Why are girls growing up so fast? “According to scientists who have been investigating the case,
the biological effect of oestrogens… lurking in the
environment may well be the reason why (girls) in
industrialised countries of the West are going into puberty at
an increasingly early age. But other researchers reject the
notion, and say that better nutrition and obesity are to blame.
Still more researchers suggest the declining age of sexual
maturity is the result of having a cold and distant father, or a
stepfather, or a depressed mother. A stressful home has also
been blamed, and so too has lack of adolescent exercise, as
well as child abuse, stress and media images.” Independent

Fight to show the ‘true’ Jacqueline du Pre . I just saw the riveting Hilary and Jackie the other night, based on Hilary du Pre’s memoir of her sister Jacqueline, passionate prodigy cellist who was stricken with multiple sclerosis at the height of her career. Friends of the musician felt she did not fare too well in the film’s portrayal as a spoiled prima donna, but I thought it was more an attempt to show her intensely ambivalent and tortured relationship to her talent and the unreality of the celebrity status it brought her. Emily Watson’s superb performance as Jacqueline, the absorbing complexity of the relationship of the two sisters, and not the least the sumptuousness of the music throughout the film make it quite rewarding. Now her admirers hope to correct what they call the distortions of the portrayal with a new documentary The Real Jacqueline du Pre. I look forward to its availability in the U.S., but far more important will be setting out to collect some du Pre on CD tomorrow… Sydney Morning Herald

Dan Hartung, in today’s Lake Effect posting, muses: “Okay, today’s White House gunman lived on Tyler Ave.
near the corner of Tippecanoe Dr., with Tecumseh Lane
nearby. Tippecanoe, of course, was the nickname of
William Henry “Tippecanoe” Harrison, who fought a battle
with Shawnee chieftain Tecumseh…” Dan and I wonder if this has anything to do with Tecumseh’s Curse, about which I wrote here some time ago. Recall that this relates to the death in office of the U.S. President elected every twentieth year since Harrison in 1840, with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan.

‘After a day of listening to Washington pundits praise the 90-year-old
Ronald Reagan as a “hero” — a verdict delivered with no discernible
dissent — we have decided to repost three past articles about the 40th
U.S. president: his real deeds and his real legacy.’ Consortium News And in Rehearsals for a Lead Role, the Washington Post writer proclaims that “Ronald Reagan was a liberal, an actor, a labor chief — but some unscripted plot twists forged a new character.”

Still, there persists the caricature of Reagan as a B-movie actor who used the talents he honed on soundstages in Burbank to attain high office where he stumbled into the end of the Cold War. Even his conservative supporters have perpetuated this view. Reagan national security adviser Robert McFarlane once remarked, “He knows so little and accomplishes so much.”

But a close review of the historical record, and recent interviews with those who knew Reagan best during the 1940s and ’50s, show a man profoundly affected by his experiences as a movie star and six-term president of the Screen Actors Guild. He emerges as a complex individual who — through what he once described as intense “philosophical combat” — changed his political ideology. Contrary to assertions (which Reagan himself often encouraged) that he became a Republican because the Democratic Party abandoned him, Reagan actually went from being a staunch liberal who participated in Communist front groups to a stalwart anti-communist because of his firsthand experiences dealing with Communist Party members. Washington Post

“They ain’t alright just because they’re white.” “I’ve been involved in the so-called ‘right-wing’ for a number of years
now, but when I step back and look at our so-called movement, especially
more recently, I can’t help saying to myself, ‘Why am I surrounded by so
many misfits?’ “

How much of Blade Runner
has come true? “A new UN report suggests 1982’s rather bleak Blade Runner
may be in danger of proving all too accurate.” BBC

Clinton and Gore Clashed Over Blame for Election. Sources describe “uncommonly blunt language.” Gore blames Clinton’s sexual embarrassments for his loss, Clinton’s rejoinder is about Gore’s failing to run on the strength of the economy. Perpetuating or healing the crippling split down the middle of the Democratic Party? Washington Post

When Straight Means Weird and Psychosis is Normal. “Given the cultural overlapping of transgression and conformity, what
does it mean to be ethical anymore?” Britannica.com

Melting Arctic Permafrost May Accelerate Global Warming. ‘Global warming may be set to accelerate as rising temperatures in the
Arctic melt the permafrost causing it to release greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere, a United Nations scientist warned today. An estimated 14
per cent of the world’s carbon is stored in Arctic lands.

Svein Tveitdal, director of a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
center in Norway that monitors the region, reported that rising Arctic
temperatures are melting the solid structure of frozen soil known as
permafrost and releasing heat trapping greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.

“Permafrost has acted as a carbon sink, locking away carbon and other
greenhouse gases like methane, for thousands of years,” Tveitdal told a
meeting of the United Nation’s Governing Council in Nairobi.’ Environmental News Service

Terrorism Watch: Greek Mythology? “The clock is ticking toward potential bloody disaster at the Athens
Games in 2004, the worst since the massacre of Israeli athletes at the
Munich Games in 1972. The International Olympic Committee is aware of
the danger but wants to keep it out of the public eye, as it tried to do
with drugs and corruption.”

Poking Holes in the Theory of ‘Broken Windows’. James Q.Wilson’s influential theory, popularized in a 1982 Atlantic Monthly
article, suggests that a zero-tolerance policy toward “neighborhood disorder” — physical decay and nuisance crime — is an effective way to bring down the overall crime rate. Police Chief William Bratton made a name for himself with his own implementation of this in New York City, and it has been credited for the much-ballyhooed dropping crime statistics of the last decade. But the “broken windows” theory appears to be based on specious reasoning and a dearth of empirical evidence, say critics from sociology, criminology and political science. (Among other things, the basic research design errors of confusing correlation with causation and failing to control for confounding variables play a hand here. ) The NYPD’s “order maintenance” program may be doing as much harm as good. Critics see “broken windows” as ‘a harmful, conservative philosophy masquerading as pragmatic and progressive public policy.’ Chronicle of Higher Education

Is the Shrub’s White House vacillating wildly on policy in controversial areas, e.g. between this and <a href=”http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010207/ts/bush_aids_dc_2.html
“>this position on closing the National AIDS Office? Or does the right
hand just not know what the right
hand is doing? Put it together with the story about Dubya demonstrating his lack of understanding of the nuances of the executive order he had signed about restricting funding for foreign abortion advocacy, and you wonder if anybody’s home at the White House and who’s running the show.

New Wild Camel Found on Chinese Nuclear Test Site. “A new species of camel that has adapted to survive on salt water has
been discovered in a remote region of salty sand dunes on the edge of
the Tibetan mountains. The wild camels were found in the middle of the
inhospitable and dangerous Kum Tagh sand dunes in China’s Xinjiang
province, north of Tibet…. The area in which they live was used by China for nuclear weapons
testing and has been, since 1955, off limits to people, allowing the
unique wild camels to survive. Since 1996 when tests were ended, miners
and hunters have been sowing land mines around the camels’ salty water
holes to take them for meat.” Environment News Service

Chance would be a fine thing: ”Walk into a research department in Cambridge, MIT or Stanford
nowadays,’ says Mike Lynch, Britain’s leading software entrepreneur and
a devout Bayesian, ‘and you will meet people who will tell you that
Bayes is more important than Marx and Einstein put together.’

For a quarter of a millennium Bayes’s theorem, or Bayes’s rule as it is
sometimes called, enjoyed a limited and mostly discredited role in
statistical mathematics. Recently, however, with the advent of cheap and
available computers, its influence has rapidly spread beyond the dull
grind of statistics to become something akin to a philosophical
movement, with an almost theological appeal. Yet it’s not a system of
belief so much as a means of measuring belief.’ Telegraph
<a href=”http://www.google.com/search?num=100?client=googlet&q=Bayes%27s%20theorem%2C%20or%20Bayes%27s%20rule
“>Here is the result of a Google search on “Bayes’s Theorem or Bayes’s Rule”.

Cameroon Attempts to Avert Natural Gas Disaster. Did you follow this mysterious and disastrous catastrophe in 1986? Hundreds living in a 25 km radius of this lake, Lake Nyos, died mysteriously and suddenly. At first it was hypothesized that there’d been a release of volcanic gas, but it’s been determined that it was a high concentration of CO2 dissolved in the lake water which suddenly let loose when the lake’s stratification was disturbed by seasonal weather changes; people and animals were suffocated by the cloud of CO2. Now that the cause has been figured out, CO2 levels are being constantly monitored and are again rising ominously. An international team has just completed the first of a projected five “degassing columns” which siphon up the CO2-rich bottom layer of water and release its dissolved gas in a controlled fashion. I wonder if the local inhabitants appreciate the nature of the threat under which they live and the effort being engineered on their behalf. Environmental News Service

Little relief for desperate citizens being driven round the bend : The Australian view of the state of things in New York revolves around the impossibility of finding a clean public toilet. “Restaurateurs complain that people order up big, use the lavatory and then do a runner before the appetisers arrive…. Desperate people have gone so far as to buy and actually drink New York coffee, which has a taste and consistency akin to warm sump oil, simply in order to use a cafe’s restroom.” New York budgeted $5 million last year to put in 100 public toilets. Not to gloat, but in contrast I just heard a news report that my hometown Boston has set aside $2 million for just eight — count ’em, eight — new public restrooms downtown; that breaks down to five times the cost per head (pun intended). Apparently, these are so expensive because they’re going to be totally self-cleaning, somehow or other. Sydney Morning Herald

Emerging Disease News: Woman in Canada Does Not Have Ebola, But Unknown Virus. It’s only a matter of time, though, it seems to me, before the virus is imported into North America. And other viral hemorrhagic fevers,some of them unknown as this unfortunate woman’s appears to be, are equally gruesome. Reuters

S-weeds: Eva Ekeblad, from Göteborg Sweden, has been going out each day and finding a weed in the vicinity of her home, identifying it, and scanning it in. “Persistent walking with eyes to the ground.”

Junkscience.com focuses on the “faulty scientific data and analysis used to further a special agenda. The junk science ‘mob’
includes:

The MEDIA may use junk science for sensational headlines and programming. Some members of the media
use junk science to advance their and their employers’ social and political agendas.

PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS may use junk science to bamboozle juries into awarding huge verdicts. Large
verdicts may then be used to extort even greater sums from deep-pocket businesses that may be fearful of
future jury verdicts.

SOCIAL ACTIVISTS, such as the “food police,” environmental extremists, and gun-control advocates, may use
junk science to achieve social and political change.

GOVERNMENT REGULATORS may use junk science to expand their authority and to increase their budgets.

BUSINESSES may use junk science to bad-mouth competitors’ products or to make bogus claims about their
own products.

POLITICIANS may use junk science to curry favor with special interest groups or to be “politically correct.”

INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS may use junk science to achieve fame and fortune.

INDIVIDUALS who are ill (real or imagined) may use junk science to blame others for causing their illness.”

Update: Dan Hartung, in a comment on this post, observes that it is “run by a Cato Institute libertarian.” Certainly don’t want to be inadvertently furthering their special agenda, but for a thinking person a halftruth is still usable…

Bembo’s Zoo is a delightful and beautiful abecedary children’s book by Robert deVicq de Cumptich that will appeal to typographically inclined grown-ups too. The website should be viewed with a child on your lap, especially if you have Flash installed.

“In this first book for children, de Cumptich… has created an abecedary of animals made entirely from Bembo letterforms and punctuation marks — nothing else. And you know, the conceit works.” — New York Times

The exodus from Blogger has begun. Today, I’ve noticed a number of people migrating to greymatter. I downloaded it last week but, alas, my website host doesn’t allow me to run custom Perl scripts without a costly upgrade in my service. Here‘s the weblog of Noah Grey, the author of greymatter.

International Necronautical Society: “…death is a type of space, which we intend to map, enter, colonise and,
eventually, inhabit.”

Reprinted in its entirety, the neologism of the day from Looka!: The word “embushen“,
contributed to the language by a fellow named Steve on
soc.motss, who exhorts us to “please make a point to use this
word as often as is appropriate in your daily conversations.”

Main Entry: em.bush.en

Pronunciation: im-‘bush-&n

Function: verb

Etymology: As derived from George W. Bush

Date: January 19, 2001

1 : to imbue with an attribute of stupidity, ineptitude
and incompetence

It Takes Training and Genes to Make a Mean Dog Mean. [The icing on the cake of this article is in bold below]:

About four million to five million people are bitten
each year by the nation’s 55 million to 59 million dogs,
according to statistics compiled by the Humane Society of
the United States and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, which consider dog bites epidemic.

The reason for the bites vary. Some are clearly accidental,
or the dog is provoked, while others result from various
forms of abnormal aggression in the dog.

Perhaps more significant, a statistical analysis by researchers
at the Humane Society, the C.D.C. and the American Medical
Veterinary Association and published in the Sept. 15 issue of
The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association
shows that between 1977 and 1998, pit bulls and Rottweilers
accounted for more than half of the 238 fatal attacks on
humans.

That same study shows that since 1975 dogs representing
more than 30 breeds have engaged in such attacks. Because
so many types of dog can be involved in fatal attacks,
including, in the past year, a Pomeranian and Lhasa apso,
experts in dog behavior have consistently argued that
outlawing specific breeds fails to address the greater
problem of all dogs that pose a threat to people and other
animals.

New York Times

What, Geeks at M.I.T.? Not With This Class The university offers an annual one-day “charm school” to counter nerdy image of its students. New York Times

Wanted: Employee Willing to Snooze on the Job

Government Revises HIV Treatment Guidelines. The good news is that AIDS experts are retreating from the “hit hard, hit early” dictum that has governed AIDS treatment in recent years. This means that the HIV(+) patient can wait longer before starting on the rigorous and burdensome multidrug regimen; findings suggest the immune system can hang on for longer than had been believed. The bad news is that this is an admission that the protease inhibitors are not a cure and, once someone starts taking them, they’re likely going to be on them for life. So putting off initiating treatment is a way of reducing attendant side effects, which include cardiovascular liabilities.

Use your Bush-era tax cut to buy a boat: Polar Ice Sheet Shows Shrinkage. “Scientists have worried for decades that
the Antarctic ice sheet was shrinking, threatening a global rise
in sea level. Now, satellite studies show that about 7.5 cubic
miles of ice have eroded from a key area in just eight years.”

Powell alters Bush campaign pledges, already. BBC

“It’s about time you had a say in what you are wearing. Make your mark!” Bid to personalize sneakers has Nike sweating. Although Nike’s website invites fans to “build your own shoe”, the company invoked its right to refuse the request of a customer who wanted the word “Sweatshop” on his personal shoe “to remember the toil and labor of the children that made my shoes.” It was abit hard for them to find a justification in their own fine print, but they sputtered on; San Jose Mercury Center here’s the email exchange.

ACLU Action Alert: Legislation Would Entangle Government and Religion — a campaign to oppose Dubya’s “faith-based initiative”. Since courts have allowed religious institutions to discriminate
on the basis of their beliefs and teachings in such areas as race,
religion, sexual orientation, gender and pregnancy status, funneling an expanding slice of the existing social services pie to faith-based organizations (after all, you don’t really think there’s going to be an expansion of social needs funding, do you? It’s not even likely we’re going to maintain current levels of expenditure on our most needy!) would result in taxpayer-funded
discrimination in social services employment and service delivery. The alternative in this devil’s bargain would be increasing regulation of religious institutions and loss of traditional autonomy of religious practices. Furthermore, a proportion of the delivery of social services would inherently shift from licensed and trained professionals to those in ministry who, for example, see drug addiction as a sin rather than a mental health problem. With a single click from this site, you can fax your U.S. Senators and Representatives, as well as the President himself, to make your feelings on ths issue known.

Here‘s the entire range of ACLU civil liberties concerns facing the 107th Congress, subject to your similar one-click action.

The Search for Another Earth: “NASA is currently mulling over a proposal that could help answer a question that has
divided astronomers since we began looking skyward: Are we alone?

The proposal is called the Kepler Mission and both proponents and opponents of the
project say it could change the way we see the universe.

The Kepler Mission, proposed by the Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in
Sunnyvale, California, wants to search for potentially life-sustaining planets by launching
a telescope that would orbit around the sun in 2005. For four years, the telescope would
monitor 100,000 stars contained in an area of the sky equal to the size of a human hand
held at arm’s length.” Wired

Scientists Seek Sense of Balance “Can rich social environments protect against dementia and cognitive decline?” The Scientist

Hidden meanings of the initials of New York City using Microsoft fonts. [via MetaFilter]

Who Let the Cat Out?

Thanks to LingMachineGo for pointing me to David Icke’s reaction to the accession of the Shrub: Another Shapeshifter in the White House: ” The Bush inauguration marks the start of the massive push by the Illuminati to further their agenda for a
global fascist state. You will see this clearly unfolding in the next 24 months and, as usual, watch what
they do, not what they say. The Bush administration will be a cold, calculating, vicious, period of human
history. I know people who have met the Shrub during his period as Governor of Texas and cold,
calculating, and vicious, as well as staggeringly unintelligent, are words they chose to describe him. But
those who will be dictating the actions of his presidency make him look like a puppy dog. Or maybe
lapdog would be more appropriate.” And here is Icke’s self-justification.

Annals of the Age of Depravity (cont’d.): Father Who Killed Sons Finds Way to Deepen Their Mother’s Grief New York Times

A Brand of Tap Dance Springing From Europe’s Streets sounds like an exciting reinvigoration of the art. New York Times

The Body Artist, Don DeLillo’s new, short, ‘pamphlet’ of a novel (at 124 pp.), seems uncharacteristically weightless until you dig beneath the surface, says Adam Begley in this complimentary review. And, as usual, a New York Times review of a major author’s new work is the occasion for a feature page linking to reviews of his earlier books and articles about and by him, as well as an audio reading and interview with the author.

Who’s afraid of Falun Gong? In this interview, progressive journalist Danny Schechter (when I was in college in the early ’70’s, he was “the news dissector” on underground rock radio station WBCN in Boston), whose recent book Falun Gong’s Challenge to China has been called a whitewash by the New York Times, explains why it’s not the cult it’s made out to be and why the Chinese are so afraid of the movement some call the most effective protest against the Chinese regime since Tiananmen. This in the aftermath of the recent attempted self-immolation by five sect members, including a 12-year-old girl, protesting continued Chinese suppression of the sect (an act which the sect has publicly disavowed), and, in one of his first official acts as Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s criticism of China’s stance, which drew a bitter rejoinder from its Foreign Ministry. Salon

Who’s afraid of Falun Gong? In this interview, progressive journalist Danny Schechter (when I was in college in the early ’70’s, he was “the news dissector” on underground rock radio station WBCN in Boston), whose recent book Falun Gong’s Challenge to China has been called a whitewash by the New York Times, explains why it’s not the cult it’s made out to be and why the Chinese are so afraid of the movement some call the most effective protest against the Chinese regime since Tiananmen. This in the aftermath of the recent attempted self-immolation by five sect members, including a 12-year-old girl, protesting continued Chinese suppression of the sect (an act which the sect has publicly disavowed), and, in one of his first official acts as Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s criticism of China’s stance, which drew a bitter rejoinder from its Foreign Ministry. Salon

Who’s afraid of Falun Gong? In this interview, progressive journalist Danny Schechter (when I was in college in the early ’70’s, he was “the news dissector” on underground rock radio station WBCN in Boston), whose recent book Falun Gong’s Challenge to China has been called a whitewash by the New York Times, explains why it’s not the cult it’s made out to be and why the Chinese are so afraid of the movement some call the most effective protest against the Chinese regime since Tiananmen. This in the aftermath of the recent attempted self-immolation by five sect members, including a 12-year-old girl, protesting continued Chinese suppression of the sect (an act which the sect has publicly disavowed), and, in one of his first official acts as Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s criticism of China’s stance, which drew a bitter rejoinder from its Foreign Ministry. Salon

Landlord created ‘noise machine’ to drive tenants out. “A landlord who wanted to get rid of a family renting a flat in his
building rigged up a ‘banging machine’ to annoy them so much
they would leave.

A court in Germany has heard that the plan came unstuck
when he went out himself because of the noise – and the family
from Geretsried called the police. Ananova

Caffeine ‘reduces productivity’ “Office managers who want to get the best out
of their workers should put a limit on how much
coffee and tea they drink each day.

Researchers have found that caffeine intake
may be partly to blame for office workers’ poor
performance.” The research was supported by Volvic bottled water… BBC

Report: DEA’s Latin drug operation’s numbers show discrepancies. They attempt to score a public relations coup with cooked-up statistics that don’t bear up to investigation at all.

Could the Scientists Be Wrong on Madcow Disease? One of those mavericks-bucking-the-received-wisdom stories, but credible enough to keep track of. New York Times

Doctor’s Doctor Home. IMHO, these two pathologists use the language of empowerment —

Patients should be more in charge of their own care. One way to do this is to learn as much about your
disease as you can. Much of the information you need is already accessible, you just need to ask for it.

The laboratory, surgical pathology, and cytology reports are your property, but most patients do not ask for
copies. This web site is dedicated to keeping patients informed and in control.

— to prey on patients’ fears and take them for a ride. After they hook you in, you get to the heart of their site, where they offer to “translate” your pathology report or lab test results “into plain English” for $50 a pop. Save your money, I’ll empower you for free: as this web site points out, you should feel free to request a copy of any of your lab tests or pathology reports; it’s your property and you have a right to it for the asking. But the appropriate physician to get to interpret it is your own, with whom you have a treatment relationship. S/he knows the particulars of your health situation which can put the lab values in context, the most medically responsible way to interpret them for you. (A generic interpretation reminds me of the booklets you can buy on the corner newsstand offering “cookbook” interpretations of your dreams.) Most physicians should be willing to do this with you, and if yours doesn’t satisfy you in this respect, then be empowered enough to consider finding a different doctor.

And, in related news, the New York Times says Talking Back to Doctors is Good Medicine, warning that the baby boomers are poised to become uppity senior health consumers.

Curiouser and curiouser: Killer Dog Linked to Ring Run by Inmates. “What first looked like a terrifying
tragedy–young woman killed by rogue dog–has
revealed an illegal guard dog-breeding operation run
from behind the walls of the state’s most secure prison,
law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
Authorities investigating the death of Diane Whipple,
33, are on the trail of a bizarre story, complete with white
supremacists, a surprise adoption and the Mexican Mafia.” LA Times

The founder of the field of cognitive ethology is No Longer Alone in daring to say that animals other than humans have consciousness and thoughts. New York Times

Salon reviews a laundry list of Democratic ills; is the party Riding a road to nowhere? “While the Republican president tries to broaden his party’s
tent, critics are wondering aloud whether Democrats are
folding their party’s tent altogether.” And the New York Times sees the Democrats Shift into Reverse with “the
Democratic National Committee’s
expected election tomorrow of Terry
McAuliffe as chairman. Mr. McAuliffe is
a walking symbol of the wretched excess of the Clinton
years. He raised millions in special-interest money for
President Clinton’s campaign. He made it clear that no
amount of presidential misconduct would sour him on Mr.
Clinton. Now he is promising to lead the entire party on a
quest for big bucks, and he is also expected to push Mr.
Clinton forward as a principal party spokesman during the
presidency of George W. Bush. With Mr. Clinton in that role,
the D.N.C. might as well vote to give the Bush White House
a permanent deed to the character issue.” And, speaking of his endearing character, the Boston Globe reports that Dubya is inviting Democrats out on dates these days.

Who’s afraid of Falun Gong? In this interview, progressive journalist Danny Schechter (when I was in college in the early ’70’s, he was “the news dissector” on underground rock radio station WBCN in Boston), whose recent book Falun Gong’s Challenge to China has been called a whitewash by the New York Times, explains why it’s not the cult it’s made out to be and why the Chinese are so afraid of the movement some call the most effective protest against the Chinese regime since Tiananmen. This in the aftermath of the recent attempted self-immolation by five sect members, including a 12-year-old girl, protesting continued Chinese suppression of the sect (an act which the sect has publicly disavowed), and, in one of his first official acts as Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s criticism of China’s stance, which drew a bitter rejoinder from its Foreign Ministry. Salon

Bush II: Smells like the ’80s!

But even if the president were inclined to represent the will
of the people in 2001, how would he know what it is? He is
known to be averse to books, television, movies, travel,
culture, public policy, work and staying awake for extended
periods of time. Indeed, some have wondered what it is
exactly that the president does with all his spare time. Could
“napping” be a euphemism for “protracted coma”? Are we
in fact living in the early days of the van Winkle
administration?

“Plus: Advertising makes a hard
right” [this is funny] “and an elitist lefty gives rhetoric tips to nonelitist
righties” [and this is pitiful]. Salon

The seat of power: if any of these are going at fire sale prices as new startups close, I need a new desk chair from which to pilot FmH. Boston Globe

The American Jobs Machine: One of the measures of the quality of the ‘new economy’ can be found in a closer examination of the nature of the jobs it creates. The authors, University of Wisconsin sociologists, find a pattern of “low road capitalism” with racialized job polarization and expansion of the “working poor.” They argue that “the pattern of job expansion is not some “natural” result of the
operation of efficient markets, but the inevitable result of all sorts of public
policies: the nature of the tax code, the institutions of skill formation, the
regulation of the employment contract and working conditions, the minimum
wage, and laws regulating unions. The task of government is to design such
policies in such a way as to rebuild social mobility and expand job
opportunities in the middle of the employment structure.” In particular, they suggest that, for the first time since the New Deal, expansion of jobs in the public works sector, considered increasingly necessary with the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and increasingly economically feasible with growing budget surpluses, may be a politically and socially useful direction to consider. Public policy decisions can also “close off the low road and pave the high road”, they argue. Boston Review

You have to believe in something. “Lewis Wolpert argues that beliefs may
come from our genes and we have a
fundamental need to tell ourselves
stories to make sense of life.” If causal thinking is preordained biologically, it is no surprise that irrational beliefs hold such sway, and Skeptics will always face such an uphill battle. Certainly, while beliefs differ tremendously, it is quintessentially human to explain things, make sense of them and believe in our explanations. Telegraph

In my psychiatric practice and teaching about psychosis, I’ve reached similar conclusions to Wolpert. It’s never easy, and a source of endless debate, to figure out which psychiatric symptoms (especially in the severe illnesses we call psychotic) are the so-called “primary” manifestations of a disease process’s alteration in brain function, and which are “secondary” — attempts of the mind at restituton in the face of the dysfunction. I firmly stand on one side of the deep controversy in psychiatry surrounding delusional beliefs — with the assertion that they are not primary psychotic symptoms. Instead, they are the attempts at restitution — a bewildered mind finding a way to “believe in something” in the face of the dysfunction of the machinery for making sense of things. For example, if you’re overcome by terrifying paranoid feelings of danger, it’s much more powerfully tempting and comforting to have an explanation (no matter how outlandish and no matter to what extent it sacrifices consistency with reality or consensus) than to have no explanation at all for how you are feeling. So you’ll come to believe, for example, that those people lurking on the corner across the street are CIA agents who have you under surveillance — and that that’s why you are feeling these frightening bewildering feelings of being in danger.

Figuring out whether delusions are primary symptoms of the alteration in brain function in the illnesses in which they occur has important clinical consequences in how we treat these disorders. I contend that treatments of psychosis, especially the powerful and effective antipsychotic medications we have at our disposal, never change delusional thinking, because once formed beliefs are very compelling and we abandon them only with great difficulty and at great cost even if the occasion for them has passed. Perhaps this “conservation of belief”, as I call it, speaks to Wolpert’s assertion of a biological determinism driving it. In any case, the implication is that we should stop throwing medications at a patient expressing fixed delusional beliefs if that’s his or her only “symptom”; instead, a focus on slower, cognitive measures for belief-changing is called for.

There is precedent for this distinction between primary symptoms and compensatory beliefs from other areas of psychiatry where it is more generally accepted. Panic disorder is a crippling condition with explosive spontaneous outbursts of severe anxiety. Along with it, patients often develop agoraphobia, the fear of going out, because they become convinced that certain places or activities away from the security of their home and family will bring on the panic attacks. Even when these patients have become completely free of panic attacks with the use of the appropriate medications, the agoraphobic avoidance persists as a fixed belief. The patient cannot be convinced that, because their susceptibility to panic attacks is stabilized, they no longer have to avoid the feared exposure. No medication can correct this, but rather only a variety of cognitive therapy approaches.

Well, enough of getting technical on you…

Hunting Web Rumors: ‘A Swiss online marketing company called Agence Virtuelle has created
RumorBot, a software robot intended to uncover the source of rumors
on the Internet. Using 44 autonomous agents (small programs),
RumorBot scans the Web, newsgroups, chat rooms, and listservers for
target words and phrases and then determines posting dates and
origins, a “chain of evidence” for malicious content (e.g., the Emulex
false press release scandal).’ Geek.com

Levi Strauss asked to apologize for Super Bowl ad which apparently (I didn’t see the ad) makes light of the plight of those awaiting organ donation. 74,000 people are on a national waiting list for an organ transplant, and 16 of them die each day because an organ is
not available to them, according to the executive director of a national organ donor registration organization. How about an ad from Levi Strauss in penance — it doesn’t even have to be aired during the Super Bowl — that, in addition to an apology (designed to restore lost sales) gives people the contact information for an organ donor registration organization? Nando Times

If you’ve sat here in the US in recent months watching the chances for a reasonable government slip through your fingers, imagine how it must feel for reasonable Israelis slouching toward Ariel Sharon’s election. I’ve heard several American commentators wishfully invoke
“only-a-Nixon-could-go-to-China” hopes, but it appears that most Israelis aren’t electing Sharon because they believe he is the only one who can make peace with the Palestinians, despite an almost singleminded focus on the peace process in the election campaign. Instead, the election is a disappointed and embittered personal rejection of Barak for his “addiction to a diplomatic formula that by now has been
empirically proven unworkable.” The only debate among those Israelis who hope for peace seems to be whether there will be any prospects left after Sharon, who says ominously “I know the Arabs and they know me” with a General’s sneer. With this, Israel elects the author of the “Lebanese misadventure” and repudiates the man who extricated their forces from the occupation of southern Lebanon. A dismal moment for peace, especially with a Shrub in the White House in place of Clinton, with his interest in leaving a peacemaker’s legacy.

I’ve migrated the FmH mailing list to ListBot after eGroups got swallowed up by Yahoo. Previously subscribed folks should’ve gotten an emailed invitation to join the new group already. If not, of if you’re anyone else wanting to subscribe, please click on this link or go to the sidebar.

Divided U.S. Senate Confirms Ashcroft 58-42. At least he didn’t quite get the 60 confirmation votes that gloating Republican leaders predicted. But it wasn’t quite the united front of opposition the Democrats are preening over either. The cave-in started in the judiciary committee with Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wisc.) who said it would be important for the Democrats’ political future not to take a purely ideological position against a nomination and said he felt the president should have the prerogative to choose like-minded people for his cabinet. Well, hello, the Senate Democrats are the only thing that can stand between a rabid unelected President without a popular mandate and the more than 50% of the electorate whose ideological positions won’t otherwise get a hearing for the next four years. The fallback position will have to be a hard line against the explosion of conservative judicial appointments that’s surely coming. Can you spell f-i-l-i-b-u-s-t-e-r?

Well, the only development in the bursting of the dot.com bubble that has the potential to affect me directly, since I’m not involved at all in the new Internet economy, is happening. Pyra is folding. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s the parent company of Blogger, the software/web
service I use to
publish this site. This essay from Pyra co-founder and CEO and Blogger developer Evan Williams, from his weblog evhead, offers assurances that he’s going to continue to work on and support Blogger, but a shudder passes through me considering the possibility of being without it, or having to migrate FmH to a different platform. Because it’s web-based, if Blogger is down, as it has been for the past day or so, it’s nearly impossible for me to post to my weblog; you may have noticed the dearth of new content for the past day or so, if you’re a regular reader. I’d been sitting on my hands thinking about my dependence on Blogger even before hearing about the demise of Pyra.

I wish Ev all the best in his future endeavors and, unabashedly, hope Blogger will remain among them as he promises. I was heartened by the response from the weblogging community to his recent fund drive for new servers, and hope he takes it as an indication of the support of his user base. I’m eagerly awaiting the souped-up Blogger Plus he has projected, not only for the promised enhancements but because his plan to charge for it may contribute to the stability of the platform. If Blogger’s been “shareware”, the trial period is certainly over and it’s time to register.

Congratulations to the winners of the Bloggies, especially Wockerjabby, the winner in the best-kept-secret-weblogs category (where Follow Me Here was a contendah).

The California GOP is seriously considering drafting Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor. As Chuck Taggart put it at Looka!, ” Jesus H. Christ on a
bike. Our most talented satirists couldn’t make up anything as
absurd as this.” He also spewed some four-letter words at the prospect, which I’m tempted to echo.

Sobering thought: “Rowdy drinkers can’t blame their violent behaviour on alcohol,
say Canadian researchers who have found that drinkers can
‘sober up’ if offered a small reward. The findings suggest that
being intoxicated is no defence if someone commits a crime.” But, on the other hand, even water makes you stupid. New Scientist

G. Gordon Liddy, on trial for defamation of Ida Wells, a Democratic National Committee secretary, advances the theory that John Dean masterminded the Watergate break-in to retrieve photos of his future wife Maureen. He claims her pictures were part of a packet of photos of call-girls used to set up liaisons in nearby apartments for visitors to the DNC, and were kept in Wells’ desk. Liddy claims he committed the break-in under the misconception that it was, as has been commonly understood, about bugging the DNC in support of the Nixon re-election effort, and that he only found out the true rationale for the break-in years later when he was told about the photographs by “a disbarred attorney and convicted felon with a history of mental illness,” Phillip Mackin Bailley.

‘ “I know he hates my husband but I know on some level he’s
trying to lessen his culpability and stupidity for the Watergate
break-in and to get even with my husband for exposing all of
the criminal acts in the Nixon White House,” (Maureen) Dean said
in what she described as her first interview on the subject in
10 years.’ Boston Globe

This is a bizarre theory from one of the strangest characters on the American scene, but is it really any more implausible than the commonly accepted theory of the break-in? Coverage of this defamation trial is the first I’ve heard of this zaniness but he and Dean have apparently been battling it out for awhile now. Here’s a Google search on “Liddy AND ‘Maureen Dean’ AND call-girl”.

Salon.com Radio launches March 1 on Public Radio International affiliates. “Each week, Salon.com Radio will take the
wry, opinionated personality of Salon.com
to the airwaves. Hosted by Stephan Cox,
the one-hour program will feature stories,
interviews and commentary on current
events, technology, arts and culture, with
reporting and interviews by Salon.com‘s
writers and editors.” How will it differ from, say, All Things Considered on NPR (except insofar as it is only one hour a week)?

“When You Get an Email Petition, Think Delete“. I’ve usually just signed them and passed them on if I agree with them, but this columnist makes a coherent argument that it’s largely a waste of your time. Chicago Tribune

Peggy Kamuf, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at USC, describes the witchhunt by a freelance reporter for Salon and, subsequently, a US News and World Reports columnist, who couldn’t even begin to understand the line of argument she was making in her lecture ‘The End of Reading.’ In the lecture, she tried to describe the contributions literary criticism and psychoanalytic theory could make to the neurologically-based science of reading and reading disorders, expanding our perspective on the interiority of the reading experience rather than just focusing on its externals. She was described by her detractors as making a 45-minute rant about the violence done by parents’ reading aloud to their children. She links to the text of her lecture, the Salon article and the USN&WR writeup, and her responses to both. Here, admittedly taken out of context, is the offending passage of her lecture:

The common notion of reading
as information-extraction sets the principles, and thus institutes the laws and the institutions through which reading practices are maintained, that is,
reintroduced, reproduced, and reinforced in each new generation of readers, as we like to think of them. And we do like our dearest common notion of
reading to remind us of the whole family scene. Reading is also thereby getting produced and maintained as site for the patriarchal, paternalistic family’s
reproduction of itself. The practice gets passed down, most typically, in the voice of mothers, usually mothers, reading aloud to their children. There where
this ancient practice of reading aloud survives, before the child’s invention of silent reading, it is the mother’s voice that has been made to echo with the
letters taking shape on the page. I say “has been made to” because the scene is certainly not a natural one. It has also to be produced, reproduced, instituted.
With the scene we are evoking of the child learning to read by listening to the mother’s voice, it is the institution of written signs themselves, and thus of all
possible institutions that is being passed down. The institution of the family of man takes place in a scene of learning to read. But what we forget, what we
have to forget or repress is that this is always also a violent scene inasmuch as it has to repeat, reinflict the violence that wrenches the human animal out of
the state of sheer animality, where, as we are taught to believe once we can read, there is no such thing as reading in this common sense, the sense we all
supposedly share, sharing thus the belief that only humans read or do what we call reading.

Some might suggest that, with prose like that, Prof. Kamuf set herself up for a hysterical misreading! But it’s no more lurid than much to be found in the psychoanalytic literature, for example, and far more comprehensible than much contemporary literary criticism, IMHO.

Chronicle of a Massacre Foretold: “The growing power and brutality of Colombia’s paramilitary forces have become the chief concern of international human rights groups
and, increasingly, Colombian and U.S. officials who say the 8,000-member private army might pose the biggest obstacle to peace in the
country’s decades-old civil conflict.

This massacre, the largest of 23 mass killings attributed to the paramilitaries this month, comes as international human rights groups push
for the suspension of U.S. aid to the Colombian armed forces until the military shows progress on human rights. The armed forces, the
chief beneficiary of the $1.3 billion U.S. anti-drug assistance package known as Plan Colombia, deny using the paramilitaries as a shadow
army against leftist guerrillas, turning a blind eye to their crimes or supporting them with equipment, intelligence and troops.” Washington Post

A Phoenix New Times reporter scores An Exclusive Interview With the Preserves Arsonist, and an Arizona Republic editorial is roundly critical, asking Where’s The Outcry Over These Arsons?

Wired has two stories about what the connectivity of the Internet has done to two very different social phenomena.
First, Will the Hatemongers Survive? Rightwing hate groups are evolving a new model in which their dirty work is done by “lone wolves”, individuals acting independently after having been inspired by the hatemonger’s justification and encouragement. The Internet is tailor-made to trawl in this way for adherents whle insulating the hate group from any direct connection to or legal liability for the actions committed in their name.

And Holy and Hooked Up in India tours the web presences of some of the “enlightened souls” at this year’s Kumbh Mela. By the way, the site has an incredible satellite photo (right) showing the dense mass of millions of people at the river bank at the start of the most sacred and busiest bathing day of the festival.

A gold star for tedium. As a father of two children whom we shower with books and to whom we read aloud all the time, I look for any pointers I can get to good children’s literature. I commented some months ago on the bewildering variety of children’s book medals, but the greatest attention and acclaim seem reserved for the Newbery medalists. So why do they have to be so boring, I wondered as I perused this year’s list, and this Salon essayist agrees that the Newberys are “insomnia-curing”, “eat-your-spinach books”, “the books
that stayed on display at the library
because no one checked them out”.

…(M)any adult
readers unquestioningly and uncritically accept the
Newbery medal…because many of us were well-trained and
obedient children, children who respected authority.
Bookish kids were often the homework-doers, the
good-grade-getters, the ones who took our vitamins and sat
still for the eye doctor. When we rebelled we did so
sneakily, with a flashlight under the covers. And so lurking
in the back of many minds is an atavistic belief that the
grownups are always right — that the books we were
sneaking for pleasure weren’t as good for us as the
award-winners we should have been reading. We too often
treat the Newbery awards as if we were still children being
told what’s good and what’s bad, what’s right and what’s
wrong.

The New Yorker Inane Ad of the Week site proclaims: “Each week this site highlights an especially absurd advertisement from the pages of the militantly bourgeois
New Yorker magazine. The selected advertisements evince the ridiculous excesses of our consumer culture.
They target an audience with a disgustingly high rate of disposable income and hawk to it the most frivolous
of baubles, endeavoring to engender — and promising, for a hefty sum, to gratify — desires nobody could have
developed on her or his own. So check this URL every seven days for a new, hilarious, hyperbolic example of
decadent consumerism.”

Tongue twisters, Zungenbrecher, Trabalenguas, Skorogovorki: the first international collection.

Making the complex simple. In the early ’90’s, scientists hoped it would be easy to find the generalities that explained complex systems or processes, and failed miserably, especially if real applicability (predicting the weather, the stcok market, human behavior, etc.) was to be the gold standard. Now complexity science has another, more modest go at it. The Economist [Could the answer be ’43’ after all?]

After Meritocracy. The sociology of the presidential administrations: Bush Sr.’s people were “WASP elitists”, Clinton’s were “meritocratic elitists”, and the Shrub’s people are “smart but anti-intellectual organization men. They rose through the
ranks of institutions—government,
industry, the military—and value loyalty
above all other traits. Their backgrounds have made the
transition run smoothly, but at the first sign of crisis, they
might lack the creative flexibility to wiggle their way out.” The New Republic

Human clone attempt ‘in a year’. It’s always been clear to me that, as soon as it can be done, it will be:

A fertility expert says he will try to produce the first cloned human being within a
year.

After a vote in the House of Lords to allow scientists to clone human embryos for
research, Severino Antinori, who runs a fertility clinic in Rome, claimed to have 10
couples willing to take part in the experiment.

If successful, it will produce a baby who will be an exact genetic replica of its
father.

Dr Antinori is already notorious for enabling a mother of almost 63 to have a child to
replace her adult son who died, and for causing uproar in Britain six years ago when
he helped a 59-year-old unmarried woman have twins.

Dr Antinori told a meeting in Lexington, Kentucky, that he was forming an
“international coalition” of scientists to work on the cloning project in ‘a country of
the Mediterranean where I had consent’.

Why I am Not a Cultural Anthropologist by Nicholas Nicastro

Darwin Awards Candidate? Boy Suffers Burns After Imitating MTV. But then again, if shows like ‘Jackass’ pandering to the lowest common denominator of human intelligence bring in the advertising revenues, isn’t this just an unfortunte cost of doing business? After all, there is a disclaimer warning viewers not to attempt these stunts at home…

Ring Travels 10,000 Miles, Stuck in Man’s Boot. “A ring given up for lost by its owner traveled 10,000 miles around Egypt,
the United States and Costa Rica stuck to the bottom of her boyfriend’s hiking boot.”

Humans Biggest Threat to Galapagos. ” ‘It was a close shave, but I think it’s safe to say the spill did
not have a major impact on the Galapagos,” said Godfrey
Merlen, a British researcher who has lived in the archipelago for
two decades and is helping the Galapagos National Park Service
monitor the damage…

Only one pelican and two seagulls are known to have died from
the spill off San Cristobal, the easternmost island in the remote
Pacific archipelago. But dozens of sea lions and birds, including
albatrosses and blue-footed boobies unique to the Galapagos,
had to be trapped and cleaned.

Scientists say the main concern now is whether fuel will settle
to the bottom of the ocean and kill algae, the only source of
food for marine iguanas, another species found only in the
Galapagos.” AP

The AIDS Questions That Linger. What we still don’t know, on the eve of the upcoming international conference:

Why does AIDS predispose infected persons to certain types
of cancer and infections and not others?

What route does H.I.V. take after it enters the body to
destroy the immune system?

How does H.I.V. subvert the immune system?

What is the precise function of H.I.V.’s nine genes?

What is the most effective anti- H.I.V. therapy?

Is a vaccine possible?

In the absence of a vaccine, how can H.I.V. be stopped?

Why do most babies born to infected mothers escape
infection?

Why do H.I.V. rates differ so greatly among regions in Africa
and elsewhere?

How many people are infected in the United States and has
the rate changed in recent years?

Where did AIDS come from?

New York Times

New Yorkers Ponder ‘Rain Rage’. “What this city needs is better umbrella etiquette.” New York Times

“Before
the UN inspectors came, there were 47 factories involved in the
project. Now there are 64.” Saddam has made two atomic bombs, says Iraqi defector: “Saddam Hussein has two fully operational nuclear bombs and is
working to construct others, an Iraqi defector has told The
Telegraph…The fresh evidence comes only a week after President George
W Bush took office. In his inaugural address, he promised to
confront weapons of mass destruction, without mentioning Iraq.
Under Anglo-US policy, any attempt by Saddam to build nuclear
or biological weapons could lead to military action.

Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State and a Gulf war veteran,
and Vice-President Dick Cheney are both known to favour a
radical approach in dealing with Iraq.” How convenient this comes up just a week after the contentions ascension of Dubya, as the international consensus to maintain the pressure on Saddam is fading. His father did so well consolidating his leadership of the “Free World” with the demonization of the Iraqi Hun.

Dogs don’t kill people, people kill people?? Friends and neighbors saddened, angered over deadly dog attack. The San Francisco woman died in the hospital after being set upon by two dogs, each of which weighed more than she did, who bounded out of their owner’s neighboring apartment as she was putting her keys into her door. The dogs were a blend of the Canario, a Spanish fighting breed so ruthless that it was outlawed in Spain in the ’30’s, and the massive English Mastiff; the cross has been deemed irresponsible by some dog experts. Apparently the owner had only recently acquired them. How should we parse out the responsibility for this? SFGate

Start Paying for Napster in June. “Germany’s publishing powerhouse Bertelsmann said on Monday it was planning for an
early summer introduction of a subscription service of Napster music downloads over the Internet.” Wired And Gnutella is spreading itself thin. “Predictions that Gnutella would quickly offer an effective file-swapping alternative to
Napster have proven premature, with the technology’s own developers admitting
more work is needed before it will take off as a way to trade free music and other
digital wares. ” ZDNet

Nominees announced for National Book Critics Circle Awards: ‘Jacques Barzun, a best-selling author at 92, and Zadie Smith, a best-selling author
at 24, were among the nominees announced Monday for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. [Smith’s White Teeth is on the pile of pending books on my nightstand.]

Other finalists included four-time nominee Cynthia Ozick for her essay collection Quarrel & Quandary and Michael Chabon for his fanciful novel about
comic books, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. ‘ Nando Times

BlogVoices is back.

“…it seems we inhabit and enjoy
a world where the real thing does not really matter”. On “the declining
importance of authenticity in western culture and our
acceptance of a world where imitation is
all-pervasive….

In the arts and in our lifestyles, endless bricolage,
regurgitation and imitation bear testament to this
trend. We drink in fake Irish pubs, cocoon ourselves
in virtual reality, and visit Disneyland to immerse
ourselves in the worlds of ancient Egypt, Greece,
Rome, Olde England or the Wild West. Some – such as
the residents of Celebration, Florida, a recreated
world of Midwest America – even live in a simulated
world. Eclectic genres of rap and dance music
unashamedly borrow guitar riffs from the Seventies,
looping them over a Sixties bass-line. Meanwhile, a
put-together girl band mimes on stage and reaches
number one.” New Statesman

Techgnosis author Erik Davis ponders the “cost to our sense of being” of wireless technology and its erosion of place:

As with so many technologies, the
penetration of wireless into global society will be
simultaneously convenient, weird, banal, and
deeply disturbing. We already accept the little
antisocial wormholes that cell phones open up in
the midst of public space, a phenomenon that,
while further cranking up the knob on
individualism, at least adds another wrinkle to the
boundaries that define our social interaction. But
the growth of wireless access to data may have
a very different effect, because it erodes the
sense that the world we wander through has any
real variation at all.

A droll Washington Post staff writer trolls the hot, hot AOL Britney Spears chatroom for opinions on Dubya and the election.

Kevin Phillips: “The GOP has never met a tax cut it didn’t like, and that weakness may pave the way for a repetition of the 1981-92 recession.” With Federal Reserve chairman Greenspan having gone forked-tongued on this one already (he knows where his bread is buttered), and the doubts expressed by new Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill being steamrolled over, keep your fingers crossed for the misgivings of Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and William Thomas (R., Calif.), new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to amount to something.

“It is a conspiracy theory that would make Oliver Stone blush, but the pieces fit
so perfectly well together that it has an eerie ring of truth. The theory: California
utilities and a Texas-based power cartel purposely turned the lights out to pressure
California’s governor and Legislature into a lucrative bailout.
If this theory is correct, it would be one of the most outrageous examples of
corporate exploitation ever perpetrated. This is not just because of the tens of
billions of dollars to be transferred from Californians to corporate interests. It is also
because the crisis may well drag the rest of the nation into a nasty recession.
Let’s look then, at the facts and logic supporting the ‘blackout-bailout’ theory.” LA Times

EJ Dionne to the illegitimate son: “We’ll Get Over It If You Get Off Your High Horse” Washington Post

‘Promising’ tests on car speed limiters extended. After a three-year trial with a Ford Escort, the government of the UK has commissioned a twenty-car experiment with limiting vehicle speed using a computerized override on the throttle linked to a GPS which downloads data about the speed limit for a given road. Guardian

Despair, Inc. secures official trademark registration for :-( “In a move that has
millions across the Internet
community frowning, Despair,
Inc. today announced that the
U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) had awarded
them a registered trademark for
the ‘frowny’ emoticon which
serves as their logo.” Will an explosion of trademark infringement lawsuits ensue? I have just one thing to say about that:

:-(

[from Red Rock Eaters]

Must men fight? Probably. “Tests on fighting fish, angry wasps show
machismo may be biologically inevitable.” Toronto Globe and Mail

Must men fight? Probably. “Tests on fighting fish, angry wasps show
machismo may be biologically inevitable.” Toronto Globe and Mail

Must men fight? Probably. “Tests on fighting fish, angry wasps show
machismo may be biologically inevitable.” Toronto Globe and Mail

A fairly technical exposition on How SETI@Home works, from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). From radio telescope reception to distributed computing and postprocessing. And what the SETI project will do if a signal arrives, according to the 1989 “Declaration of Principles
Concerning Activities Following the Detection of
Extraterrestrial Intelligence“.