Is Queen Elizabeth Losing It? Awhile ago, I blinked the report that she had been entertaining guests doing duets with a singing bass. Now, a day after criticism in the British press for wringing the neck of a wounded pheasant during a shoot, “The Killer Queen” (as dubbed by the Sunday Mirror) delivered a royal “up yours” by appearing in church wearing a pheasant feather in her hat. “The queen would never enter into a public
debate about whether she should be involved in
country sports, but by displaying the feathers
she has made her feelings plain without saying
anything,” a royal aide said. ABC [via Rebecca’s Pocket]

The Drunken Irish Bastard is alive and…well? Dallas Observer [via Robot Wisdom]

‘Bubble Tea’ Makes Its Way Stateside. “A popular import from Taiwan, bubble tea is a
mix of tea, milk, sugar and giant black tapioca
balls served cold, usually in a clear cup. An
added delight are gummy balls the size of small
marbles sucked up, with a little effort, through
an extra-wide straw….Boba can be a hit or miss with American tastebuds…” I think it’ll be a miss with me, but at least you heard it here first.

Mob Rule Wins for Dubya. “Texas Gov. George W. Bush appears to have sealed his claim to the
White House through a premeditated mob action that influenced the Dade
County decision to halt a crucial recount.

Egged on by Republican phone banks and heated rhetoric over Cuban-American
radio, a pro-Bush mob of about 150 people descended on the Dade County
canvassing board Wednesday as it was preparing to evaluate 10,750 disputed
ballots.” consortiumnews.com Phil Agre, in Red Rock Eaters’ Digest, agrees.

The Reason Al Gore Should Concede Time

Bach as Bach Never Intended. Or Did He? The last “Bach year”, the 300th anniversary of his birth, found us in the midst of austere early music realism. Now, at the 250th anniversary of his death, seemingly irreverent transcription is in sway. And the Wu Tang Clan’s reinterpretation of hip hop tradition continues to evolve as well. New York Times

Publishing Declares Open Season on Famous Figures. Joe
DiMaggio; Susan Sontag; Saul Bellow;
Richard M. Nixon; Diana, Princess of
Wales; and Barbara Marx Sinatra,
Frank Sinatra’s widow are among the recent public figures with bullseyes painted on their rumps. New York Times

Burning the Village in Order to Save It. The real crisis for the American electoral process is not the closeness of the election, not the delay in ascertaining the legitimate winner, not the court wrangling over recount deadlines or methods, but the Republican poisoning of the well.

In the last few days the Bush partisans have resorted to an extreme tactic:
forcefully asserting that the Gore camp is trying to “steal” the election. The
charge was replayed all over the media this weekend, and especially on the
more sensational and hyperventalating cable news networks that must stoke
the fires continuously (if only because they burn twenty-four hours a day).
This amounts to the Bush camp jumping ahead of the process and sowing
land mines, and thus ensures that whatever the outcome, voters around the
nation will never be able to have confidence in the process that yielded the
final result.

No matter who prevails in the closest presidential election in American
history, this last tactic may be the one we all remember. It elicits a memory
from the Vietnam era: “We had to burn the village in order to save it.” Tompaine.com

Joe Conason echoes the sentiments: Poisonous Rhetoric Shows Bush is Dividing the Nation. The New York Observer

Annals of the Decline and Fall (cont’d.): Italian research shows married men who have an affair make more attentive husbands
and fathers because their guilt drives them to devote more time to
their homes. Only in a world where cowardice, guilt and deception motivate the finer things in life… The Times of London

Happy Thanksgiving! Why Your Brain(s) Love Thanksgiving. “Thanksgiving may well be the year’s biggest bonanza for your brain — all of them. This
famous feast doesn’t just satisfy the survival instinct of your rudimentary reptilian
brainstem. The gathering of family and friends also serves up the emotional interaction
craved by your mammalian limbic brain. Brain.com

The Last Undecided Senate Race is finally certified, in an event that may prove more important to the political arc of the next few years than the outcome of the contested Presidential vote. Upstart Democrat Maria Cantwell is declared the victor over three-term Republican incumbent Slade Gorton in Washington state, and the Senate is 50-50. (However, if the Democrats win the White House and Joe Lieberman resigns his Connecticut seat, the Republican governor will appoint a Republican in his place.) New York Times

Transcript of the 1967 SF Oracle Houseboat Summit: “This is Alan Watts speaking, and I’m this evening, on my ferry boat, the host to a fascinating party sponsored by the San Francisco Oracle,
which is our new underground paper, far-outer than any far-out that has yet been seen. And we have here, members of the staff of the
Oracle. We have Allen Ginsberg, poet, and rabbinic saddhu. We have Timothy Leary, about whom nothing needs to be said. (laughs) And
Gary Snyder, also poet, Zen monk, and old friend of many years.” Ah, those were the days…Missing only Ram Dass… [via boing boing]

Riprap

Lay down these words

Before your mind like rocks.

placed solid, by hands

In choice of place, set

Before the body of the mind

in space and time:

Solidity of bark, leaf or wall

riprap of things:

Cobble of milky way,

straying planets,

These poems, people,

lost ponies with

Dragging saddles —

and rocky sure-foot trails.

The worlds like an endless

four-dimensional

Game of Go.

ants and pebbles

In the thin loam, each rock a word

a creek-washed stone

Granite: ingrained

with torment of fire and weight

Crystal and sediment linked hot

all change, in thoughts,

As well as things.

— Gary Snyder

[via Obscure Store]: Woman left for dead by rescuers, calls 911 a second time for help after a suicide attempt. [As a psychiatrist at the receiving end of ambulance transports of suicide attempters, I can tell you that the EMTs don’t always have the highest opinion of this segment of their clientele.]

Faithless Elector Watch: NPR commentator Daniel Schorr joins the ranks of those asking Republican electors to honor the will of the majority. In fact, Citizens for True Democracy and the Coalition Coalition have posted contact information for electors, who are feeling a little besieged as a result.

Mirror-Image Elián Miami Herald

Click Here to Buy Nothing Wired

I inevitably find that the New York Times Magazine is feast or famine — there’s either nothing of interest at all on a given Sunday, or almost everything in the magazine is worth reading. [I think, but I’m not sure, there’s almost a strict alternation of the two types.] This Sunday was a bountiful one: an article about Elaine Scarry, a professor of English literature at Harvard who has devoted her analytical skills most recently to the possibility that electromagnetic interference (EMI) caused three recent high-profile airplane crashes; a grueling description of the proverbial clash of irresistible force and immovable object in the guise of a gruesome murder in a Kentucky hill town; and a portrait of Dr. Martin Kafka, a McLean Hospital psychiatrist who has, serendipitously it seems, made a career of treating sexual addictions.

Rising suicides cut a swath through Amazon’s children. “The largest tribe of Amazonian Indians, the 27,000-strong
Guarani, are being devastated by a wave of suicides among their
children, triggered by their coming into contact with the
modern world.” Telegraph

An Ally in Asia. Since the end of the war, Vietnam has been “one of China’s
major headaches. There have been border skirmishes and
battles for influence in Cambodia, and the two have settled into
a state of not-very-neighborly mutual disgruntlement.” There are hints that, despite the recent granting of more favorable trade terms, Chinese military doctrine increasingly views the U.S. as an adversary to its Asian goals, including “reunification” with Taiwan. We may need Vietnam as a more important ally in the containment of China than conventional wisdom dictates, writes Anne Applebaum in Slate.

Is that why Clinton went to Vietnam? I doubt it: According to
one cynical American diplomat, he went because he knew that,
as a former opponent of the war, he would get a hero’s
welcome. But although that may be part of the explanation for
the mobs who turned out to wave American flags at his
motorcade, I suspect it doesn’t account for all the crowds. They
were partly there, as they would be anywhere, because the
American president is just about the most famous person in the
world, after Michael Jackson. And perhaps they were partly
there because some are already beginning to see that the
United States is not Vietnam’s past but its future.

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman: A Divine Gift in Sickness Vanishes Painfully in Health. “A cloistered Carmelite nun in
Southern California
experiences a prolonged burst of
ecstatic illumination. The poems
Sister John writes as a result are
published and praised; the Vatican
invites her to Rome to read them.

One day she collapses after what
seem to be flashes of light and a
series of blinding headaches. She is
taken to a hospital, where a
neurologist diagnoses treatable
epilepsy. He removes a tiny brain
growth; the symptoms cease, and so
do the visions. So do the poems.

Were Sister John’s flashes of
divinity medical or mystical? Were
her poems the product of art or of a
raisin-sized tumor? A variation on
the mind-body problem —
God-body, in this case, or art-body
— the question goes beyond the
religious or artistic. It continues to
ferment in the centuries-old debate
over the nature of human thought
and endeavor. How free and
distinct are they from biological
mechanics?” New York Times

New issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal

A New Way to Be Mad (Caution: the referenced article has graphic details not for the squeamish) Carl Elliott, a philosopher of psychiatry, with a medical degree, writes a long reflection on the growing epidemic of apotemnophilia, a psychological malady in which people seek the amputation of one or more of their limbs without medical cause. This is done with or without the assistance of a surgeon, some of whom feel there are no humane alternatives to relieve their patients’ distress. (“It was the most satisfying operation I have ever
performed. I have no doubt that what I was doing
was the correct thing for those patients”, said one.)

I
was interested in the way that previously
little-known psychiatric disorders spread, sometimes
even reaching epidemic proportions, for reasons
that nobody seems fully to understand. But I had
never heard of apotemnophilia or acrotomophilia
before the Falkirk story broke. I wondered: Was this
a legitimate psychiatric disorder? Was there any
chance that it might spread? …I also wondered about the ethical and
legal status of surgery as a solution. Should
amputation be treated like cosmetic surgery, or like
invasive psychiatric treatment, or like a risky
research procedure?

Other interesting questions — is this a problem of sexual desire (there are certainly large numbers of “devotees” who are sexually aroused by people missing limbs, but it does not appear that the “wannabes”, those who seek amputation, are sexually motivated) or a disorder of body image or sense of self? What does it say about the nature of our self-identity? What relationship does it bear to other, less extreme, body modification techniques in our own and other cultures? What is the balance between its psychological, possible neurobiological, and sociological determinants? How deep do the homologies between amputation-by-choice and sex-reassignment surgery go? Is it adequately explained as a subset of some other existing category of psychopathology — e.g. body dysmorphic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, the paraphilias — or is it something distinct from all of them? More radically, is it a disorder at all? If it is, what is to be considered acceptable treatment, in light of the “extraordinary and often very destructive collaboration” between psychiatry and surgery over the past seventy-five years?

clitoridectomy for
excessive masturbation, cosmetic surgery as a
treatment for an “inferiority complex,” intersex
surgery for infants born with ambiguous genitalia,
and — most notorious — the frontal lobotomy. It is a
collaboration with few unequivocal successes. Yet
surgery continues to avoid the kind of ethical and
regulatory oversight that has become routine for
most areas of medicine.

I’ve long had professional concern about the role that popularizing faddish new diagnoses may have in spreading them. Consider for example multiple personality disorder, which I’m convinced barely exists if at all but has hordes of adherents (“wannabe” sufferers, and “devotee” clinicians). Dr. Elliott has a fine summary of the arguments of a historian of medicine, Ian Hacking, whose thoughtful work about how “transient mental illnesses” arise and take hold I’ve followed closely.

Crucial to the way this worked is what Hacking calls
the “looping effect,” by which he means how a
classification affects the thing being classified.
Unlike objects, people are conscious of the way
they are classified, and they alter their behavior
and self-conceptions in response to their
classification…In the 1970s, he
argues, therapists started asking patients they
thought might be multiples if they had been abused
as children, and patients in therapy began
remembering episodes of abuse (some of which may
not have actually occurred). These memories
reinforced the diagnosis of multiple-personality
disorder, and once they were categorized as
multiples, some patients began behaving as multiples
are expected to behave. Not intentionally, of
course, but the category “multiple-personality
disorder” gave them a new way to be mad.

Is apotemnophilia going to be a particularly malignant example of such contagion? What is the balance between the extent to which cultural and historical conditions reveal, as opposed to create, new disorders? How far do we want to go in regarding it as a psychiatric diagnosis, including it in DSM-V, the next edition of the “Bible” of officially acceptable diagnoses (and, by the way, the basis for insurance reimbursements). In essence, is this going to spread like a new meme, to which Hacking refers as “semantic contagion”? Its severity may be enhanced by the potential for connectivity among “devotees” and wannabes”. As Dr. Elliott points out, part of the motivation of apotemnophiles may be an aspiration to heroism, and of their devotees to hero worship, which the web facilitates tremendously. One discussion group on the topic has over 1400 participants. Atlantic Monthly

The LEGO Star Wars Trilogy is a series of sixty tableaux of scenes from the first Star Wars trilogy, made of LEGOs and constituting a sort of storyboard of the three films. “…My biggest project ‘LEGO Star
Wars trilogy’ was completed by autumn 1996. It consists of three series of 60 pictures each.
Most of my free time, approximately 2,500 hours, was devoted to making it. Actually, there
were several intervals due to my job. During those years I gradually added new LEGO bricks,
so the pictures that were taken later are more satisfying.”

Has the threat of bioterrorism been overestimated? Are Aum Shinrikyo-like attacks the wave of the future? Some like the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Defense Program of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies at Johns Hopkins feel that today’s terrorists have less to lose by unleashing a biological or chemical threat, and raise the hue and cry about our unpreparedness. Others such as Milton Leitenberg of
the University of Maryland Center for
International
Security Studies feel such claims are alarmist, and that “only the most sophisticated
terrorist organizations could master the complicated process
of launching a biological weapons attack. Most countries
that experimented with biological warfare in the 1970s
eventually gave up because the results were discouraging. ” Economist

Cryptome “welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on cryptology,
dual-use technologies, national security and intelligence — open, secret and classified documents — but not limited to those. In
particular, now that the US Congress adopted an official secrets act on October 12, 2000, increasing penalties for disclosing
government secrets, Cryptome invites those secrets for publication here.” Follow your Echelon and Carnivore concerns here. For example, a recent wire service report claiming that “the FBI’s controversial e-mail surveillance tool, known as Carnivore, can retrieve all communications that go through an Internet service, far more than FBI officials have said it does, a recent test of its potential sweep found, according to bureau documents” is refuted with a bit of back-of-the-napkin calculation here.

BBC Says Sorry for ‘African Orphan’ Stunt. “The BBC apologized Monday after a film
crew used a child actor to pose as an African orphan and play a practical joke on a generous
housewife.

An actor playing the part of a charity collector persuaded the woman to part with one pound
($1.43) for orphaned African children. A seven-year-old posing as an African child was then
unloaded from a crate and delivered to her.”

Microsoft Office 10 beta underwhelming users. Speech recognition technology is faulty and oflimited functionality. The company had not been planning on another beta release before shipping the product in the first half of next year.

Child abuse ‘myths’ shattered: First one shibboleth, then the next. Fast on the heels of the study showing that women are underestimated as domestic abusers, a major study by the British National Council for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children shows that “children are more likely to be sexually abused
by people of their own age than by adults…Most children are sexually
abused by a brother and not their parents. “

Mary Marsh, NSPCC chief executive, said the
findings overturn traditional stereotypes.

“Modern myths about child cruelty have
emerged from the public attention given to
horrific and frightening cases of child abuse by
strangers.

“Other traditional stereotypes come from a
historical wellspring of children’s stories about
wicked adult bogey figures.

“These stereotypes have become part of
popular culture.” BBC

Chance Discovery Of “Immortal Skin” Holds Medical Promise Sciece Daily

I missed my blog‘s first birthday. I began posting on November 16, 1999 with a link to blogger.com, the discovery of which had goaded me into creating this thing. I won’t bore you with too much self-reflection here, except to say I’m grateful for your readership, support and involvement. Follow Me Here has always been a faithful reflection of what grabs me as I follow a number of interests on the web. I’m glad it interests you, and I think I’ve developed a more confident voice over the year from knowing that.

If it’s been in a low spot recently, it’s because despite myself I’ve found the drama of the election campaign more captivating than I ever thought I would; kept more in touch with the news than I ever had in previous election seasons; and started to reflect that in my postings here, despite having vowed at one point that you wouldn’t get much Presidential politics here, since I have usually found the political process bankrupt and meaningless and the outcomes of elections not to matter, or at least found it chic to maintain so.

In any case, it’ll all be over relatively soon, and Follow Me Here can get back to the usual routine:

social

commentary, criticism, cynicism,

conjunctions and conundrums.

Outrage. Recent scientific, technical

and healthcare developments.

Exciting artistic and cultural news.

Human pathos, whimsy, folly,

darkness and depravity.

I wanted to extend particular appreciation to several people for their crucial support during my first year — Abby Levine, Jorn Barger, David Brake, David Hartung, Jim Higgins, Matt Rossi and Chuck Taggart. No matter that some of you (webloggers who have found me worth pointing their readers toward) I’ve never met outside of cyberspace.

Her name was Candace. Two unlicensed Colorado therapists, their two assistants and the adoptive mother of a 10-year-old girl are charged with “child abuse resulting in death” after the troubled girl stopped breathing during a “rebirthing therapy” session.

Therapists curled Candace into the fetal position

inside a flannel sheet and pushed against her from

all sides.

She gasped for air. She begged them to stop.

She cried out that

she was dying.

They said go

ahead.

And then she did.

The Rocky Mountain News devoted an entire section to Candace’s death, including tracking down her birth mother in North Carolina six months after the tragedy to inform her of her daughter’s passing.

Why Gore (Probably) Lost. The pundits have been analyzing to death the question of why he didn’t do better. Three factors are often mentioned, to the point of becoming “received wisdom” already — his flatness of personality and discomfort with himself; his distancing himself from Clinton, crippling him in any attempt to run on his record; and his turn from centrism toward populism. In this essay, Jacob Weisberg is able to show how all of these relate to, and maybe emanate from, his complicated and ambivalent relationship with his late father (and Clinton, as a surrogate father figure). I think he’s on the mark.

Al Gore doesn’t deserve all the vilification that may be about

to be heaped on him. He has done a fine job as vice president

and really does deserve credit for many of the administration’s

accomplishments. Although the ineptitude of his campaign was

frustrating to his supporters, he tried to compensate for it by

working his heart out. Had Bush lost by so narrow a margin,

his defeat would have been attributable to laziness, a failing

Bush has far more control over than Gore has over his. And if

Gore is at fault, so are many of his aides, who we can expect

will soon be pointing the finger elsewhere. And so, too, is the

public, which failed to see through what are, in the scheme of

things, superficial faults to elect the more capable, intelligent,

and experienced man. Slate

Recycling your PC? IBM will take it. “Responding to what many see as one of

the biggest solid waste issues in decades, IBM

on Tuesday kicked off a computer recycling

program for consumers and small business. For

a $30 fee that includes shipping, buyers can

keep their old equipment — whether IBM made

them or not — out of landfills and send them

instead to a recycler. Environmentalists saw it

as a step forward, but urged IBM and other

companies to adopt free recycling.” MSNBC

Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts. Recent studies have shown that there is a specific ‘disgust center’ in our brains. Building on the observation that patients with Huntington’s Disease cannot recognize expressions of disgust on others’ faces and do not react with disgust to items or situations others usually find distasteful, the crucial brain locus has recently been established to be in the insular region of the cortex. Speculation is that this center originally evolved to help us recognize rotting food. ” ‘All animals have a sense of distaste,’ says psychologist Andrew

Calder. However, in humans it has been enhanced to give us a

centre for highlighting both disgusting things, and disgusting

acts. We need to be able to spot such behaviour because it

could threaten society unless rooted out quickly, he says.” Although the article does not make it clear, the crucial step in this inference by researchers has been the observation that patients in whom this brain region is damaged combine three behavioral deficits — not only do they not react to things that are repugnant but they fail to recognize the emotion of disgust in others and fail to react with the emotion of disgust to socially objectionable actions. Is this a biological basis for the sense of morality? Guardian

Men, if you value your life, stop shaving now. And other lucky escapes. Ananova

Overkill. ‘In the

morning paper, the town read disturbing allegations about a local

personality, followed in the afternoon by the news of his suicide. Readers

immediately flamed The Plain Dealer with angry phone calls, letters, and

e-mail. Rose hadn’t been charged with any crime, many noted, and by

making the investigation public, the newspaper had, in effect, killed him. The

paper had turned itself into a convenient outlet for residents to vent their

disbelief.

In response, The Plain Dealer became defensive and launched an often

harsh counterattack that at times seemed even more reflexive than its

readers’ reactions. In a series of editorials and columns, the paper reminded

readers that journalists are supposed to report facts–and that Rose was a

suspect. It is not the paper’s fault, editors said, if subjects of articles

choose to commit suicide. In answer to an e-mail message from Merle Pollis,

Rose’s best friend of 25 years, Douglas Clifton, The Plain Dealer‘s editor,

sent off a response that read, in part: “I know how I would react to a false

accusation of that sort. It would not have been to blow my brains out.” ‘Brill’s Content

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova

The Nazi on the Bestseller List. “German media giant Bertelsmann, still feverishly trying to make

people forget that it once marketed Hitler to the masses, is now

selling a Vermont professor’s regurgitation of the ideas of America’s

foremost living Hitler admirer, William Pierce, author of the Turner

Diaries.

Unable to find a publisher for his 420-page labor of love, University

of Vermont education professor Robert S. Griffin is peddling The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close

Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce for $8 per download on MightyWords.com, where it has the

immediate potential to reach millions of people.

The Web site is owned jointly, through a subsidiary, by Bertelsmann and Barnes & Noble. And Griffin’s

e-book has zoomed to No. 1 on the MightyWords bestseller list.

Griffin, in an interview with the Voice, insists he’s no mere publicist for Pierce, an ex-physicist whom Jewish

activists consider America’s most intellectual—and most dangerous—anti-Semite and racist.” Village Voice

Women are more violent, says study. A new study ‘challenges the long-standing view that

women are overwhelmingly the victims of aggression,…based on an analysis of 34,000 men and women by a British

academic. Women lash out more frequently than their

husbands or boyfriends, concludes John Archer, professor of

psychology at the University of Central Lancashire and

president of the International Society for Research on

Aggression.

Male violence remains a more serious phenomenon: men

proved more likely than women to injure their partners.

Female aggression tends to involve pushing, slapping and

hurling objects. Yet men made up nearly 40 per cent of the

victims in the cases that he studied – a figure much higher

than previously reported.

… Speaking last night, he said that female aggression

was greater in westernised women because they were

“economically emancipated” and therefore not afraid of ending

a relationship.

“Feminist writers say most of the acts against men are not

important but the same people have used the same surveys

to inflate the number of women who are attacked,” he said. “In

the past it would not even have been considered that women

are violent. My view is that you must base social policy on the

whole evidence.” ‘ Independent

Death row inmate nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. Nando Times

World marvels at meteors. “Waves of fireballs brightened the skies over

the Middle East as the much-heralded Leonid

meteor shower swelled into the heaviest show

of shooting stars in 33 years.

Around the world, astronomers and amateur

stargazers gathered to watch the celestial light

show, which is unlikely to be matched for

decades.” BBC

“Wealth Porn”. “The media have almost totally overlooked the causal connections between the wealth boom and rising distress among the middle classes. The pieces that do report on middle-class financial distress often quote spokesmen for the personal responsibility movement who condemn financially-strapped middle-class families for their lack of discipline.” But, the author contends, as the rich get richer and are driven to more and more conspicuous consumption, they carry the rest of society along with them, and there are unacceptable costs to failing to spend on a par with others. Columbia Journalism Review

Main characters in the distressing but strangely appealing novels of Michel Houellebecq keep visiting shrinks and getting diagnosed with ‘Depressive Lucidity”. Life is “narrow, dark and acrid.” People barely connect, barely hold on. Suicide is ever-present. But then there’s the lucidity…. The New Republic

Pedro the hellraising parrot squawks his last. “A hellraising parrot whose lifestyle of bars, booze and

birds caused outcry among animal welfare activists has

died after going on the wagon.

Pedro the parrot fell off his perch after being barred

from living it up at the Kiwi Spirit bar in Rotorua, New

Zealand, where he lived.” Ananova

Is There a Duty to Die? Philosophers consider those controversial cases “in which a person is dying or has substantial physical or cognitive impairments and whose care is very costly or burdensome.” JAMA

Blind to change. Recent experimental psychology studies indicate that “we see far less than we think we do.” Our subjective experience of seeing a rich, full visual scene of the world at all times is just an illusion; we take in only salient details and rely on extrapolation from memory or imagination to fill in the rest. Neurological probes have recently demonstrated that the same neurons activate when viewing a scene in the mind’s eye as when viewing it outwardly, suggesting the same conclusion from a different direction. Daniel Dennett proposed this in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained, observing how computationally inefficient it would be to store the entire elaborate picture in short-term memory. Instead, we log what has changed and assume the rest has remained the same. Implications of the potential for error in this model of perception include calling into question the validity of eyewitness testimony, for example. Some of the further reaches of extrapolation from these findings pose epistemological challenges about what we really know about the world “out there.”

Back in 1992, Kevin

O’Regan, an experimental psychologist at the French National

Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris put forward

what later became known as his “grand illusion” theory. He

argued that we hold no picture of the visual world in our

brains. Instead, we refer back to the external visual world as

different aspects become important. The illusion arises from

the fact that as soon as you ask yourself “am I seeing this or

that?” you turn your attention to it and see it.

According to O’Regan, it’s not just our impression of richness

that is illusory, but also the sense of having control over what

we see. “We have the illusion that when something flickers

outside the window, we notice it flickering and decide to move

our eyes and look,” says Susan Blackmore of the University of

the West of England, who supports O’Regan’s views. “That’s

balderdash.” In fact, she says, we are at the mercy of our

change detection mechanisms, which automatically drag our

attention here, there and everywhere.

At a meeting in Brussels in July this year, O’Regan and Alva

Noë of the University of California, Santa Cruz, updated the

controversial theory. Sensation, whether it be visual, auditory

or tactile, is not something that takes place in the brain, they

argue. Rather it exists in the knowledge that if you were to

perform a certain action, it would produce a certain change in

sensory input. “Sensation is not something that we feel, but

sensation is something that we do,” says O’Regan.

According to this idea, the sensation of “redness” arises from

knowing that moving your eyes onto a red patch will produce a

certain change in the pattern of stimulation in line with laws of

redness. In other words, the role of the brain is to initiate the

exploratory action and to hold the knowledge of those laws:

together this give rise to the sensation of redness.

New Scientist

Mobile phones: Can a small ring of metal cut radiation from hands-free kits?. A new British study suggests that using a hands-free headset with your cellular phone can channel more microwave radiation to your head (in contrast to most tests which have found that hands-free kits cut microwave exposure). Fitting a small ferrite ring or choke to the headset wire eradicated the extra radiation, however. New Scientist

U.S. Report Offers Steps to Fight Global Warming. Here’s hoping they can agree on some way of implementing the Kyoto Protocol in the Hague talks. “The United States came under fire on

Thursday from the European Union and

environmentalists over its wish to use the world’s forests to soak

up greenhouse gases rather than cut emissions at home. And, in related news, “climate researchers are warning of a possible

link between global warming and giant waves in

the Atlantic Ocean.

They say that if the current trend towards

warmer temperatures continues, roughening

seas could threaten coastal areas in northern

Europe.

Average winter wave heights in the north-east

Atlantic have increased by about a metre

(3.28 feet) over the past 30 years. Stormy

conditions also persist longer.”

At tough 180-nation talks in The Hague on how to slow global

warming, the EU rejected a U.S. proposal to use its own forests

and farmland as ‘sinks’ to soak up greenhouse gases, dismissing

the plan as a ‘free gift’ to the world’s largest polluter.”

Here’s at least one defeat handed to Dubya by the Supreme Court. Supreme Court Blocks Texas Execution. ‘The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Thursday night’s execution of a convicted killer

said to be so mentally retarded he spends his days coloring with

crayons and still believes in Santa Claus.

The high court said it wanted more time to decide whether to

hear arguments that Johnny Paul Penry’s mental deficiency was

not properly explained to the jury…. Penry, 44, was to become 38th Texas inmate to be executed

this year – the highest number by any state since the U.S.

Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. It

was the third execution scheduled in as many nights in Texas.

Penry’s case was at the center of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court

decision on executing the retarded, and his impending

execution drew protests from around the world. The European

Union (news – web sites), anti-death penalty groups, the

American Bar Association and advocates for the retarded urged

Texas not to execute to him.’

Eli Lilly Gets Extension on Prozac Patent

Adventures Through Inner Space. “Let’s say you’re a buttoned-down organic-chemistry jockey at Merck. One day

you tweak a molecule ripped off from a Peruvian native medicine, and you wind

up with a powerfully psychoactive compound. Instead of squelching anxiety,

instilling a reliable boner, or giving young minds that magic amphetamine edge,

the drug helps you touch the hem of God — or at least something a lot like the

hem of God. At times it hurtles you into a blazing hieroglyphic phantasmagoria

more sublime and gorgeously bizarre than anything on the demo reels of

Hollywood FX shops. On other occasions it leads you to the lip of a fundamental

insight into the dance of form and emptiness. And though later attempts to

communicate your insight founder on the shoals of coherence, the experience

still leaves you centered and convinced that ordinary life is fed by deeper springs.” An enthused paean by Erik Davis (Techgnosis) to resurgent psychedelic research these days. Feed via AlterNet

No Bark, Strong Bite: The Drug War and Elections 2000. Six of eight ballot initiatives to reform drug enforcement passed: sentencing reform in California; asset forfeiture reform in Oregon and Utah; and medical marijuana provisions in Nevada and Colorado. Legalization of marijuana in Alaska went down, as did a combination sentencing reform and asset forfeiture reform bill in my state of Massachusetts (which had unfortunate wording that would have allowed drug dealers as well as those arrested for simple possession to avoid criminal conviction and incarceration by choosing a treatment option).

The Ultimate Cereal Guide for Geeks. “Hard-working computer geeks know nothing delivers bursts of

instant energy with such caloric efficiency better than

sweetened cereal. Joab Jackson gives his review of the best

and worst cereals ever to grace the late-night lips of

malnourished programmers.” He follows the lead of Neal Stephenson, who sang the praises of Cap’n Crunch in the Cryptonomicon — rating five other cereals (have you noticed how many kinds there are out there on the market shelves these days??), he finds none stack up to the Cap’n. Baltimore City Paper via Alter.Net

Americans Uneasy About ‘Designer’ Kids. “A poll of 1,015 Americans reveals that although most feel it is

okay for parents to choose to have a child who can “give cells”

to a sick sibling, they largely oppose allowing parents to choose

to have an attractive or gifted child. Most also feel parents

should not choose whether to have a boy or girl.”

Managed Care Patients Denied Heart Attack Care. “Researchers have confirmed what critics of

managed care health plans long have suspected: heart attack

victims insured by such programs are less likely to get the

treatment they need.” Reuters

“His new translator

tells you what you

need to know about

the philosopher —

and why you need

to know it”: Being Martin Heidegger. “Why is there something instead of

nothing,” asked philosopher Martin Heidegger, and he

asked it again and again throughout his life. But,

considering his at times nearly incomprehensible response to

his own question and his affiliation with the Nazis during

the 1930s, there are more than a few who have since

plaintively wished, “Why couldn’t there be nothing instead

of Heidegger?” Salon

Piecing Together Alzheimer’s: December 2000. “The stunningly complex biochemical puzzle that underlies

this crippling disease remains incomplete, but parts that

seemed unrelated just a decade ago are now fitting into

place.” Scientific American

Are we Dumbing Down? The Guardian‘s special supplements dedicated to the issue over the past

three Saturdays. “Commentators romped through several decades of intellectual

history, television, cinema, exams, the press and literature.” If the issue concerns you, the cornucopia here includes:

Is America bad for us? How is it possible to maintain cultural difference in a

world run by US corporations?

Why today’s protesters have to be smarter The wising-up of dissent. Making

yourself heard is harder than ever

The death of custom ‘The remnants of what was at least in part an urban culture

“of the people” are being destroyed.’ Richard Hoggart, 1957. That was then. How do things stand now, in the era of Kentucky Fried Chicken and

Rupert Murdoch?

Dubious divisions What does the dumb debate mean for groups that are often

excluded from ‘high art’ yet dominate the landscape of popular culture?

The whole whack: for better or worse, we have unzipped the

very idea of what culture actually is.

From sages to celebrities What does it mean when we stop listening to

intellectuals and pay heed to pop stars?

Sex: The decline of modesty.

Violence: Thug culture is becoming the norm for the mass of young British men, with its roots in films and classroom failure.

Pop: Being dumb may be the essence of pop music,but there are

many varieties of dumb. Still, things are pretty bad.

Books: Pulp fiction: commercial realities are reducing the

chances of truly innovative novels seeing the light of day.

The problem with poetry is that you have to read it.

Art or product? It may be pointless to say Hollywood is dumb, but vitality and variety are under threat.

Zones of pure play: Why video games are good for you.

The highs and lows of film: It’s too simple to argue that the movies dumb down

over time. High and low coexist in different periods, sometimes within

individual films – a cultural history of cinema

from Sunset Boulevard to The Phantom Menace.

Going, going . . . Moaning about cultural decline is as old as the hills;

the long history behind the current dumbing down crisis.

The Bluffer’s Guide to Culture Buffs Having problems getting to grips with all

this hi-lo stuff? We are. Here’s a handy guide to the experts

Classical music Can we only listen to music in bite-sized chunks these days?

Food How come we have wider food experience than our

parents but less food knowledge?

Sport From local hero to pay-per-view demi-god:the money

culture that has turned sportsmen into superstars.

An A-Z of cultural terms What is culture anyhow? A bunch of artworks? An

activity? A habit? A product? A battlefield? A corpse? This A-Z of cultural

terms might help you find out…

The invention of popular culture. We had to create high

culture before we could have low culture.

Architecture: We have squandered the legacy of modernism and destroyed the notion of public duty

Had enough already? Then all too likely you’re part of the attention-deficit

generation.

Review of Laughter: A Scientific Investigation by Robert Provine. ‘What a weird trick has been played

on our linguistic species to express itself with such stupid “ha ha ha” sounds. Why

don’t we leave it at a cool “that was funny”?

These questions are old, going back to philosophers who have puzzled over why one

of humanity’s finest achievements–its sense of humor–is expressed in such an

animal-like fashion. There can be no doubt that laughter is an inborn characteristic.’ We share laughter with the apes; it appears to be associated with a playful attitude, and is distinct from smiling, which encodes affection and appeasement instead. Laughter is not as much as we think a response to a joke; naturalistic studies show that people laugh more frequently in response to situations that are far from humorous. Laughter’s purpose seems to be to solidify social relations by signalling mutual liking and well-being. A group of people laughing together — more often men than women, BTW — broadcast solidarity and togetherness often at the expense of the outsider. “Provine expands on this theme with the observation

that women laugh more in response to men’s remarks than the reverse. The asymmetry between the sexes starts early in

life, between boys and girls, and seems to be cross-cultural. The man as laugh-getter also turned up in an analysis of

personal ads, in which Provine found that women generally sought partners with a sense of humor, which male

advertisers claimed to have in great measure.” Scientific American

The Wait for an E-book Format. Everyone admits that e-books are the wave of the future, but we’re not even close to establishing standards that’ll allow any e-book to be read on any device. Publishers Weekly

Emperor Without Clothes Dept.: Literary criticism in the Disneyland cloisters; a year at Yale for a British PhD student in literature:

“I write the sentence down in my notebook, like everyone else in the seminar. The ode must traverse

the problem of solipsism before it can approach

participating in the unity which is no longer

accessible. When I have pieced it together, I realise

he is talking nonsense. I am struck by the thought

that literary criticism – at least as it is practised here

– is a hoax. And the universities that offer it, and the

professors who in America earn large salaries

teaching it, are fraudulent, wittingly or not.”

Gang-Bangers: A Deadly U.S. Export. The gang members we deport back to their countries of origin have it all over the homeboys. Time

If you are happy and you know it clap your hands.

Bush Team Prepares ‘Scorched-Earth’ Plan. “The battle to win 270 votes in the electoral college has taken on a unique calculus. Florida remains crucial, but the close outcomes in New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon are critical in what one Republican operative called a “scorched-earth strategy” GOP officials hope to avoid implementing.

The strategy is to challenge Gore’s close wins in Iowa, Wisconsin and, perhaps, Oregon. If successful in Wisconsin with 11 electoral votes and either Oregon or Iowa, with 7 each, Bush could then, under this scenario, still win in the electoral college without Florida’s 25 votes.

That depends on keeping New Mexico in the Bush column. If New Mexico flips back to Gore, Bush would have to overturn the outcome in all three other states–Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon–to make up for the loss of Florida.” Washington Post

Forget Florida—Flip the Electors! by Matthew Miller, a senior fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. He’s basically saying that tit-for-tat litigation airs dirty laundry about the U.S. electoral system that would be better off not known. He prefers Gore take the (constitutional) high ground for the country’s sake. “Would a handful of Republican electors switch and vote for

Gore? I don’t know, but as a Gore supporter I’d rather risk

his losing this way than see the nation implode on its current

path. Even 271 party hacks could not help but feel the weight

of history in ways that would lead most to go beyond partisan

interest to consult their consciences.” Of course, there isn’t a ghost of a chance of this happening (unless Gore promises a handful of these hacks ambassadorships or something); I’m answering my own question I asked on election night. And it’s not self-evident at all that this is a “crisis”, or that the nation will “implode” at all if it continues down its current path. Slate

BuzzWhack: The Buzzword Compliant Dictionary. “dedicated to demystifying buzzwords.” One of the features on this site I particularly enjoy is the Whack of the Week, in which they highlight a press release or web site that’s incomprehensible. Here‘s one:

PictureTel Corporation is focused on reinventing the rules for intuitive, content-rich remote communication, including the

launch of evolutionary PC-based integrated collaboration systems. We are harnessing the power of the broadband

revolution to deliver a range of IP-based, interactive communication solutions and will continue to accelerate solution

development and innovation to enable new models for communication and productivity.

(buzz.whack.er: n. A person who receives some degree of pleasure in bursting the bubbles of the pompous.)

What did Aum Shinrikyo have in mind? Excerpt from Ian Hacking’s thoughtful essay in a recent London Review of Books about Underground, Haruki Murakami’s new book on the sect’s 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo Underground. Thinking about this “terrorist act” is fascinating and important, and thinking about Murakami writing about it is a concept in itself!

Battle Plans: a friend of mine sent me this — a call to action from J.J.Johnson, a spokesperson for the radical right, who feels he’s watching a coup d’etat by Clinton forces determined to steal the election from its rightful winner and stay in power unjustly. He lays out the plans for “freedom fighters” to oppose it. Scary stuff; read on and wonder, with me, how many people will feel similarly, and how many will listen to them. My friend said: ” If Gore wins

through a recount, the militia movement will grow radically, but mostly

they will gripe. If Gore wins through a court decision, then God help us

all – these guys will make McVeigh’s hit look like a practice run.”

The Sage of Fortune Cookies. “A quest to discover why the ubiquitous little messages so rarely predict the future anymore leads through a

byzantine world of secrecy and suspicion to an unlikely oracle.” LATimes (requires free registration)

13 Myths About the Results of the 2000 Election “Propaganda is flying left and right.

To combat this barrage, we present a point by point analysis of

some key myths in the media today, substantiated with footnotes.

Please read, copy, and forward to friends, relatives and colleagues!” Red Rock Eater Digest

Who Should Concede? “Politicians and pundits are eager for Vice President Gore to quickly

concede the presidential election to Gov. Bush and bring closure to

Election 2000.

A key argument is that Republican candidates who came close in the past —

especially Richard Nixon in 1960 and Gerald Ford in 1976 — gracefully

accepted defeat for the “good of the country” and Gore, a Democrat, now

should do the same.

Though this argument is gaining momentum, it is based on bogus history.

The real history is that Republicans since Nixon have played extraordinary

hardball and have only conceded when they were faced with clear defeat in

the popular vote. Ford was behind by 1.7 million ballots in 1976.

Indeed, it has been the Democrats who have routinely turned the other

cheek and kept quiet when they discovered evidence of GOP dirty tricks

aimed at rigging the outcome of presidential elections. These cases go

back to Nixon’s runs in 1960 and 1968 and are as recent as the 1992

match-up between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.” Consortiumnews

Hidden Data Transmission Using Electromagnetic Emanations. ‘Your computer produces electromagnetic “emanations” that in some

cases contain enough information to reconstruct, for example, the image

on the screen. These emanations can sometimes be detected at a distance,

even across the street, and this fact has given rise both to legitimate

computer security research and to urban myths. One of the urban myths,

which takes various forms, is that Microsoft has secretly used emanations

from personal computers to look for pirated software. (This is)

a message about this myth from probably the foremost authority on the

subject.’ Red Rock Eater Digest

Brain Repair Companies Sharpen Their Drills. “A local anesthetic, a small drill-hole in the

skull and a syringe full of new cells may one day be all it takes to

repair brain damage.” Regenerating damaged tissue with neural stem cells offers promise to reverse the deficits of stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s etc. Tissue transplanted from aborted fetuses has been used successfully in reversing the worst symptoms of a handful of Parkinson’s Disease patients, but the ethical problems caused by depending on fetal stem cells has led to a quest for other sources, including “immortalized” human cell lines, nonhuman mammalian sources and, recently, cadavers. Companies are lining up to commercialize the approach once it is clear it is safe and effective. Here’s a primer on stem cells from the National Institutes of Health; and information from the American Association for the Advancement of Science on stem cell research and applications.

Right nostrils provide clues to brain

illnesses. “People’s right nostrils are better at evaluating strange new

smells, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, say Swedish

scientists.

While familiar smells appear to be sniffed equally by both

nostrils, it is the right that takes the lead when the nose is

challenged by a new odour.

The research has implications for the diagnosis of

neurological disorders because it suggests that only one side

of the brain is involved in processing unfamiliar smells.

By testing patients’ reactions to different scents, doctors might

be able to diagnose which side of the brain has a problem,

the researchers said…” Independent

Just can’t get enough A German researcher who found that heart rate and cortisol concentrations surge when habitual gamblers place money bets but not when playing for points claims this proves gambling is “addictive” in the physiological sense. New Scientist highlights the controversy over this claim given many scientists’ refusal to accept that a behavior can be physiologically addictive, that “you can’t have an addiction unless you take a substance.”

If the findings of the scientific paper (in the journal Biological Psychiatry) are well-described here, the assertion that it “proves gambling is addictive” is absurd. All that appears to be shown is that, when people do something pleasurable, they demonstrate some of the physiological changes associated with pleasure or gratification. In essence, the research proves that such a behavior is “addictive” only in the way we use that term in lay conversation, to mean merely something we enjoy doing alot. The more precise notion of addictiveness involves (a) physiological tolerance (as the person continues to use the substance, it takes higher and higher doses to have the same effect); (b) physiological dependency (when denied the substance at the expected interval, a physiological withdrawal reaction ensues); and (c) the drug-seeking activity is preoccupying and dominates the person’s behavior pattern.

Assertions such as the following, from the article, are risible: “…Such findings might reduce the

culpability of people who have committed crimes. If lawyers

can attribute their clients’ crimes to physiological cravings

rather than acts of free will, they may receive lighter

sentences. ” Even though all craving of pleasurable activity has a physiological basis, by no stretch of the imagination does it diminish someone’s free will by any notion of autonomy and choice I’m aware of in the behavioral sciences! New Scientist

Now you tell me — is this a related item or not? Contract bridge enhances the immune system, according to a preliminary study

by researchers at UC Berkeley. EurekAlert!

Along the same lines as what Iceland has done (see below), but on a bigger scale, Estonia sells its gene pool.

(The) Estonian people, in case you didn’t know, are just perfect. Quite

steady, as they have been settling in their present location for at

least 5,000 years, but not too isolated from the rest of the world.

Their family trees can normally be traced back into the 17th

century. More than a third of the people old enough to take a

degree have done so, and the life expectancy is 70 years.

Most importantly, they have willingly accepted the deal. Opinion

polls suggest that more than 90% of the 1.445 million Estonians

are ready to part with 50ml of their blood and a detailed account

of their medical history. A law regulating the details of the

procedure is expected to pass parliament without problems.

What seems to have won over the Estonian politicians was the

hope of becoming world leaders in something for the first time.

Guardian

“We love our small friends — we value their lives.” The Rat & Mouse Gazette.

Amnesty in Africa: How does Amnesty International persuade a state to change its ways? Prospect

Amnesty in Africa: How does Amnesty International persuade a state to change its ways? Prospect

Amnesty in Africa: How does Amnesty International persuade a state to change its ways? Prospect

Improbable but no longer unthinkable solutions to the Presidential election impasse.

Amnesty in Africa: How does Amnesty International persuade a state to change its ways? Prospect

AIDS-related virus spreads through kissing. “A form

of the herpes virus that causes an

AIDS-related skin cancer appears to

spread through kissing. Herpes virus 8 was discovered six years

ago and causes a skin cancer called

Kaposi’s sarcoma. In the United States,

the cancer occurs almost exclusively in

people with AIDS.” Researchers from the University of Washington have demonstrated that gay men infected with herpes 8 shed the virus far more often and at much higher concentrations in saliva than in anal or genital secretions. The implication, that oral-to-oral contact can be the route of transmission, needs further research confirmation. The obvious public health concern is that kissing is largely ignored in “safe sex” protocols. Transmission via the oral route makes sense when you realize the similarity between herpes 8 and the Epstein Barr virus, another herpes virus whose oral spread causes mononucleosis (“the kissing disease”) and which has been implicated in a malignancy of its own, Burkitt’s lymphoma. AP

His parents despaired of ever curing his rare phobia until they appealed for help in the local newspaper. A hypnotherapist came to the aid of this 8-year-old Gloucestershire (UK) boy and cured him of his fear of ketchup.

“Researchers in Iceland claimed yesterday to have pinpointed a gene for schizophrenia, stirring hope and anxiety among millions

of sufferers of what has been called ‘the worst disease affecting

mankind’.

The discovery is one of the first fruits of the controversial effort

by Icelandic entrepreneur Kari Stefansson’s firm deCODE to use

the medical records of the entire nation to ferret out disease

genes.’ You will recall that deCODE has given the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche the rights to commercial exploitation of its findings in return for financial backing. deCODE is applying for patent rights to the discovery and, for the moment, there is no scientific publication forthcoming; neither Roche nor deCODE is willing to even say on what chromosome the genetic locus resides. While it is implausible that one genetic defect can cause all the manifestations of this disease, it is well established that there is a heritable component. This discovery might lead to an understanding of just what the inherited vulnerability is, to ways of identifying vulnerable individuals before they develop symptoms, and perhaps to new drug strategies for treatment or even prevention. Guardian

Surf like a Bushman. Foraging theory, developed to understand animal hunting behavior and the strategies of hunter-gatherer humans, can be used to understand modern data foraging on the web. Two Xerox PARC researchers have been doing field studies of information-hunting-and-gathering and applying their observations about optimal foraging theory to search engine design. New Scientist This analogy between food and information appears to be a fruitful one for web designers as well — so eat your fill here!

A reason why some women can wrap men around their little

fingers has been suggested by a language expert: they use five

different tones when communicating verbally and men can

understand only three.

“Men only have 10 per cent of women’s speaking ability,” says

Alan

Pease, author of the book Why Men Don’t Listen and Women

Can’t Read Maps. ‘He says that women use 60 to

80 per cent of their brains to communicate, which is why they

excel in the area. Such verbal dexterity means that they are better

placed than ever to compete for new “knowledge economy” jobs.’ The Times of London

Wag the Human. Review of Stephen Budiansky’s The Truth About Dogs. Did we domesticate the dog or vice versa? ”If biologists weren’t victim to the

same blindness that afflicts us all, they probably wouldn’t

hesitate to classify dogs as social parasites.” The reviewer has a sentimental complaint that “when Budiansky deconstructs the

so-called love and loyalty that dogs have for their owners,

he reduces it all to selfish biology.” New York Times And Britannica.com has this interesting review article considering the range of animal intellect and emotion from the vantage point of several recent books. We do seem to be seeing a reawakening of interest in ethology, a generation after Conrad Lorenz. “Through

evolutionary theory, genetics, neurophysiology, and

experimental procedures, many scientists are providing

strong evidence that animals feel and think in ways akin

to humans.” The controversial Peter Singer perhaps takes this furthest. His Great Ape Project seeks to “include the nonhuman great apes within the community of equals by

granting them the basic moral and legal protection that only human beings currently enjoy, … to work for the removal of the

nonhuman great apes from the category of property, and for their immediate inclusion within the

category of persons.

Our long-term goal is a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes.”

Are We All Aliens? The new case for panspermia.

Alcoholic by Nature: The attraction of ethanol may have evolutionary origins in the selective advantage it conferred on our frugivorous primate ancestors. But it appears to be an evolutionary trait gone wrong. Biologist Robert Dudley of the University of Texas speculates on this. The Times of London I was reminded of the thinking of Andrew Weil several decades ago in The Marriage of the Sun and Moon. Proposing that the attraction of mind-altering substances is innate, he said that the natural psychoactives our ancestors used were healthier than modern purified and extracted ones. The impurities acted to self-limit consumption to manageable amounts, because one would get sick from ingesting too much. Consider the contrast between chewing a coca leaf and freebasing cocaine. (Here‘s a less-than-laudatory 1998 essay on Weil’s reasoning by the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, Arnold Relman MD.) [One of the best things in Marriage…, IMHO, was the essay on the ‘right’ way to settle into the euphoric buzz you get from hot peppers such as jalapenos.]

A chance observation of an analogy to the physical world may mean that someone is closing in on the solution to the Riemann hypothesis, one of the world’s greatest unsolved mathematical problems, which relates to the distribution of prime numbers. New Scientist

‘Happy’ Kristallnacht: Hate e-mails bombard Jewish group. The emails were sent via a server in the US. Nando Times

Most Promiscuous Species Have The Highest WBC Counts.’A new study indicates that evolution of the immune system may be directly

linked to the sexual activity of a species. A comparative analysis of 41

primate species demonstrates that the most promiscuous species have

naturally higher white blood cell (WBC) counts — the first line of defense

against infectious disease — than more monogamous species.

The findings are reported in today’s issue of the journal Science.

“Our findings strongly suggest that the most sexually active species of

primates may have evolved elevated immune systems as a defense

mechanism against disease,” says (the) principal investigator.’ UniSci [via Robot Wisdom]

Happy 40th, Caffe Lena

Lions Maul Man Offering Alms. ‘A Sri Lankan man was seriously injured

when he jumped naked into a lions’ den at the national zoo,

apparently offering himself up as a feast for the big cats,

officials said Monday.

“The man…had written a letter before jumping into the enclosure saying he wanted to

give ‘alms’ to the lions,” said (the director) of the National Zoological Gardens…’

31 Eyewitnesses See Mile Long Aerial Craft in Yukon. “There are only

30,000 residents in the entire Yukon and at least thirty-one eyewitnesses near Pelling Crossing saw an aerial craft

estimated to have been nearly a mile long hovering silently about 300 feet above the ground.” A summary report with drawings by the eyewitnesses has just ben assembled by a UFO investigator, and a transcript of an interview with one of the witnesses is published here. Earthfiles

Astronomers find planet around Spock’s “home star”. “According to some Star Trek lore, the

planet Vulcan, homeworld of Mr. Spock, is

a rocky, arid planet orbiting the nearby

star Epsilon Eridani. Now, astronomers

say they’ve found a planet orbiting the

star – but it doesn’t exactly match the

description of Vulcan.” exn.ca

Gut reactions: Scientists discover ‘second brain’ in the stomach. “Scientists are claiming to have discovered a second

brain – in the human stomach.

The breakthrough, involving experts in the US and

Germany, is believed to play a major part in the way

people behave.

This ‘second brain’ is made up of a knot of brain nerves

in the digestive tract. It is thought to involve around 100

billion nerve cells – more than held in the spinal cord.

Researchers believe this belly brain may save

information on physical reactions to mental processes

and give out signals to influence later decisions. It may

also be responsible in the creation of reactions such as

joy or sadness.” Ananova