and their missile shield built – no
matter what is going on in the world.Finally, they control the Senate, the House, the White House and
the Supreme Court, so there are no brakes.” International Herald Tribune
Lego: No Tech Meets New Tech: “Although its trademark plastic building blocks are decidedly old school, Lego is
repositioning itself as a player in today’s technology toy market.
Founded in Denmark before World War II, Lego is emphasizing key product lines based on interactive
software, robotics and even Harry Potter, at this week’s Electronic Entertainment Expo.” Wired And: LUGNET™: ‘home to thousands of LEGO® fans of all
ages. We are a community which never sleeps — and has been called “the friendliest place on
the Internet.” ‘ A Webbies finalist.
Cytokine-Associated Emotional and Cognitive Disturbances in Humans. One element of the immune response is the secretion of infection-fighting circulating substances by lymphocytes (a class of white blood cells) activated by the presence of the infection. Many of us who look at the interface between behavioral disturbances and bodily physiology have suspected that these cytokines have direct — and deleterious — CNS effects and may account for some of the behavioral disturbance accompanying various physical illnesses. Here’s empirical evidence. Archives of General Psychiatry
“The drive by HMOs to “medicalize” psychotherapy – insisting that practitioners look for a
medical disorder such as clinical depression and then dispense a prescribed treatment – will ultimately suffocate psychotherapy through
ignorance of how it works.
That’s the contention of Bruce Wampold, professor of counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of a new,
controversial book, The Great Psychotherapy Debate.
Methadone increases infectivity and stimulates viral replication of HIV, according to new research. Bad news for patients who contracted HIV through IV drug abuse which they are now attempting to stabilize through methadone maintenance. BioMedNet And: Study: Heroin Moving to Suburbs, Rural Areas. ” A New
Jersey study suggests that heroin, a
longtime scourge of America’s
inner cities, is becoming a suburban
and rural problem.” CNN
The Accidental Curist — “Doctors who were trying to grow new blood vessels with gene therapy found a welcome side effect:
The therapy repaired what they thought was permanent nerve damage.” Not clear if the improvement was due to revascularization or direct nerve growth; further studies are planned. Wired
Breaking the Hickory Stick: The proposed Teacher Liability Protection Act,
supported by President Bush, will likely increase corporal punishment of schoolchildren in
states where paddling is still legal. New York Times
This Time, It’s Personal. Democrats (finally) begin opposing Bush’s judicial nominees. The American Prospect
“Suddenly some of the most unlikely people are losing sleep over what windmills might be doing to birds.” TomPaine.com
New disorder, cyberchondria, sweeps the internet, says the New Zealand Herald article. But it’s really just run-of-the-mill hypochondria (or, to be more precise, somatization) fueled by the ease of obtaining information on the ‘net.
Living dead. “Ants and infertile humans are not alive, but parasitic DNA is.
That’s the view of a Polish researcher who has proposed a
new, universal definition of life.
He claims it will lay to
rest arguments about
what is and isn’t
alive, and might offer
insights into when life
on Earth got started.
And if we ever find
something that looks
like life on another
planet, his definition
could help us settle
whether it’s alive or
not.” New Scientist
Study: Oscar Winners Live Longer , nearly four years longer on average than their colleagues who were never nominated or those nominated who did not win. Katherine Hepburn, four-time Academy Award winner, should live forever! I knew the Oscars were good for something… Washington Post
Find A Grave “… of thousands
of famous people from
around the world.”
Childhood’s end? Early puberty is more common in children who have immigrated from the third world, researchers suggest. Could pesticide residues be to blame? New Scientist
The Abolition of Man? ‘…(T)he reader who trudges through Kass must eventually wonder whether the
ethicist is confusing the map with the territory. Conservatives have long been known, in William F.
Buckley’s famous phrase, for standing athwart history yelling “Stop!” But when did they start insisting
that history which does not go their way isn’t actually history at all?
On closer examination, what worries these writers isn’t that human nature might change in the future. It’s
that human nature might not be what they think it is right now.’ Reason
Content Sites of the World, Unite! The Salons and Slates of the world ought to band together for their survival. “Right now there appears to be a race among Web publishers to
garner the most revenue in the short term by making the
experience of visiting its site intolerable, like the intrusive ads
spearheaded by CNET or the Slate format in which text ads
sneak into spaces readers expect to find unpaid-for material.
The ads will get so overpowering it’s no surprise that Salon
thinks it might take in some money by eliminating them for its
best customers.” The Standard
Puckered Out: People don’t whistle like they used to before the advent of mass entertainment. It’s a ‘loner art”, and loners today are highly suspicious. Washington Post
The wrd of Gd — the world’s first text-message church service. New Scientist
Monkeys Who Think… and the neuroscientist who loves them. Portrait of Marc Hauser (Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think). “To its advocates, the rise of cognitive ethology reflects a regaining of
consciousness after a dark half century of behaviorist orthodoxy, which
held that all behavior, animal or human, was the result not of mental events
but of conditioned responses to external stimuli. Cognitive ethologists trace
their assumptions back to Charles Darwin, who insisted that animals and
humans exhibit no less evolutionary continuity in their minds than in their
kidneys, hearts, and toes. The field’s critics, however, suspect that talk of
animal thinking and intention may owe less to Darwin than to the
embarrassing and dubiously anecdotal mentalism of his protégé Georges
Romanes, a popular lecturer who saw logisticating dogs and conniving
felines under every Victorian armchair.” Lingua Franca
Big Split Over Gene Theory: “If you eat a genetically modified strain of cauliflower, you won’t inherit its gene for frost resistance. That’s the position taken by researchers who are refuting an earlier claim published by the Human Genome Project international consortium that genes from other species could indeed “jump” into the human gene family tree. The dissenting view will appear in the May 25 issue of Science.” Wired
Short guide to a happy marriage: “The secret of a long and faithful marriage is to marry
a short man, according to research.
Tall men are more likely to divorce and remarry,
usually replacing their first wife with a woman who is
at least two years younger and better educated,
according to a study by American and German
scientists.” The Telegraph
The secret of life – it could be an uncrackable code
Robert Matthews laments that Claude Shannon’s passing was not noted more widely. The mathematician’s work, especially the classic 1948 paper “The Mathematical Theory of Communication”, was a foundation of information theory. What attention his death has received has generally focused on the technological implications of his work — “unsung father of the internet” kind of stuff. But Matthews suggests that
scientists involved with the Human
Genome Project would benefit from the
application of Shannon’s theorem. The argument may overreach. The Telegraph
Aboriginal rock paintings oldest depictions of mystics says researcher. But critics say that seeing shamans everywhere is a fad that will pass. The Age
“Kansas City is a very, very sad story,” said Gary Orfield, a Harvard
University sociologist who has studied the district for years. “They really
can’t show much of anything, though they spent $2 billion.”
To Orfield, the lesson from Kansas City is clear: Money can’t buy
good schools. Not, at least, in shattered urban districts where poverty
leaves many children ill-equipped to learn.
When students come to class hungry, exhausted or afraid, when they
bounce from school to school as their families face eviction, when they
have no one at home to wake them up for the bus, much less look over
their homework, not even the snazziest facilities, the strongest curricula
and the best-paid teachers can ensure success, he argues. LA Times
David Anderson, on his always stimulating Metaforage/Metaphorage: what’s a meta for? points to President Carter’s commentary on comparisons between the current energy shortage and the one Carter faced. David says, “Nice to hear from an honest man who brings an engineer’s mind to bear on a problem, rather than hearsay,
propaganda and superstition. In particular I like the fact he nails the administration on its bullshit labeling
of conservation as just ‘private virtue.’ ” I was struck by the quote he pulls out from Carter; certainly the understatement of the week: “Exaggerated claims seem designed to promote some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental quality.”
Dan Hartung’s excellent lake effect is going on a reduced posting schedule for at least a couple of weeks, he says. “I’ve never wanted to make updating lake effect a crisis,” he says, but reassuringly adds, “No fear, I am coming back.” Good thing, too, or I’d be going after him…
Update on the Bremerton, Wash. keyless remote dysfunction about which I first blogged several months ago. “A federal investigation into two mass
outages of keyless remote entry
devices in the Bremerton area could
be complete in about 30 days, officials
said.
But the Federal Communications
Commission, which is conducting the
probe, is staying tight-lipped about
what it has found so far.
At the same time, other information
has come to light — some of it
contradictory — pointing to a number
of possible causes. One of those is a
section of radio frequency that the
military shares with many keyless
devices.” [via Robot Wisdom]
Douglas Adams continues to be revisited since he migrated over. Here’s a piece he wrote about the ‘net several years ago. How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet: “…We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody
and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and
disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But
that is changing.
Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our
lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them.”
Theories that drive one to
abstraction: an erudite condemnation of modernism in art. Telegraph UK And a portrait of American modernism.
At Home With Andrew Solomon: Showing the Demons the Door. Child of a pharmaceutical fortune, Andrew Solomon turned his struggle with depression — he’s now on five medications daily — into what he describes as his big career break by authoring the forthcoming The Noonday Demon: an atlas of depression; the New York Times describes him as “the only serious historian of a sickness that disables more people in the United States than any other.” One FmH reader wrote me several months ago to ask if I knew how many people take Prozac and other related SSRI antidepressants; this article, in passing, provides the answer, a figure of 28 million.
A Debate Over Loved Ones in the E.R.. A pilot project allowing family presence during gruesome resuscitation efforts in the ER is uniformly positive for the families even if their loved one dies; hospital inches toward acceptance. New York Times
Positively 4th Street: the lives and times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. “With this lovely madeleine of a book,
a hauntingly evocative blend of
biography, musicology and pop cultural
history, it is as if David Hajdu has struck a
tuning fork and summoned the spirit of the
folk-singing 1960’s all over again. It is also
as if Mr. Hajdu has discovered that within
every movement, however pure, there is a
healthy whiff of soap opera to be found.” New York Times
Let the culture battle begin. French culture minister seeks to enlist the other G7 nations to join it in battling homogenization of national cultures; proposes extension of the strict rules it has already adopted protecting film, television and publishing industries against dominance by U.S. material. The Globe and Mail By the way, France imposes a $100-per-television-set tax on all viewers to pay for public programming. Imagine such a proposal to fund PBS in the U.S.!
Fuelled by a willing media, America’s thirst for
paranoiac conjecture is reaching new heights of
lunacy. The Guardian
The rush to the death chamber: “Like Timothy McVeigh, more condemned prisoners are in a hurry to die. Does the trend undermine
justice?” Opponents say that it is the oppressive and prolonged conditions on death rows that “torture to death” many inmates convicted of capital crimes, leading them to give up their rights to appeals. Christian Science Monitor
Time twister. A Connecticut theoretical physicist with a lifelong passion for reading everything he could get his hands on about time travel thinks that “closed time-like loops” to take us back in time are achievable. A circulating beam of laser light can twist time into a loop; prohibitive amounts of energy are required unless you slow the light down, which we’ve just figured out how to do. New Scientist Time travel experimenters ought to make a pact that, when they figure out how to implement this scheme, they travel back in time to the present to tell us how to do it (grin).
One of Australia’s foremost tourist attractions to close for weeks. Uluru, formerly known
as Ayers Rock, will be closed for
a twenty-day mourning period as a show of
respect for an Aboriginal leader, unnamed for cultural reasons, who
died. Tour operators plead with the national government to overrule park managers’ decision, fearing the longterm consequences of even a brief closure to their business. Aboriginal authorities, to whom the Australian government returned the former Ayer’s Rock in 1985 and who have leased it back to the government in perpetuity for park use, consider it sacred and have always discouraged tourists from climbing Uluru. Ironically, the elder whose death is the occasion for the ban, was a leading proponent of the pragmatic value of opening the site to tourist access. CNN
“…(T)hings are messier, more beautiful and more dynamic than originally thought…” Astronomers find ‘spaghetti’ twirling around in galaxy: ‘Circulating the Milky Way is a stream of stars that has wound itself around the galaxy like a strand of spaghetti.
A consortium of researchers from three continents — called the “Spaghetti Collaboration” — found new evidence suggesting the existence of
three more star streams in the outer galaxy.’ Yes, a picture would be nice. EurekAlert!
Vatican comes out against pro-masturbation priest: “A Vatican Cardinal has advised Catholics not to
masturbate, after a lengthy study of a pro-masturbation
priest’s arguments.
Spanish reformist priest Marciano Vidal has criticised the
church, saying no one has proved masturbation is immoral.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described the act as very bad
indeed after the church conducted a three-year
investigation.” The Cardinal also got in his digs about homosexuality, concluding that only heterosexual relationships and chastity are sanctioned by the Church. Ananova
“The liberal obsession with installing hate crimes in every statute book is one of the saddest spectacles of our age.” CounterPunch
Mob phreakers rule Vegas phone network The Register
The Zero Year Curse: ‘Many Christians believe the election victory of George W. Bush was a direct answer to fervent prayer. But several
well-known prayer and intercessory groups are urging Americans not to stop praying, especially for the President and his safety.
They are citing what’s known as the “Zero Year Curse” and have issued “code red” prayer alerts. The groups are urging Christians
to pray especially for the physical safety of President Bush to combat the supposed curse, which is also known as the Tecumseh
curse,” about which I wrote during the election campaign. I had not ben aware that Reagan, the only ‘zero-year’ President since 1840 who did not die in office, is considered the “exception that proves the rule” by Christians; they attribute his survival to their prayer. Bizarrely, Christian fears in Y2K are aroused by predictions from New Age astrology groups. Superstition begets superstition, I guess… Christian Broadcasting Network While we’re at it, look here or here or here for discussion of that turn of phrase, “the exception that proves the rule.”
Review of God, Faith and Health by Jeff Levin. In bad faith: “A researcher offers evidence
that religion is good for your
health. Too bad so much of it is
bunk… Levin does a good job summarizing much of what we know
about the connection between spirituality and health.
Readers new to the field will probably find themselves
willing to believe that religious affiliation and activity are
probably a good marker for improved health, and may even
promote it. But they should be leery of those who try to take
the evidence much further than that, and be conscious of the
bad effects religion can sometimes have. Read a history of
the crusades for even more evidence on the negative effects
of religion on the public’s health.” Salon
“A sentimental view of the Marx Brothers misses the
point about them even more than it does about Chaplin.
They were nervous and resourceful fighters who rose from
the bottom and never forgot it, and they deployed the
slapstick aggressions of everyday life as a coarse stimulant
and a way of gaining private ends. ” The London Review of Books casts a serious eye on Groucho, loaded with anecdotes and quotes.
One of the earliest sketches to lodge in the memory of
lifelong fans was a skit about the Emperor Napoleon called
I’ll Say She Is! Its mode is runaway farce, a pastiche
without a prayer for logic, and any sample suggests about
as much as any other: ‘Our just is cause. We cannot lose. I
am fighting for France, Liberty, and those three snakes
hiding behind the curtain. Farewell, vis-à-vis Fifi D’Orsay.
If my laundry comes, send it general delivery, care of
Russia, and count it – I was a sock short last week.’A
memory of the three brothers all playing Napoleon in their
tricorn hats would find its way into Finnegans Wake,
according to Thornton Wilder, a formidable scholar of
Joyce. ‘This is the three lipoleum Coyne Grouching down
in the living detch.’ When told of the homage in later years,
Groucho was well pleased and only a little sceptical. ‘Did a
New York policeman, on his way back to Ireland to see his
dear old Mother Machree, encounter Joyce in some peat
bog and patiently explain to him that, at the Casino Theater
at 39th and Broadway, there were three young Jewish
fellows running around the stage shouting to an indifferent
world that they were all Napoleon?’
Woodworking can be hazardous to health; both commercial and DIY. Environmental News Network On a related topic, concerns are mounting that pressure-treated lumber used in climbing structures in children’s playgrounds may expose them to considerable arsenic levels. Wooden climbing structures are being dismantled in several states.
Clichés – avoid these like the plague. “Corrupt men with dead souls simply repeat
stale phrases. Like Senator Trent Lott, they use the word suck without bothering
to let a picture form in their minds.
Since all language is “fossil
poetry,” almost every phrase is a cliché. We cannot write every phrase entirely
new or we’ll end up as incomprehensible as Gertrude Stein. But that is no excuse
for wallowing in the worst of the cesspool. We can strain against fate and fight
against habit and, who knows? maybe even create some new phrases in the
process. To leave a new phrase or word behind is to have expanded the
collective consciousness and to have more than justified one’s existence. Good
writers are the heroes who free us from the tyrannies of clichés and open up the
future. Vocabula Review
“A new class of music writers is on the rise — call them the rock
curmudgeons. Call them dangerous.” Is Rock ‘n’ Roll Dead? Only if You Aren’t Listening The author, chairman of the English Dept. at SIU, finds rock music criticism to be part of a larger critical problem:
The decision to stop listening, for a music critic — or stop watching,
for a film critic, or stop reading, for a literary critic — is a
perfectly legitimate one; to delimit, however arbitrarily, the
boundaries of one’s expertise and interests creates a field of
manageable size within which one might hope to make a
significant contribution. But surely there’s a world of difference
between admitting “I don’t find time to read a lot of
contemporary poetry,” on the one hand, and pronouncing that
“no significant poetry has been written since Robert Lowell,” on
the other. Chronicle of Higher Education
Ted Olson’s Arkansas problem: “Despite his evasive disavowals, Salon investigations showed the right-wing consigliere was deeply involved in a sordid plot to bring down
President Clinton.” Salon
Studies Conflict on Whether Homosexuals Can Change. Robert Spitzer’s controversial study, reported last week, is widely criticized. [via Fred Lapides]
Psychiatrists analyze Harry Potter in a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in New Orleans, concluding he’s a good model of psychological health in the face of adversity. Salon And The analysts continue their discussion of The Sopranos‘ penultimate episode of the season:
‘When I was training to become an analyst, I had a supervisor with
impeccable Viennese credentials who taught me a very important
concept. And the fact that he put it in German made it that much
more authoritative. At a crucial point in a treatment, he told me, the
patient gains Krankheitseinsicht–which roughly means “insight
into one’s illness.” At that moment a person really becomes a patient,
an ally who has joined you in trying to understand the nature of that
“illness.”Until then, people often try to explain their troubles in terms of such
factors as ill luck, their stupid boss, their nagging spouse, the
capitalist system, an unjust world–in short, on some aspect of
external reality. While many of these complaints aren’t often true,
it’s only after a person has realized that there is something in their
inner world that causes them to continuously recreate unhappy
situations that therapeutic transformation can begin. The task then
for therapist and patient is to understand the psychological template
inside of the patient that he or she repeatedly imposes on external
reality.’ Slate
Indian caste shows link to Europeans. “A study has shown that people in higher ranks of the Indian
caste system are more closely related to Europeans than
Asians.
Experts now believe Europeans moved into India about
5,000 years ago, helped put the caste system in place and
put themselves at the top.
The genetic differences between social levels are still clear
because inter-caste marriages are frowned upon in Indian
culture.” Ananova
