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.

Honey May Prevent Recurring Tumors AP

What Controls Nerve Growth?. “Impelled by the tragic plight of
paralyzed victims of spinal-cord
injuries, scientists move ever
closer to unlocking the mysteries
of nerve development and
regeneration.” The molecular mechanisms that guide axon growth are remarkably preserved throughout the animal world, so that research on simple species can bear enormous fruit with regard to humans.

Generation Statistics: ‘Trademarks have become so ingrained in our psyches that we
need hear only a few notes of a jingle or see the colourful swirl
of a logo and we are automatically drawn into their world,
reminded of how thirsty we really aren’t or how necessary a new
shirt is what we wear or drink defines us, as people. We are
whoring and de-valuing ourselves, but in exchange we get to be
a walking advertisement. But that’s okay because, hey, it’s
SHINY while we maintain that we have the ultimate decision, as
far as they’re concerned, they’ve already sold the shirt.’ Spark

A reporter’s coverage of the Pagan Federation Conference 2000 in Croydon (UK) in November found the witches, warlocks, druids and vampires “frighteningly clean and well-behaved.” Fortean Times

Blather: The Alan Moore Interview. In-depth musings of the master of the “graphic novel.”

America’s Tribes: ” In the past 40 years, the Democratic and Republican parties in the US have almost
entirely switched places. But a longer-lasting contest underlies this strange
history,” says Michael Lind, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation in Washington
“—a struggle between two tribal coalitions, the socially-minded Puritans of the
north and the colonial gentlemen of the south.” Ethnography, not ideology, is the way to understand American politican partisanship in this fascinating incisive essay. Prospect

The Bastardization of the ‘Masterpiece’: “…(I)f there are no ahistorical standards and no objective
criteria for assessing superior achievement, then every form
of cultural activity can claim masterpieces, which then
freely proliferate. All that can be done is to display those
varied tastes with appreciative acclaim. This can lead to
expanded horizons but also contracted perspective.” New York Times

The French Paradox. “They eat all the
butter, cream, foie gras, pastry and cheese that their hearts desire, and yet
their rates of obesity and heart disease are much lower than ours. The French
eat three times as much saturated animal fat as Americans do, and only a third
as many die of heart attacks.” All sorts of hypotheses have been proposed. Curiosity about this is stimulating a sort of culture war. Salon

Scooby-Doo, How Could You? The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) laments the transformation of the Scooby-Doo crew from skeptical debunking to credulity. The writer is “stunned, shocked and appalled” as a new episode of the show actually portrays paranormal events as real!

No longer do the intrepid investigators
prove that the paranormal is all a ruse. In their latest
incarnation, Daphne is now a TV reporter for an
Entertainment Tonight-type show. She goes to New Orleans to look into reported
hauntings, bringing her old friends along. She and the other members are once
again beset by a ghost of a pirate, as well as assorted zombies, werewolves and
vampires. But this time, when Fred and Velma present possible rational
explanations for the weird events, they are pooh-poohed by Daphne, who goes so
far as to tell Fred “you’re not a skeptic, you’re in denial.” When Velma suggests
that these horrifying apparitions are really humans behind masks, she is ridiculed.
Obviously the new storywriters are parodying the show’s past, but at what
expense? At the end, we see that there really are ghosts, zombies, werewolves
and vampires running amok. It’s all such a sad betrayal of the original show’s
glorious skeptical tradition.

Mood Menders. Recent research on the molecular mechanisms of antidepressants begins to circle around the first advance in understanding the nerobiology of depression and its treatment since the “low-serotonin” theory of the last decade and a half, linking it to the leaps and bounds being made in the understanding of the neurobiology of memory and the effects of trauma as well.

‘In the 1970s and 1980s, the German Democratic Republic’s
secret police – the Stasi – frequently labelled suspected
dissidents with highly radioactive chemicals so that agents
wearing concealed Geiger counters could keep tabs on them,
according to a paper by Klaus Becker, a leading radiation
protection expert.

It has long been suspected that the Stasi used radiation as a
weapon. Becker reports that “unusual non-medical X-ray
machines” in former political prisons could have been used for
covertly irradiating inmates.

Large doses of X-rays are thought to be behind the deaths
from cancer of a number of prominent dissidents.’ New Scientist

Is ozone responsible for the asthma epidemic in children? The evidence mounts that smog damages the lungs of growing infants and causes asthma. A recent study from UCDavis confirms a widely suspected correlation. The increasing incidence of asthma has been a troubling and puzzling phenomenon of public health. New Scientist

Happy perihelion! The earth was at its annual closest point to the sun this morning at 5:00 EST. The sunlight falling on the earth’s surface was around 7% more intense than it is at the height of the summer.

Microsoft, Starbucks in wireless venture. Their coffee shops around the world will be endowed with wireless network links allowing customers to access local arts, entertainment and shopping information. Starbucks is also launching a system to let customers pre-order via cellphone on the way in to their coffee bar. Infoworld

Accidental e-mail violates 12,000 patients’ confidentiality. California insurer sends the names of patients receiving treatment for mental conditions to the wrong doctors, blames “computer glitch.” San Jose Mercury

Celebrities: Enough, already “After a year of
tales of their addictions, affairs and (optional) clothing choices, the rest of us need a break.” Philadelphia Inquirer

Ashcroft is pro-privacy, defied FBI on encryption export restrictions and opposed FBI-supported 1997 bill that would have mandated a “key-recovery” scheme. “Working for him is what made me realize I could be a [Republican
Party] civil libertarian,” said one former advisor. The Register

As if you hadn’t noticed: The Net is a commercial failure: study. “In spite of heroic efforts by vast armies of e-merchants to pervert the
Net into some commercial Valhalla, it remains primarily a tool for
research (albeit commercial in many cases) and for socializing,
according to a recent study by the Pew Internet Project.” The Register

Girl sues friend for $5m after saving her life. The 17-year-old was severely injured at 11 when she pushed her friend out of the path of an oncoming truck. Now she blames her friend’s parents for failing to “supervise (their daughter) properly, or instruct her on how to cross a road safely.” National Post

Reducing the entire universe to the level of the complete idiot? Washington Post

Complete List of Grammy Nominations for the 43rd annual awards ceremony to take place in LA on 2-21-01. AP

Elephant Tramples Man And Keeps the Corpse. The animal pulled the man from a tree after he had climbed up to escape a rampaging herd, breaking the man’s legs. Enraged by villagers trying to extricate the man from its grasp, the elephant trampled him to death and has refused to part with the corpse for more than two weeks. Reuters

[via Slashdot]: Does 2001 mean monoliths to you? Apparently it does to someone in Seattle, joining a gleeful tradition of anonymous art in that city. Seattle Times

Alarm over NATO uranium deaths. The cancer deaths of six Italian soldiers who served with the NATO peacekeeping force in the Balkans raises concern about the use of depleted uranium weapons, valued for their armor-piercing capabilities, in that theater. A heavy metal almost twice the density of lead and only mildly radioactive in its native state, it turns on impact with a solid object into a burning vapor creating radioactive dust. US and British military officials have always denied the level of alarm about DU, which began with suspicions it was implicated in Gulf War Syndrome.

“We’ve always known
that it was a danger
only in absolutely
exceptional
circumstances like, for
example, picking up a
fragment with a hand
on which there was an
open wound, while in
normal circumstances it
isn’t dangerous at all.

But now we’re starting
to have a justified fear
that things aren’t that
simple,” worries Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. BBC

Arafat ‘accepts’ US peace plan. One more upswing on the roller-coaster-ride to hopes for Middle East peace. Arafat reserves the right for his approval to be subject to his own “interpretations and principles.” Ehud Barak, briefed on Arafat’s response, has gone on record to state his doubts that Clinton can make progress in brokering a peace before the end of his term of office. Barak called an urgent meeting of his top ministers, whose rhetoric has been increasingly confrontational. The Israeli deputy defense minister states Israel will continue its policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders involved in attacks on Israelis.

The Typing of the Dead: I’m not a gamer but this still caught my attention: ‘If you think you’ve seen everything there is to
see in gaming, you’re wrong – if you haven’t
tried out The Typing of the Dead, that is.
Sega has created possibly the weirdest game
ever, a title that’s so unexpected it defies logic
when one tries and figure out the frame of
mind of the individual at Sega of Japan who
said “Hey, we’ll make a typing game, and
make it fun.” The Typing of the Dead is the
kind of game that, like Dance Dance
Revolution and Beatmania makes people
look on as you play, and with good reason:
you’re killing zombies with precise key
strokes! Who wouldn’t be intrigued at the
prospect.’

Capitol Hill Blue: Civil Rights Groups Challenge Ashcroft
Selection, “demanding that Democratic senators abandon the tradition of supporting former colleagues
and vote against the nomination.” Ashcroft (whose recent distinction, you’ll recall, was to lose his
reelection bid for his Missouri Senate seat to an opponent who had been killed in a plane crash before
the election) “has drawn opposition for his anti-abortion views and for leading a drive to defeat the
nomination of a black Missouri Supreme Court judge, Ronnie White, to the federal bench.”

In a
related story, a researcher in Ashcroft’s home state finds that he has “…actively cultivated <a href=”
http://www.accuracy.org/new.htm”>ties to white supremacists and extreme hate groups.” John Hickey,
executive director of the Missouri Citizen Education Fund, singles out Ashcroft’s praise of the quarterly
Southern Partisan, which the New Republic characterizes as the “leading journal of the neo-
Confederacy movement,” for over 20 years serving up “a gumbo of racist apologies.”

To each their own: Russia looks for funding to build a tunnel link to the U.S., while France seeks financial backing to allow President Jospin to roll the workweek back to 35 hours.

Passersby may have ignored dead woman. “Commuters may have stepped over a woman killed by an escalator in Calgary after assuming she was intoxicated…. An anonymous caller had told police a woman had passed out there.

The paramedics found Ms. Turning Robe’s scarf and hair snarled in the escalator. Police believe she died of strangulation
and head injuries. National Post

Researcher Challenges a Host of Psychological Studies. “If scientists do not know whether they are dealing with
elephants or mice, …it becomes anyone’s
guess what small and large really mean.” New York Times

Dysfunction in the brain’s ‘hub’ in the earliest stages of schizophrenia: “A new brain imaging study from the Institute of Psychiatry shows for the first time that the thalamus, the brain’s main sensory filter
or ‘hub’, is smaller than normal from the earliest stages of schizophrenia. The findings, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry
in January, may explain why people with schizophrenia experience confusion during their illness.

The thalamus is the area where information is received and relayed to other areas of the brain. It is of particular interest in
schizophrenia because of the role it plays in processing information. The thalamus receives information via the senses, which is then
filtered and passed to the correct regions of the brain for processing. People with schizophrenia often have difficulties in processing
information properly and as a result may end up with an information overload in some areas of the brain.” EurekAlert

As people who have read some of my earlier comments know, I think some schizophrenia involves a primary information processing deficit…since I think it’s really a wastebasket term for a collection of disparate diseases. Because the study populations are, from this point of view, heterogeneous, it’s been difficult to find any important defining characteristics in most studies of “schizophrenics.” There will be “brain findings” in a subset of any schizophrenic population, I’m fond of saying. And it’s a further obfuscating factor that it’s difficult to find medication-naive schizophrenics in this day and age, and the medications used to treat psychosis have been such heavy-hitters that the brain may take a hit from them. If this finding about the thalamus is as universal as claimed, it could prove very important. The abstract of the article, from the American Journal of Psychiatry, is here.

Obscene Interiors: “Amateur porn photography is one of the rare instances where
everyday people expose their naked bodies to the public. Seeing your
neighbors nude my be shocking, I, however, am more frequently disturbed by
the gross display of amateur interior design found in these photos.

‘Oh my God! How could they do that? Those curtains are so wrong, I
can’t believe this stuff is allowed on the net.’ Yes, it can be pretty
hardcore stuff. I’ve gathered a random selection of male amateur porn and
personal ad photographs and asked a professional interior designer to join me
in a lively critique of these truly obscene Interiors. (No need to shield your
virginal eyes, the nude figures have been laboriously obscured.)”

New York’s Great Outdoors: “Since 1998, billboards covering entire buildings
have sprung up all over Manhattan, transforming
the Big Apple into something out of Blade
Runner. So last fall, about 35 volunteers
scouted out Manhattan’s major thru-ways, taking
notes on the outdoor advertising. Thus was
born New York’s Great Outdoors, our rough guide
to Manhattan ad creep.” For New York culture jammers, and an inspiration to others to organize against ad creep everywhere. Stay Free!

New Year’s Day History, Traditions, and Customs. Years ago, the Boston Globe ran a January 1st article compiling folkloric beliefs about what to do, what to eat, etc. on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the year to come. I’ve regretted since — I usually think of it around once a year (grin) — not clipping out and saving the article; especially since we’ve had children, I’m interested in enduring traditions that go beyond watching the bowl games and making resolutions. A web search brought me this, less elaborate than what I recall from the Globe but to the same point:

“Traditionally, it was thought that one
could affect the luck they would have
throughout the coming year by what they
did or ate on the first day of the year. For
that reason, it has become common for
folks to celebrate the first few minutes of
a brand new year in the company of
family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night
after the ringing in of a new year. It was once believed that the
first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or
bad luck the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor
happened to be a tall dark-haired man.

“Traditional New Year foods are also
thought to bring luck. Many cultures
believe that anything in the shape of a ring
is good luck, because it symbolizes
“coming full circle,” completing a year’s
cycle. For that reason, the Dutch believe
that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will
bring good fortune.

“Many parts of the U.S. celebrate the new year by consuming
black-eyed peas. These legumes are typically accompanied by
either hog jowls or ham. Black-eyed peas and other legumes
have been considered good luck in many cultures. The hog, and
thus its meat, is considered lucky because it symbolizes
prosperity. Cabbage is another ‘good luck’ vegetable that is
consumed on New Year’s Day by many. Cabbage leaves are also
considered a sign of prosperity, being representative of paper
currency. In some regions, rice is a lucky food that is eaten on
New Year’s Day.”

The further north one travels in the British Isles, the more the year-end festivities focus on New Year’s. The Scottish observance of Hogmanay has many elements of warming heart and hearth, welcoming strangers and making a good beginning:

“Three cornered biscuits called
hogmanays are eaten. Other special foods are: wine, ginger cordial, cheese, bread, shortbread, oatcake, carol or carl cake, currant loaf, and a pastry called scones.
After sunset people collect juniper and water to purify the home. Divining rituals are done according to the directions of the winds, which are assigned their own colors.
First Footing:The first person who comes to the door on midnight New Year’s Eve should be a dark-haired or dark-complected man with gifts for luck. Seeing a cat,
dog, woman, red-head or beggar is unlucky. The person brings a gift (handsel) of coal or whiskey to ensure prosperity in the New Year. Mummer’s Plays are also
performed. The actors called the White Boys of Yule are all dressed in white, except for one dressed as the devil in black. It is bad luck to engage in marriage
proposals, break glass, spin flax, sweep or carry out rubbish on New Year’s Eve.”

Ray Bruman’s List of Weird and Disgusting Foods. “I have a theory that many (all?) cultures invent a food that is weird or disgusting to
non-initiates as a sort of a ‘marker. ‘ The kids start out hating it, but at some point they cross
over and perpetuate it (perpetrate it) on the next generation. Then they nudge each other when
foreigners gasp.” Listed geographically, with a glossary of explanations attached.

NYPD Faces Challenges as Cops Leave. Police are demoralized about the pressure to maintain the crime rates at their low ebb and the blame they will garner as statistics inevitably rise again. Leaving the force in demoralization will hasten the upswing. AP

9 Million Gaining Upgraded Benefit for Mental Care. In a significant victory for mental health advocates, President Clinton acted by executive order to give federal employees improved mental health benefits in parity with those for physical ills. Both Bush and Gore endorsed the concept of parity, currently enacted in the laws of 32 of the 50 states. But the laws include so many restrictions and loopholes that equal coverage is illusory. A thorough, long analysis of the issues. New York Times

“The statistics are mind-boggling…Don’t expect any drastic changes…” Addicted to Guns. New York Times op-ed page commentator Bob Herbert finds the outpouring of outrage and grief over the Wakefield rampage abit incongruous with our societal fascination with and marketing of gun violence. “…a society hopelessly addicted to gun violence, and in deep denial about its hideous consequences.”

U.S. Signs Treaty for World Court to Try Atrocities. Powerful American endorsement of the treaty establishing a permanent international criminal tribunal by President Clinton, despite its not being legally binding without unlikely Senate ratification, comes in defiance of the Pentagon and Republicans and poses a diplomatic challenge for the incoming administration. The US’ signing, as well as a last-minute decision of Israel to add its approval (seen as a testament to Clinton’s influence), brings the number of signatories to 139. 27 have already ratified the treaty, of the 60 necessary to bring the tribunal into existence.

Senior advisers to Mr. Bush, like many Republicans in
Congress, have strongly opposed the treaty. One of them is
Mr. Bush’s selection for secretary of defense, Donald H.
Rumsfeld, who joined 11 other prominent retired policy
makers last month in signing a letter warning that “American
leadership in the world could be the first casualty” of the
tribunal.

New York Times

A very happy new year to all of my readers and all those close to you.

Hey, this eGroups thing is great. Participate in a reader survey, if you please, by following this link: When I read Follow Me Here, I prefer:

Jorn Barger’s provocative post on his Robot Wisdom weblog — he headlined a link to an article claiming that assassinating unarmed Palestinian freedom fighters is official Israeli government policy “Is Judaism simply a religion of lawless racists?” — has been roundly condemned in a discussion forum he set up for responses. The consensus seems to be that Barger had blurred the distinctions between Zionism and Judaism, between Israel and Jews, and was doing the kind of generalizing and stereotyping we associate with bigotry. By and large, the responses were civil despite the posters’ perception that Barger had been way out of line, and by and large they have commented on their surprise at how uncharacteristic they considered this of Barger, as well-respected and widely-read as his weblog is. But Barger has pushed the issue further by asking, “Are Jews incapable of polite discourse?”

In separate incidents today, the son of rabid anti-Arab Jewish leader Meir Kahane — himself assassinated a decade ago — and his wife were ambushed and killed in the West Bank by Palestininan gunmen; and a Fatah official was shot dead leaving his West Bank home in what Palestinian officials described as an assassination. Israel claimed he had been killed in firefight between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli security forces. Draw your own conclusions about the continuing cycle of violence and murder.

Allergies to MSG May Not Exist. Although IMHO the study’s methodology is flawed, it claims to show that people don’t react negatively to MSG as they believe they do.

Bush Appoints Leader of Health And Human Services. Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson is pro-life, in favor of school vouchers and spearheaded the welfare-to-work reform movement. But he has no significant experience in the health arena and had made no secret of his desire to be given the Dept. of Transportation. I’m excited at the prospect that at least people may end up with better arrangements for their rides to doctors’ appointments! (unless they’re going to a women’s health clinic…)

Rare Baby Elephant Delights Seattle. “The
answers to the three
most commonly asked
questions at the Woodland
Park Zoo in Seattle these
days are: one, 235 pounds;
two, 22 months (the longest
pregnancy of any mammal in
the world); three, natural
insemination, after her
8,800-pound mother was
transported 2,000 miles for a
tryst in Missouri.” New York Times

Doctor faces trial over rapid detox method. I’ve been aware of the antics of this physician, himself long recovered from drug dependency, who does “rapid opiate detoxification” as an outpatient office procedure without hospitalizing his patients … and losing at least seven of them within days of his procedure over the last four years. Part of the process involves putting them under general anaesthesia, which IMHO is just crazy to do outside a hospital setting. Both his grandstanding on TV talk shows and the operation of his procedure through a for-profit company reinforce the impression of the cowboy unprofessionalism and possibly frank irresponsibility of his activities. No surprise that state regulators are going after him. AP

Doctor faces trial over rapid detox method. I’ve been aware of the antics of this physician, himself long recovered from drug dependency, who does “rapid opiate detoxification” as an outpatient office procedure without hospitalizing his patients … and losing at least seven of them within days of his procedure over the last four years. Part of the process involves putting them under general anaesthesia, which IMHO is just crazy to do outside a hospital setting. Both his grandstanding on TV talk shows and the operation of his procedure through a for-profit company reinforce the impression of the cowboy unprofessionalism and possibly frank irresponsibility of his activities. No surprise that state regulators are going after him. AP

Doctor faces trial over rapid detox method. I’ve been aware of the antics of this physician, himself long recovered from drug dependency, who does “rapid opiate detoxification” as an outpatient office procedure without hospitalizing his patients … and losing at least seven of them within days of his procedure over the last four years. Part of the process involves putting them under general anaesthesia, which IMHO is just crazy to do outside a hospital setting. Both his grandstanding on TV talk shows and the operation of his procedure through a for-profit company reinforce the impression of the cowboy unprofessionalism and possibly frank irresponsibility of his activities. No surprise that state regulators are going after him. AP

He’s a nurtural Calculational prodigies use different brain regions than we do when performing the same mental activities.

I’ve just set up a Follow Me Here mailing list through eGoups. Feel free to join. FmH posts generate a trickle of feedback and reactions from readers, sent to me 1:1 as direct email.
Why not generate some discussion with other similarly gregarious FmH readers through this mailing list instead? This will be an unmoderated list and, in fact, I expect I will
participate more as a lurker than a poster, as I’m letting you get to know how I think with my weblog
postings in the first place. When you post to the mailing list, it’s set up so that the subject line of your contributions begin with
“[FmH]” so that recipients of the mailings can readily identify them in our email inboxes. If you
want to talk to me “offlist” about this list, you can email me directly about it.

Addresses:

Post message to mailing list:
FollowMeHere@eGroups.com

Subscribe to mailing list:
FollowMeHere-subscribe@eGroups.com

Unsubscribe from mailing list:
FollowMeHere-unsubscribe@eGroups.com

List owner (me):
FollowMeHere-owner@eGroups.com

eGroups page for this list:
http://www.eGroups.com/group/FollowMeHere

Dan Hartung’s weblogger’s manifestito: “I don’t feel the need to turn my personal weblog into a
community, any more than I do to turn it into a diary. As it is,
though, what I get out of it is clearly informed by the larger
coummunity of webloggers. I steal links from them, to be sure, but
I also respond to their comments, learn from them, and get ideas
from this interplay. I can safely say that a year plus of doing this
has excited me intellectually as nearly no other undertaking has
done.”

Better Living Through Snoezelan. More about the background and details of the sensory stimulation treatment of dementia (Alzheimer’s Disease etc.) — to an account of which I blinked earlier. New York Press

Sham summit promised little for the
Palestinians. “The result? The world believes
that Mr Arafat turned down what he had always demanded, and the
cancellation of the Sharm el-Sheikh summit was entirely his fault.

Having claimed in the past that Israel was offering 92 per cent of the
West Bank – and then 94 per cent – to the Palestinians, the Americans
insisted that the latest Clinton proposals would give Mr Arafat 95 per
cent. But a careful reading of the Clinton document proves this to be
untrue. With the Dead Sea waters that would become Palestinian
‘territory’, with the Israeli army ‘buffer zones’, with the ‘rental’ of the
Kiryat Arba settlement land, with the exclusion of the West Bank land
illegally annexed into Jerusalem by the Israelis (including the massive
Male Adumim settlement), Arafat was still likely to get no more than 64
or 65 per cent.” The Independent

UCSF study of HIV patients identifies interleukin-7 as a key factor in controlling T-cells. “Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology have learned how T-cell levels may be maintained in
people. The study has important implications for developing treatment strategies for patients who have diseases like HIV and
cancer where the immune system is destroyed and for patients whose immune system is suppressed by chemotherapy or who
are undergoing a bone marrow transplant, the researchers said.” EurekAlert

Doctor faces trial over rapid detox method. I’ve been aware of the antics of this physician, himself long recovered from drug dependency, who does “rapid opiate detoxification” as an outpatient office procedure without hospitalizing his patients … and losing at least seven of them within days of his procedure over the last four years. Part of the process involves putting them under general anaesthesia, which IMHO is just crazy to do outside a hospital setting. Both his grandstanding on TV talk shows and the operation of his procedure through a for-profit company reinforce the impression of the cowboy unprofessionalism and possibly frank irresponsibility of his activities. No surprise that state regulators are going after him. AP

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth
can stand by itself.”

–Thomas Jefferson

While I was away, many weblogs linked to Michael Kinsley’s essay in Slate on whether reasonable people can differ; I just noticed the pointers and got around to it. The issues he raises are must reading for progressives, who are inherently in danger of respecting the unthinking positions of those who don’t think as they do, because of their embrace of relativism and respect for difference. At the cost of a great deal of “epistemological vertigo,” Kinsley concludes he doesn’t need to trouble himself about people who differ with the reasonable position and, quite rightly to my thinking, raises a call to arms against “this great national reconciliation everyone is so gung-ho about.”

Some of the pundits are glib about how soon the nation will forget the vote-counting debacle, but Dubya will remain the “illegitimate son” for me, “not my President-elect”, “not my President”. It’s been that way before; Ronald Reagan was never my President, nor his toady, George Bush. There’s no “epistemological vertigo” in not thinking like the majority for me, especially since — as you can glean from reading FmH — I have always paid alot of attention to the myriad of ways in which we are in the modern world, but particularly in the US, victims of “cultural entrancement”. As I did in the ’80’s, I think I’m going to be walking around in an America that feels alien and alienating for at least the next four years.

The ire and frustration are wearying, and thence the temptation to yield to reconciliation and ecumenism. But right-thinking people would be sold down the river by that, it seems to me. So onward to hoe the tougher row.

“I
might be one of these misguided people. I don’t think so—but
then I wouldn’t, would I? And it’s also a puzzle what one
should do about this possibility. On the one hand, it’s
important to keep the danger in mind, to take the competition
out for a mental road test before you buy an opinion on some
issue, and to trade it in at any time if you’re persuaded it’s a
lemon. On the other hand, deriving your specific opinions
from a framework of beliefs is a good thing, not a bad one,
and excessive self-doubt can be paralyzing and even
dishonest in its own way. If you can’t decide, maybe you
should try harder. And if you’re sure you’re right … well,
you’re sure you’re right, aren’t you?” — Kinsley

[via Medley]: If you’ve recently upgraded to a new cellphone, have you wondered what to do with the old one? Call to Protect is an agency that will have it refurbished, programmed with emergency numbers and given to a victim of domestic violence. Visit their site for information on the program.

Five Signs of Domestic Violence:

Does his or her
partner:

Embarass or
ridicule him/her
in public?

Use intimidation
or threats to get
him/her to go
along with
something?

Physically
abuse him/her
with pushing,
shoving or
hitting?

Attempt to
control or
restrict his/her
activities?

Z

Blame him/her
for the way
he/she feels or
acts?

Dirty Pig Slaughter Report Hits Gourmets. “Another food scandal hit France Friday, and with it the
announcement that one of the country’s top restaurants was shunning meat for good.”