Beat Poet Gregory Corso Dies at 70. Crusty, irreverent friend of Allen Ginsberg, discovered by Ginsberg through his prison writings. Some selections from Corso’s poetry may be found here, and this tribute page includes one of my favorite of his pieces:

…Like the jester who blew out candles

tip-toeing in toe-bell feet

that his master dream victories

–so I creep and blow

that the cat and canary sleep.

I’ve no plumed helmet, no blue-white raiment;

and no jester of-old comes wish me on.

I myself am my own happy fool…

“Clown”

From my continuing coverage of the “underground”: Tunnel Vision: Using Sociological Radar to Snare a Seat — everyday applications of ethnic savvy in subway hand-to-hand combat. Next, the extraordinary portrait of the impostor subway motorman, a favorite of the Spike Report. New York Times And online and underground: “Thanks to the Web, the sport of
infiltration — creeping through
abandoned buildings and unused
subway tunnels — is thriving as
never before.” Salon This article points to the entertaining Infiltration site, “the zine about going places you’re not supposed to go”: utility and subway tunnels, drains and catacombs, abandoned buildings and other edifices and institutions. Here‘s a list of the sites in the Urban Exploration webring. “We don’t break locks or
bolts or climb over fences; what we’re really overcoming is
imaginary barriers that are just understood but barely
questioned.” And this, from Salon as well, on Subway Love: “With much of its crime and grime
wiped clean, or at least swept into the corners, the subway has
become a blank slate for our sexual fantasies. It has become a
place for flirtation, self-invention, play.”

Bay Area Bug Eating Society: “No one can resist the toe tappin’, hand clappin’, exoskeleton snappin’ satisfaction of Entomophagy.” With anecdotes, pictures, recipes, frequently asked questions, and links to other bug-eating sites.

The virginity hoax: ‘Toss out words like “sexual behavior of teenagers,”
“virginity” and “highly effective” and the parents of adolescents
claw their way to newsstand and keyboard in a panicky search
for enlightenment, looking, always, for relief from the kind of
angst they heaped on their own elders just long enough ago not
to remember.

So what did they — we — learn from the study of “virginity
pledges” by the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development?’ That they don’t work, in short. When pledgers break their vows (and they do) they tend to have unsafe sex. As the study points out, it’s hard to imagine how someone could both pledge chastity until marriage and carry a condom whle unmarried. Furthermore, they tend not to think of anal or oral sex as violating their commitment to chastity. Salon

Diamond trade fuels bloody wars. “It is the poorest country in the world and it is
conceivable that the diamond ring being enjoyed by a young woman in the
richest part of the world could have resulted in the dismemberment of a young
woman in Sierra Leone.” CNN [via Medley]

Lower Pneumonia Risk in Some With AIDS. “Researchers
are offering additional evidence
that people infected with the AIDS
virus can safely stop taking drugs
designed to prevent a deadly
pneumonia as long as their immune
systems are relatively healthy.” The risk of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, an opportunistic infection that was one of the early causes of devastation in HIV-infected patients, has consigned a generation of AIDS sufferers to preventive therapy. This new finding is important both because of the possibility they do not have to take pneumocystis-preventing meds but also as a paradigm. If the immune system with modern AIDS treatment can be kept vigorous enough to prevent this infection, patients may be at lower risk than commonly thought from other infections that prey on immune-compromised hosts. New York Times

Britney Spears guide to Semiconductor Physics:

“It is a little known fact, that Ms Spears is an
expert in semiconductor physics. Not
content with just singing, in the following
pages, she will guide you in the
fundamentals of the vital laser components
that have made it possible to hear her super
music in a digital format.”

“It’s really remarkable. The 21st Century comes to a Vermont boy!”
Parkinson’s Sufferer Improves After Surgery. The procedure implanted a pacemaker-like device in the 37 year-old man’s chest, to electrically stimulate parts of the brain and block the impulses causing his tremors. WCVB Boston

Kumbh Mela update: devotee photo gallery. Reuters [via Robot Wisdom] Recent news stories from the festival. Yahoo News

A collection of articles in the latest issue of New Scientist takes a look at what the illegitimate son is likely to do as commander-in-chief of the world’s largest scientific research budget:

Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars Project is Back

<a href=”http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns22747
“>Environmentalists Fear the Worst

<a href=”http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns22748
“>Big Science Gets the Silent Treatment

Will Embryonic Stem Cell Research Grind to a Halt?

Scientists Bring Light to Full Stop, Hold It, Then Send It on Its Way New York Times

California in State of Emergency Over Power, Hundreds of thousands of people in a swath from the Oregon border to Bakersfield had their power cut temporarily in rolling blackouts; frantic efforts to buy power from the Northwest grid were unsuccessful as other utility companies refused to sell, citing the near-bankruptcy of California’s two largest utility companies. Traffic lights and ATM machines stopped functioning.

When I read Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren — which someone has neatly described as the first novel of “ambiguous heterotopia” — several decades ago, it burned itself into my consciousness as an archetype — chaotic life in the ruins of the metropolis after some vague, unnamed apocalypse. Nothing as specific as those (often clumsy) novels explicitly posing the aftermath of nuclear war, which was the only apocalyptic referent I had in those days, so it never seemed possible we’d actually live it during my lifetime. But if I were living in California right now, I might think I was on the doorstep… “…not with a bang but a whimper”?

The power of e-mail. Six degrees of separation revised for the connected world. Update: 115,000 responses from all seven continents to date. The teacher regrets that he didn’t put a stop date on the original request.

<img src=”http://www.georgybush.com/dark.gif”
align=center alt=”Dark. Like America’s Future.” border=0 height=30 width=500>

“Minor Literary Celebrities Against Fascism”, a call-to-arms from Neal Pollack, whom I still maintain may not exist.

As an adoptive parent, I find this particularly outrageous. Washington Post [via Rebecca’s Pocket]

This will definitely be on our travel agenda. Spy Museum Shows Off Espionage Tools The museum is slated to open in Washington in February of next year. Thanks to Rebecca Blood for pointing to this item; she comments on how much fun it would be to work for a company whose business is setting up museums, and I agree.

A bland antidote for Bill ‘n’ Al fatigue: George W.. Camille Paglia’s postgame analysis on the election and the current status of the Democratic and Republican parties; on the Linda Chavez flap; and the bankruptcy of current literary criticism. In passing, she declares her crankiness at the “low level of play” in last weekend’s NFL championship games. But everyday concerns pale in the face of her recent trip to immerse herself in Mesoamerican ruins in Mexico, she reports. Salon

Jews in Bush’s Cabinet? Don’t Hold Your Breath.

“George Bush has put every kind of American in his cabinet
except Jews, and no one has complained about this, even
though everyone knows it’s nuts. Remaking the American
power structure without Jews is like remaking sports without
blacks. At least when it comes to blacks in sports, you can talk
about it; you can say that blacks changed sports. But no one is
allowed to speak up about something we all quietly know: Jews
changed America.”

What follows in this essay by a Jewish writer is a discussion about whether Jewish paranoia is justified, e.g. in discerning anti-Semitic indicators in Dubya’s actions.

“So long as Jews continue to see themselves as powerless, they fail to recognize the
effect they have had on society and, worse, fail to move outside a privileged
position of wounded self-regard and come to terms with their real spot: big winners
in the new order. It looks like the next chapter in the democratic discourse is going
to be about winners and losers in the globalist pursuit of excellence. Liberal Jews
owe it to themselves and to American ideals to take an honest part in that
conversation. Doing so might begin with asking the President-elect bluntly what’s in
his heart.” New York Observer [via Robot Wisdom]

McVeigh Execution Date Set “Federal officials set a May 16 execution date Tuesday for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of murder and conspiracy for the bombing that killed 168 people in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building…

The 32-year-old McVeigh, who is on death row at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., has said he doesn’t want any more appeals, but he has reserved the right to seek executive clemency.” Martyrdom awaits; at least the killing isn’t going to be on the anniversary of the April 19, 1995 bombing. AP

A reader wrote to say that the “[discuss]” button doesn’t work; Java errors. After I installed the feature, I clicked on it and it was trouble-free for me. Anyone else care to try?

Google Search: “George W. Bush” and “favorite book”; Gore said his was Stendhal’s The Red and the Black.

Fight for future of dance ideal is taking shape “Fredrika vs. the (SF) Ballet is the latest round in the high-profile
battle between politics and art, where aesthetic standards and
business realities often clash with notions of liberty, diversity,
and self-esteem.

But this case has earned a heightened sense of importance
because of the death of ballerina Heidi Guenther, whose
mother has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Boston
Ballet. Guenther was 22 years old, 5 feet 3 inches tall, and
weighed 93 pounds when she died of heart arrhythmia in
1997. The suit contends that Guenther starved herself to a
state of ill health after the ballet pressured her to lose
weight. And her death has prompted a broad debate about
who is at fault when people harm themselves in pursuit of
someone else’s physical standards.” Boston Globe

Review of Peter Knight’s Conspiracy Culture: “Rumour has it that you no longer have to be paranoid
to believe that there exists a conspiracy to spread
conspiracy theories about everything.” New Statesman

Thanks to a reader for pointing me to further discussion of the Death Cycle of Presidents Elected in a Zero Year, which I discussed awhile back. I was not aware of Tecumseh’s curse.

Hollywood Prepares to Fight File-Swappers. Although no widespread Internet film-swapping system has yet emerged, Hollywood executives are running scared, studying the Napster phenomenon as the inevitable digital distribution of movies looms nearer. The Standard

Stars quit charity in corruption scandal: “Luciano Pavarotti has walked out of the high-profile overseas aid
charity, War Child UK, with five other celebrity patrons after
discovering that its co-founder had taken a bribe from contractors
building a prestigious music centre named after him in Bosnia.

The opera maestro – who along with the rock musician Brian Eno persuaded
other stars like Elton John, Bono and Eric Clapton to perform in
concerts and donate royalties to raise millions of pounds for the
charity – quit after discovering that two people involved with the
organisation had taken bribes and that there were concerns over
financial and management controls. Pavarotti himself has raised more
than $10m (£6.6m).

High profile patrons of the charity included the playwright Sir Tom
Stoppard, film and Royal Shakespeare Company actress Juliet Stevenson,
pop star David Bowie, and MTV chief Brent Hanson.” The Guardian

Un-American Activities: The rehabilitation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his redbaiting? New York Review of Books

For those few of us who listen: two Village Voice critics grapple with the state of ‘serious’ music today. First, from Kyle Gann, Death Wish “New music is at an impasse — you can’t convince people it exists.

There is a certain small culture around it, but it is impossible to get power brokers outside that culture to believe that anything is going on. The offcial line is, classical music is finished, a closed book, Glass, Reich, and maybe John Zorn the end of history. And it does not help that jazz is ever more officially referred to as “America’s classical music.” First of all, what is that supposed to do for jazz? Legitimize it, make it blandly respectable and therefore ignorable? And it slaps those composers whose training is classical out of the water. With the Wynton Marsalis crowd threatening to bring jazz history to a close and turn it into a repertoire museum, jazz musicians who believe in the ongoing evolution of the art are in the same boat as the new-music people. We need to band together.”

And Voice jazz critic Larry Blumenfeld <a href=”http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0102/blumenfeld.shtml
“>blasts the Ken Burns documentary currently on PBS, echoing much the same concern about the Marsalis hegemony, as I wrote about several months ago. Burns has said that this is a series that isn’t supposed to be for those who already listen to jazz, and dismisses criticism from the jazz critic community, who have complained that it is unduly classicist at the expense of the living tradition of improvisation and the “embrace of entropy” that lies at the heart of jazz. “Burns’s film may raise jazz’s water level in our culture at large, as the record-company executives hope, but it may also signal a final dry season for the music’s forward flow.”

Itch Gets Its Own Neurons. It has long been thought that the itch sensation is conveyed by pain neurons, and that that is why scratching, which stimulates the pain sensors, can relieve an itch. But now it has been found that there are specific, separate neurons in the CNS that respond to itch.

“Eco-pornography”: The latest book by a Pacific Northwest journalist who has given much aid and comfort to environmentalists throughout his career commits the heresy of saying that the “handbasket-to-hell” pronouncements of the Greenpeace set are dead wrong, and that things are improving. He cites new oceanographic and marine biological data to suggest that the notion of a “sacred balance” is askew — the North Pacific ecosystem undergoes dramatic periodic “sea changes” of its own accord independent of human impact. Terry Glavin believes that public despair about environmental degradation is another version of millennialism. He cites a long list of species whose numbers have been rising exponentially over recent decades, and he says the First Peoples fished out the salmon to a similar extent to modern commercial fishing endeavors long before the European presence in the Northwest. National Post

For the perfect party, invite a mathematician. A mathematical theory predicts how large a gathering of people must become before it inevitably breaks down into cliques of mutual interest and mutual dislike.

The same mathematical column has the following tidbit which I find fascianting (and am clipping and saving) but is guaranteed to have only limited appeal, I fear:

Is there
a formula for working out the day of the week
corresponding to a date of birth?

Indeed there is. Suppose the date is September 23,
1959. First, take the final two digits of the year (in
this case, 59), divide them by four, ignoring any
remainder (14), and add the result to the original
two digits (giving 73). Now add to this the day of
the month (23) and divide the result by seven, this
time keeping only the remainder (five).

Next, add the “month number”: six for January (five
in leap years), two for February (one in leap years);
two for March; five for April; zero for May; three for
June; five for July; one for August; four for
September; six for October; two for November; four
for December. Finally, add two and divide the result
by seven, again keeping only the remainder. The
result is the day of the week on which you were
born, starting from one for Sunday. So September
23, 1959, was a Wednesday. The Telegraph

[If you try this for dates >12/31/99, instead of using just the last two digits of the year, you have to use the number of years since 1900, i.e. ‘100’ for the year 2000 etc.]

Violent Children: Where Do We Point the Finger of Blame? The author, a clinical psychologist from Cornell, proposes an “accumulation-of-risk” model that he hopes will stop the finger-pointing. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine

Deadly virus fuels bio-terror fears. “Scientists who accidently (sic)
created a deadly
version of mouse smallpox in the laboratory say
lethal human viruses are only a step away.

The prospect of such dangerous organisms
being produced relatively easily have left
bioterrorism experts fearful of killer global
epidemics.” Subtle modifications to the genome of a virus can, it seems, render it much more virulent and render vaccines useless in producing immunity. Scientists are already busy making small modifications to various pathogenic viruses to use them as vectors to carry genes into the body’s cells for genetic therapy. BBC

Bad Moon Rising: The sinister influence of the full moon on behavior has a venerable place in folklore and inconclusive support in scientific studies. Leaving humans aside for the moment, might there be a general tendency toward hostility under the full moon? Two studies coincidentally published in the same issue of the British Medical Journal, one from the UK and the other from Australia, reached contradictory conclusions in examining the relationship of severe animal bites and lunar phase. Beyond 2000

The Milk of Human Kindness: “How to make a simple morality tale out of a complex public health issue” British Medical Journal [free registration required]

Galaxies Made of Nothing? New Theory of Mysterious Dark Matter. “If the concept of dark matter gives you a bit of a headache,
hold on to your Advil.

Theorists attempting to explain some of the “missing mass”
in the universe now say there may be entire galaxies that are
dark.: A new theory “…suggests that for every normal,
star-filled galaxy, there may be 100 that contain nothing, or
at least nothing that we understand.” space.com

Splinters is the Spike magazine daily weblog. I was pointed to it from LinkMachineGo, which I have just discovered to be an excellent London-based weblog.

Mobile Phone Forces Plane to Land. “A Slovenian airliner made an emergency
landing Tuesday after a passenger’s mobile phone caused its electronics system to
malfunction and indicate there was a fire on board, Adria Airways said Wednesday.” Reuters

A World Divided Into Two-Way-Pager Camps. “Two wireless systems, two passionate camps. The
rectangular, rigid BlackBerry is the choice of a high-tech and
financial elite, including Bill Gates, Michael Dell and the
investment bankers at Goldman, Sachs. They would not be
caught dead carrying a fire-engine-red or cobalt-blue
Motorola Talkabout, which the company markets to young
adults — even teenagers passing e-notes in class.” But they all seem to feel that cellular is passé, as in “20th century”…New York Times

3 Sisters (Sorry Chekhov), Maureen Dowd: ” The president-elect, known for his gunslinger’s stance and
circle of establishment good ol’ boys, has added some female
swagger to his staff — the G.O.P.’s three most famous alpha
females, tall, tough, salty, relentless and fanatically loyal
operatives Mary Matalin, Margaret Tutwiler and Karen
Hughes. Jealousies, one-upmanship and hijinks bound to
ensue?

Never before has a White House had this many powerful,
senior, vocal women in it — at least not since Hillary Clinton
dined alone. And, more deliciously, never before has a
White House had this many powerful, senior, vocal women
assigned to do exactly the same job.” New York Times

‘I Think He’s Nuts’, said the wife of a 36-year-old seminary student from Jerusalem. He had opened a knapsack he found on the ground next to a neighborhood school to find it contained two mortar shells connected to a cellular phone, so he gave a tug and disconnected the phone from the explosives. Several minutes later, the phone rang, a signal that would have triggered the explosion.

“We’ve got lawyers looking at every single issue, every single opportunity” to reverse
actions taken by Clinton in the waning weeks of his presidency, says the illegitimate son. New York Times

Update from the Kumbh Mela

Everyone has a different ‘now’ New Scientist

Everyone has a different ‘now’ New Scientist

Everyone has a different ‘now’ New Scientist

Everyone has a different ‘now’ New Scientist

See the “[discuss]” link on each post? I’ve added BlogVoices‘ functionality to FmH. By clicking on the link, you can add to a public discussion thread about any of my postings, or just ‘lurk’ and read the discussion (if any) to date. Enjoy.

The depleted uranium furor continues not to attract the attention in the U.S. with which it is being covered in Europe. A new report, scoffed at by the British Ministry of Defence, reveals that a secret, but leaked, paper from the British Army’s medical team warned the Army four years ago that soldiers exposed to dust from depleted uranium weapons risked lung, lymphatic and brain cancer. Of course, all the concern about NATO peacekeeping forces’ exposure to radiation pales in comparison to the likely Balkan victims. Independent And now Britain’s Royal Navy announces that it is “phasing out depleted uranium ammunition on its warships
after the U.S. manufacturers stopped producing the shells that have sparked safety
concerns.” Reuters via ENN

The Patriot Missile “Didn’t Work”. “Secretary of Defense
William S. Cohen, supporting a
decade of questions about the
Patriot missile’s performance, said
Raytheon Co.’s famous antimissile
system failed to work in the Persian
Gulf War.” Raytheon begs to differ. Critics have long claimed its kill rate was anywhere between 0-10% in contrast to the 70% figure the U.S. Army and Raytheon have cited. Cohen’s point: we need to invest in research to improve antimissile technology. Watch this space, since the antimissile defense program is certainly alive and well, especially with Dubya ascending to the throne. Boston Globe

How will Microsoft position Whistler, the Win-9x replacement OS now in beta and due out (so they say) in the second half of Y2K1? Is it an upgrade or something new? The Register And here‘s a good preview of several of its features. Windows Help.net

What the heck is Kaiju? B-movie wrestling? pop art? shameless opportunism? The New York Press

An Unacceptable Risk. Washington Post op-ed piece by Lloyd Cutler, former counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton, and Howard Baker, former Republican Senator from Tennessee and Senate majority leader: “Russia’s nuclear stockpile is the most serious national security threat we face today.”

Genre Trouble: The Boston Review considers the densely-written fiction of John Crowley (The Deep, Beasts, Engine Summer, Little Big, Aegypt, Love and Sleep, Daemonomania), off the critical radarscreens because he “(tries) to create literature with the tools of the genre writer”. He runs the risk “of intimidating readers and baffling
reviewers, of trying the patience of his publisher, of falling
off the literary map altogether.” He’s largely out of print and what there is is buried in the sci-fi/fantasy section of your bookstore.

Paean to a Jan. 8th New Yorker piece describing the writer’s mental illness and psychiatric hospitalizations. “Daphne Merkin bravely gives words to the silent scream and deserves not our pity,
not our voyeurism, but—better than our sympathy—our envy and admiration of her
sharp eye and sharper tongue. We need her to stay with us for a very long time.” The New York Observer

A consortium of six daily newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the parent company of the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal has convened to cost-share on an examination of all the uncounted Florida ballots. The Miami Herald is racing them to complete its own solo recount effort. The New York Observer

“I
have good news for you: You may have the opportunity to
be president of France.” An open letter to Bill Clinton from a French scientist. New York Times

Star in the East: Krishnamurti –
the Invention of a Messiah: review of the new, accessible biography of Krishnamurti by Roland Vernon. London Telegraph via net.headlines

Remembrance of the public as well as the personal departed is a renewing experience for those surviving them, I’m convinced. One of my year-end rituals is to make a point of reflecting on those lists that start showing up of those we lost in public life during the preceding year. This, abit belatedly, is a thorough list of those in the arts who died in 2000. There are people on the list whose passing will diminish me, and surprises, people I did not know had left us. SF Chronicle

U.S. Shifts Policy on Sierra — Trees, Wildlife Protected “The U.S. Forest Service unveiled a
long-awaited management plan for the
Sierra Nevada yesterday, signaling drastic
cutbacks in logging and sweeping
protections for old-growth trees and
endangered species.

The plan’s dramatic shift in policy sparked
predictable responses from
environmentalists, who enthusiastically
endorsed it, and timber industry
advocates, who vehemently opposed it.” SF Chronicle

Clear and Present Danger James Ridgeway: “Democrats have the goods to sink John Ashcroft’s nomination. Now the question is whether they have the
guts.” The hottest property on Capitol Hill is two dozen boxes of “opposition research” painting a damning portrait of Ashcroft “entirely at odds with the bland, friendly image the ever-smiling conservative tries so hard to project”. The files were gathered by Democrat Mel Carnahan who unseated Ashcroft posthumously after dying in a plane crash during a polarized campaign. Village Voice

Democrats are eyeing a 1999 speech by John Ashcroft that may give clues to his lack of belief in the rule of law. New York Times Ashcroft appears to have been in his element, being given an honorary degree at Bob Jones University; here’s the text of the speech. Phil Agre comments:

“When the Constitution was written, religious conservatives opposed
it because, as everyone perfectly well understood, it did not create
a Christian nation. Their arguments sound more or less identical
to the arguments that their descendants make today, as for example
in John Ashcroft’s speech at Bob Jones University, enclosed. Having lost
that fight, the opponents of the Constitution now take a different
approach: they claim to have invented it. The evidence being so
overwhelmingly against them, they use bits and pieces of quotations
to dance around the Constitution’s straightforward assertion that
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. It’s okay for them to hold
these opinions. That’s what we’re here for. What’s not okay is for
them to be placed in charge of enforcing the laws. Lately they have
taken to accusing John Ashcroft’s opponents of opposing him because
he believes in God. This is going to get worse before it gets better.” Red Rock Eaters’ Digest

Guilty by Association? “Ashcroft appeared in a 1997 video from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum that portrayed the feminist movement, multiculturalism, reproductive
rights, gay rights, environmental concerns, global cooperation, and even chemical weapons treaties as part of a secret conspiracy to promote a
socialist One World Government and New World Order.

This type of conspiracist allegation is found in the right-wing of the Republican Party, the Patriot and armed militia movement, and the Far
Right. The use of language about cosmopolitan international financial elites shows insensitivity to the historic use of such phrases to promote
antisemitic claims of an international Jewish banking conspiracy.” Political Research Associates

And here’s some commentary by attorney and former federal prosecutor Edward Lazarus on The Proper Standard for Ashcroft’s Confirmation Fight: “If the Senate does reject Ashcroft,
no one should lose sleep over it. It would be poetic justice for a
man who deprived so many others of confirmations they rightly
deserved.”

Since I seem unable not to mention Gale Norton, interior secretary-designate, in the same breath as Ashcroft, the New York Times today reviewed her record of “declin(ing) to endorse high-profile laws with which she disagrees,” as Greg Wetstone, the national program director for
the Natural Resources Defense Council, nicely put it. Of course, one of her most egregious declarations was a 1996 speech that described the cause of states’ rights
as having suffered a grievous blow with the defeat of the cause
of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Dubya is certainly acting as if he has a mandate, isn’t he?

‘ IT’s the new sensation, across the nation…’ Nobody, it appears, knows what IT is… “All they do know: IT, also code-named Ginger, is an invention developed by 49-year-old scientist
Dean Kamen, and the subject of a planned book by journalist Steve Kemper. According to
Kemper’s proposal, IT will change the world, and is so extraordinary that it has drawn the attention
of technology visionaries Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs and the investment dollars of pre-eminent
Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, among others…. A
venerable press pays $250,000 for a book on project cloaked in unprecedented secrecy.”

Some clues as to IT’s nature can be gleaned from the proposal:

IT is not a medical invention.

In a private meeting with Bezos, Jobs and Doerr,
Kamen assembled two Gingers — or ITs — in 10
minutes, using a screwdriver and hex wrenches from
components that fit into a couple of large duffel bags and
some cardboard boxes.

The invention has a fun element to it, because once a
Ginger was turned on, Bezos started laughing his “loud,
honking laugh”.

There are possibly two Ginger models, named Metro
and Pro — and the Metro may possibly cost less than
$2,000.

Bezos is quoted as saying that IT “…is a product so
revolutionary, you’ll have no problem selling it. The
question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?”

Jobs is quoted as saying: “…If enough people see the
machine you won’t have to convince them to architect
cities around it. It’ll just happen.”

Kemper says the invention will “sweep over the world
and change lives, cities, and ways of thinking.”
The “core technology and its implementations” will,
according to Kamen, “have a big, broad impact not only
on social institutions but some billion-dollar old-line
companies.” And the invention will “profoundly affect
our environment and the way people live worldwide. It
will be an alternative to products that are dirty,
expensive, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating,
especially for people in the cities.”

IT will be a mass-market consumer product “likely to
run afoul of existing regulations and or inspire new
ones,” according to Kemper. The invention will also
likely require “meeting with city planners, regulators,
legislators, large commercial companies and university
presidents about how cities, companies and campuses
can be retro-fitted for Ginger.”

” The inventor himself is as interesting as the invention may prove to be.
Kamen —’a true eccentric, cantankerous and
opinionated, a great character,’ according to the proposal
— dropped out of college in his 20s, then invented the
first drug infusion pump; he later created the first portable
insulin pump and dialysis machine.” [Inside] Wired profiles Kamen here.
As someone commented on Metafilter, “I’m really hoping for this to be either for real or a complete and total hoax. If it’s just some overhyped
invention I’m going to be so disappointed.” It seems hard, if one believes the ‘hints’ above, not to draw the conclusion that IT is a new form of personal transportation device; maybe IT stands for “individual transport” or something similar. And I’m not talking about anything resembling a Star Trek matter transporter as much as something like a motorized personal scooter.

First report of successful genetic modification of primates: researchers succeeded in inserting a gene into the unfertilized eggs of rhesus monkeys. “The eggs were then fertilized, resulting in
several pregnancies and the birth of three live monkeys. The gene was successfully incorporated into one monkey’s DNA, making this
the first genetically modified non-human primate. Previous gene transfer attempts in animals have been confined largely to rodents
and agricultural animals. ” EurekAlert

‘Death Spiral’ Around a Black Hole Yields Tantalizing Evidence of an Event Horizon:

“The Hubble telescope may have, for the first time, provided direct evidence for the existence of black
holes by observing how matter disappears when it falls beyond the “event horizon,” the boundary
between a black hole and the outside universe. Astronomers found their evidence by watching the
fading and disappearance of pulses of ultraviolet light from clumps of hot gas swirling around a massive,
compact object called Cygnus XR-1. This activity suggests that the hot gas fell into a black hole.” Clicking on the image will send you to an animation of how matter falling into the black hole might look.Space Telescope Science Institute

Federal Guidelines for Searching and Seizing Computers and Obtaining Electronic Evidence in Criminal Investigations from the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) of the Dept. of Justice.

The New England Journal of Medicine reviews Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession by distinguished psychiatrist Harrison Pope.

This interesting and provocative book describes a form of obsession in which otherwise healthy men become absorbed by
compulsive exercising, eating disorders, body-image distortion, and ultimately, abuse of anabolic steroids. In a manner
analogous to the course of anorexia nervosa, the social norm of male “fitness” turns, in these sad men, into an insatiable
obsession with growing “bigger” and more muscular. When exercise and dieting rituals, no matter how fanatical, fail, recourse
to drugs, mostly anabolic steroids, appears to be an easy transition. Body-obsessed men find that drugs are readily available
from underground suppliers who gravitate to gyms like moths to the light. Gripped by unshakable fat phobias as well as
dietary and drug-related rituals, these pathetic men lose touch with reality and become isolated, socially dysfunctional, and
sometimes even dangerous.

Update on “Kosovo Syndrome’ furor: Uranium-Tipped Arms Ban Rejected by NATO Majority. “A
majority of NATO
countries turned down
requests today from several
of their allies for a
temporary ban on the
inclusion of
depleted-uranium munitions
in NATO arsenals.” New York Times A seventh Italian soldier involved in the handling of these weapons has died of leukemia within a year of exposure. Official dismissals of the danger of these depleted-uranium shells are based on the fact that they are only mildly radioactive at rest. But as my blink several days ago suggested, the shells burn on impact and release a radioactive aerosol. European testiness with the U.S., the main proponent of these weapons, joins the tensions with Europe of last month over implementing the Kyoto accords on clean air.

Astronomer Seth Shostak speculates on Why ET Will Be More Advanced than Humanity. Why will our listening experiments – if they
succeed – find only highly advanced aliens? space.com

Hatch pledges to keep online music accessible. “Putting the recording industry,
entertainment conglomerates and even
the future AOL-Time Warner on notice,
the chairman of the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee warned that he
would work to ensure that online music doesn’t fall under the control of a few
powerful distributors.

At a two-day conference on the future of digital music that pitted such parties as
Napster and the Recording Industry Association of America against each other in
panel discussions, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, pledged to use his position to keep
the Internet open for the benefit of fans and artists.” CNN

“Be All You Can Be’ is out; Ads Now Seek Recruits for ‘An Army of One’.

News Analysis: Lessons of a Swift Exit. The Linda Chavez embarrassment, which seems to be treated by the press as a casualty of the foreshortened transition period and hasty vetting of candidates rather than a reflection on Dubya’s judgment or ideology, may yet “embolden
Democrats, unions and
environmentalists with other nominees
in their sights, particularly John
Ashcroft, the religious conservative
attorney general- designate, and Gale
A. Norton, Mr. Bush’s choice to run the
Interior Department.” I certainly hope so. New York Times

Satisfied With U.N. Reforms, Helms Relents on Dues. The Clinton administration had long struggled to “conduct diplomacy under the stigma of being a deadbeat nation.” New York Times

Calls for Change in the Scheduling of the School Day. A groundswell of support for lengthening the schoolday and the schoolyear joins increasingly rigorous curriculum design and the imposition of exit-exams as the latest thrust in educational reform; designed to address “a troika of sociological forces:
more parents working outside the home; research showing
that children get into trouble during the late afternoon and
lose educational ground during summer breaks; and the
higher standards that have been embraced from coast to
coast over the last decade.” But how does having our children spend more hours in school square with the stultification they already face in the classroom, where financial constraints have increasingly stripped any richness and breadth from what they’re taught? New York Times

Ancient DNA gives debate a new life. An Australian scientist, who claims that his analysis of the oldest DNA recovered from human remains — an aboriginal skeleton from New South Wales claimed to be 60,000 years old — casts doubt on the common genetic ancestry of all modern humans, is embroiled in two sorts of controversy. He is besieged by challenges to his dating techniques from leading Australian scientists on the one hand. On the other, there’s this buried in the last paragraph of the news story — Aboriginal leaders are apparently upset that they were not kept abreast of the DNA findings and issued a statement yesterday that they did not need scientists to inform them that their ancestors had “been here forever.”

Clinton To State No Gun Ri Regret — but not issue a formal apology for the apparent massacre of South Korean civilians by U.S. forces in July 1950, during the Korean War. The “statement of regret” may be something as generic as lamenting civilian casualties throughout the war. The U.S. has already decided not to pay reparations to the families of the victims. The Pentagon’s official conclusions of its investigation of the incident, due out on Thursday, will reportedly emphasize “that the U.S. troops who were
sent to fight in the early weeks of the war were ill-equipped, poorly trained and led by
commanders who were not prepared for the chaotic conditions.” The American white knight is further besmirched.

Defense Rests in Lockerbie Trial after calling just three witnesses, as contrasted with the prosecution’s 230. Establishing reasonable doubt is all they had to do…

N.H. Lawmaker Alciere Resigns. The recently elected legislator (to reports about whose statements advocating the legitimacy of cop-killing I blinked below) has been forced by popular demand to resign, effective 11:59 tonight. Alciere has acknowledged posting anti-police messages on the
Internet, including one that said: “There is nothing wrong with
slaughtering a cop. Just throw the carcass into the Dumpster
with the rest of the garbage.” He’s apparently a radical libertarian who, as a condition of his resignation, demanded that the NH Legislature vote on the abolition of public education and the legalization of all drugs. Another legislator has stepped in and agreed to be Alciere’s proxy in introducing the bills, stating that the issue has been such a distraction to the Legislature that he’ll do anything to facilitate Alciere’s departure. Alciere thinks he stands a chance of being re-elected in the special run-off election that will fill the vacancy his resignation causes. Amazing that, this time, the voters might get a second chance when they squandered their first one. In all the public outcry, I haven’t heard anyone saying “I told you so” yet to them — this is what you get if you vote the party line instead of investigating your candidate’s views before electing him. In the same state, Republicans also elected a legislator who had failed to reveal his conviction and incarceration on check-forgery charges in neighboring Massachusetts in the ’80’s. Who was it who said something to the effect that a people get the government they deserve? Whether or not a government serves the people well, it serves them right, I’d say.

Intergalactic ‘Pipeline’ Funnels Matter Between Colliding Galaxies. “This visible-light picture, taken by the Hubble telescope, reveals an intergalactic ‘pipeline’ of material
flowing between two battered galaxies that bumped into each other about 100 million years ago.” Space Telescope Science Institute

“They are unique and frightening…” Found: 2 Planetary Systems. Result: Astronomers Stunned. “Astronomers
have discovered two more
planetary systems in the universe, and
they appear to bear little or no
resemblance to each other or to the
solar system.

In one of the systems, a Sun-like star is
accompanied by a massive planet and an even larger object
17 times as massive as Jupiter. If this whopper is a planet, it
is the largest ever detected, defying current theory.
Scientists suspect that it could be a dim failed star or a type
of astronomical object that has never been observed before.

In the other system, two planets of more normal size are
orbiting a small star. But their orbits are anything but normal.
The pair of planets are locked in resonant orbits, moving in
synchrony around the star with orbital periods of 61 and 30
days; the inner planet goes around twice for each orbit of
the outer one.” New York Times

“What Questions Have Disappeared?” John Brockman, a New York literary agent and writer who runs The Edge, the stimulating online intellectual salon (“To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves”) poses his annual question to a wide group of distinguished respondents.

Thank you to R Mark Woods (of the excellent weblog Wood’s Lot) who let me know that the Galbraith article is from The American Prospect and can be found here. Too new to have been indexed by the search engines, I suppose, although I don’t really understand all the arcana of what they do and don’t discern.

As it turns out, the article is not by John Kenneth Galbraith but by James K. Galbraith. Information about the author is here; he’s a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. I recall somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory that this may be John Kenneth’s son “Jamie”; does anyone know? In any case, nice to have someone so feisty on Dubya’s home turf.

I’m going back and editing the original blink to correct the misattribution and also to remove the full text of the article from my weblog in favor of the link, as the usual (“This article may not be resold,
reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind
without prior written permission from the author.”) copyright notice appears at the bottom.

The Kumbh Mela starts today in Allahabad. This confluence of religious pilgrims, which occurs in each of four places in India (Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik) every 12 years or so (on a schedule determined by the position of the planet Jupiter in the sky), is expected to draw more than 30 million souls, the largest gathering of humanity ever seen on the planet. As one weblogger put it, “Eat your heart out, Burning Man.” Heck, eat your heart out, Woodstock! I was at the last-but-one Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, at the headwaters of the Ganges River, in 1975. That had a mere 10 million attendees, I’d venture to say 99.99% of them from the Indian subcontinent (back before the days of “ecotravel”) and most of those renunciant sadhus. However, material souls plan to seek salvation as well at the upcoming gathering. A British tour agency confirms that it is bringing in <a href=”http://www.timesofindia.com/today/09home3.htm
“>some of the biggest showbiz stars [Times of India, via Robot Wisdom]
for the experience, including the ubiquitous Madonna. Indian tour operators are making the most of the festival, selling it to international travellers as the quintessence of the mystical East. Plan now for 2013.

NSA abandons wondrous stuff. This is being widely blogged, because it’s fascinating. What a group of astronomers found after they took occupancy of an abandoned National Security Agency listening post in backcountry North Carolina.

I’m too proud and aloof to suggest that you nominate me for the 2001 Bloggies, but consider nominating some of the nice folks in the black box over in the lefthand column…

The Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Eminem’s latest outrage: ‘Eminem’s “Marshall Mathers LP” was
“probably the most repugnant record of the year.” So says
Michael Greene, president of the National Academy of
Recording Arts and Sciences, home of the Grammy.

Yet Greene can hardly contain his glee over the fact that the
gay-bashing, misogynist rapper was nominated last week for
four Grammys, including the prestigious album of the year
award…. Now, with the hand-picked selection of
Eminem’s hate-filled record as album of
the year, …the
once-respectable albeit feckless Grammy has transformed
itself into just another trend-chasing music awards show.

The predictable outcry accompanying Eminem’s
nominations virtually guarantees the Grammy telecast —
undoubtedly featuring a performance by the rapper — will be
another ratings hit.’ Salon

The crime of my life: Salon contributor Charles Taylor dissects the modern mystery scene and tells us which books got him through a particularly tough year (and not just because of election and recessionary fears). His tastes run to both the genteel British genre and the hard-boiled American writers.

Corporate Democracy; Civic Disrespect: More incisive thinking on the meaning of the theft of the election, the peculiar perils of American “forgetting,” why Dubya is not the “President-elect”, the tribalism of American politics, and a potential viable agenda for the Democratic Party in the new, post-2000 Americn political landscape from James K. Galbraith, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. He lays out important priorities progressive-thinking people should have, to prevent Dubya’s co-optation of the political process from having an enduring impact. This was originally sent to me by email and misattributed to John Kenneth Galbraith, now 92, who I seem to recall may be James K.’s father (anybody know?). The American Prospect

“…Some of Paul W. Ewald’s best thinking started with an attack of
diarrhea on a field trip to Kansas.” Biologist says germs, not genes, to blame for most human ailments. The time may be ripe for a renascence of infectious disease approaches to many ‘unsolved’ illnesses, after several decades in which the field has been eclipsed by advances in other specialties in medicine. Cervical cancer, Burkitt’s lymphoma and peptic ulcer disease have all been accepted as having associations with infectious agents, and Ewald says in his new book, Plague Time: How Stealth Infections Cause Cancers, Heart Disease, and Other Deadly Ailments (2000) that the ‘best’ is yet to come. In my own field, I’ve recently cited E. Fulller Torrey’s speculation on the infectious etiology of schizophrenia. Nando Times

<a href=”
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32//”>Photoshop for free? Not quite— but getting closer: GIMP — the GNU
Image Manipulation Program — is a freely distributed piece of open source
software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image
composition and image authoring. Recently ported to Windows; it’s to the Windows download which clicking on the link above will send you.

<a href=”
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32//”>Photoshop for free? Not quite— but getting closer: GIMP — the GNU
Image Manipulation Program — is a freely distributed piece of open source
software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image
composition and image authoring. Recently ported to Windows; it’s to the Windows download which clicking on the link above will send you.

<a href=”
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32//”>Photoshop for free? Not quite— but getting closer: GIMP — the GNU
Image Manipulation Program — is a freely distributed piece of open source
software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image
composition and image authoring. Recently ported to Windows; it’s to the Windows download which clicking on the link above will send you.

Sex: The Annabel Chong Story “Annabel Chong (is) a porn star who
infamously took part in a film in which she had sex with 251
men. She later took part in a documentary about the
experience: it turns out she was gang-raped years before she
made the film. A disturbing read, and not for the easily offended”, says the Guardian weblog in pointing to this portrait. “Sex is a fascinating and occasionally unsettling film,
whose subject comes across as a complicated
young woman, alternately assertive and thoughtful,
damaged and deluded. The gang-bang itself is one
of the least erotic things you’ll ever see,” says the Spike article.

American Memory Deficit Disorder “Why are Americans so quick to forget even the most
egregious political outrages, when the rest of the world
seems to have no trouble holding grudges for centuries?” Abuse of the political process — most recently the Supreme Court’s underhandedness in giving the election to the illegitimate son, or Dubya’s lies about his drunk driving conviction or his military service, which lost him not one percentage point in popularity — seems predicated on the confidence that the public will forget soon enough and ‘get over it.’ “When no one remembers what you did wrong, being American means never having to say you’re sorry.” Mother Jones

Dear Mr. Bush: An open letter from Mikhail Gorbachev to the President-elect cautions that U.S. bullishness is bad for American and world security. “…the post-Cold War period ushered in hopes that are now faded. Over the course of the past decade, the United States has continued to operate along an ideological track identical to the one it followed during the Cold War — but now without a cold war…Isn’t is amazing that disarmament move further along during the last phase of the Cold War than during the period after its end? And isn’t that because U.S. leadership has been unable to adjust to the new European reality…(which) has placed Europe on the world scene as a new, independent and powerful player(?)” Washington Post

And some further advice about Losing before you start: “George Bush is undoubtedly about to embark on a stupid and
disastrous war in Latin America.” Guardian

<a href=”
http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32//”>Photoshop for free? Not quite— but getting closer: GIMP — the GNU
Image Manipulation Program — is a freely distributed piece of open source
software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image
composition and image authoring. Recently ported to Windows; it’s to the Windows download which clicking on the link above will send you.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs may prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Here’s a Google search on the generic name of one of the most popular and effective, atorvastatin, AND (dementia OR cognition OR cognitive OR Alzheimer).

Israeli critics join Palestinians and human rights groups in condemning pinpoint killings [via Robot Wisdom]

Baudrillard Sees Dead People: “No one ages less gracefully than a hipster
past his prime — unless it’s a prophet of
technological revolution, once his vision reaches
the sell-by date. Roll them into one, and it’s a
miserable spectacle all around. The books Jean
Baudrillard started publishing in France about
thirty years ago ran selected concepts from Marx
and Freud on an operating system cobbled
together from Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler.” Feed

Autoimmunity May Come From Confluence Of Normal Events. A new study elucidates the process of autoimmune disease, in which components of the immune system meant to defend against invaders turn on our own tissues.