Artificial stupidity. Salon interviews techno-visionary Jaron Lanier who, at 38, has gone impressively sour on a computer-driven future. For one thing, he says that software is brittle and cannot keep up with ongoing advances in processing power. He views with contempt the half-baked stabs at artificial intelligence touted as the newest advances in most commercial software. His “One-half a manifesto” at The Edge provokes responses from luminary techno-heads: George Dyson, Freeman Dyson, Cliff Barney, Bruce Sterling, Rodney Brooks, Henry

Warwick, Kevin Kelly, Margaret Wertheim, John Baez, Lee Smolin, Stewart Brand,

Rodney Brooks,Lee Smolin, and Daniel Dennett.

A police officer in Long Island left a loaded gun lying around the school where he was conducting a security exercise. New York Daily News

Palestinian Demand to Probe Killings May Be Vetoed: “…The United States is poised to cast its veto against a UN draft resolution sponsored by the 114-

member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) calling for an international inquiry into the killings of over 45 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since

last week.

The resolution, which is expected to be taken up later this week, faces a possible US veto because Israel has made it clear it will not permit any

international investigation into the shootings.

The proposed investigation is also one of the demands made by Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat Wednesday at the Paris talks involving Israeli Prime

Minister Ehud Barak and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.”

I missed my chance to wish you a happy Mad Hatter Day yesterday.

Your world is crazier than you think:

We travel around by taking the juice from hundred-million-year-old rotten dinosaur food and exploding it in a metal can.

A “sports fanatic” is not someone who participates in sports, but someone who sits indoors on a beautiful day, drinking beer while

yelling at the picture on a little box. (Throw the ultimate football party: Forget the TV; just sit around eating and drinking with

friends.)

As much as we say we like to “get away from it all”, the more successful we are, the more we take it all with us when we go. (Take a

vacation with all the comforts of home: Just stay home!)

We’re so well-fed that we’re getting food with intentionally reduced nutritional content–so we can take the trouble to eat without

getting the benefit of doing so. (Enjoy the ultimate in fast-diet-food: Skip lunch.)

We’ve saved so much gift-giving for the Christmas season that it has entirely unbalanced the flow of cash and consumer goods

through the year. So merchants decided to start the season early to have something to do the rest of the year. (There’s now only one

major gift-giving holiday — but it lasts for five months. Surprise someone with a MadHatterDay present.)

…and it goes. Take a look around you, drop your assumptions about what must be proper and normal, and see how much of it is just silly.

Better yet, try to find something that does make sense.

Branded Journalism. Hybrid branded magazines published by companies to showcase their products or associated lifestyle — from Abercrombie and Fitch, Sony, Kinko’s etc. — are the latest obscenity blurring the boundaries between journalism and commercialism. ‘Increasingly, as Naomi

Klein shows in her blistering book No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand

Bullies, companies see themselves as alternative providers of content.

They can now shape the environment in which their advertising is

delivered, enabling them to further reinforce their brands. The

magalog, Klein tells me, represents “a growing impatience in the

corporate world with the traditional role of the advertiser as the

commercial interrupter, intruding on ‘real’ culture. Now, the brand

wants to be the cultural infrastructure, not an add-on, or an interruption.

Magalogs are an important part of that: rather than associating

with a lifestyle, represented by Rolling Stone or the New Yorker,

magalogs allow the brand to be the lifestyle, their products the

essential accessories.” ‘

What Was Al Gore Thinking? – Guess the meaning of the vice president’s drawings.  Slate

Slate’s “Explainer”: Could a New President Ban RU-486?

Can a Girl Take RU-486 Without Telling Her Parents?

Will globalization make you happy? Foreign Policy

Men of Steel Feel Like 97-Pound Weaklings.

Why are men so much

more concerned

about their bodies today

than they were 50 years ago?

This was the question

Harrison G. Pope Jr., a

professor of psychiatry at

Harvard Medical School, and

two colleagues asked

themselves after noticing a

sharp increase in male gym

memberships, anabolic

steroid use and especially

body image disorders,

including muscle dysmorphia

(sometimes called

bigorexia), an illness

characterized by compulsive

exercising and the sufferer’s

irrational conviction that he

is weak and puny even

though he may be bulging

with muscle.

New York Times

UN Experts Say Ozone Depletion at Record Level. For the first time, the ozone hole has extended so far that populated areas of southern Chile and Argentina were uprotected from high ultraviolet radiation levels. Watch for crop failures in the coming growing season from irradiation of the emerging seedlings, and increased skin cancer in decades to come in the affected areas. Reuters

Thnigs Bite Back: Deadly touch: ‘Hospital superbugs thrive on sweat, say Danish researchers. They have found that some antibiotics “leak” out of the

body in sweat, and believe that bacteria on patients’ skin become resistant through unrelenting exposure to the

seeping drugs. Simple physical contact would then be enough to pass on the bugs.’ New Scientist

Things Bite Back (cont’d.): Sinister side of sunscreens. “The widespread use of sunscreens has been increasingly questioned by experts who say that it may not provide

protection against skin cancer because it encourages people to sunbathe for longer. Now there is evidence that a

substance called octyl methoxycinnamate (OMC), used as a UVB filter in 90 per cent of sunscreens worldwide, may

itself be toxic,” especially in reaction with sunlight. New Scientist

Alexander Cockburn on the Yanomami scandal: “Will Tierney’s book provoke the uproar that Turner and Sponsel predict? Will anthropology be

placed in the dock? I doubt it. For years native groups across the world have recounted their

stories of the depredations of anthropologists, and have been eager to tell them to anyone

interested. If Tierney’s claims are true, Chagnon may end up in some judicial venue, facing

charges of crimes against humanity. But I doubt that, too. The can of worms is way too full.” NY Press [via Robot Wisdom]

Review of Antonio Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens by Aldo Mosca. An accessible summary of an important neurobiologist’s thinking on how emotions and feelings rooted in the body contribute to consciousness. Psyche 6(8)

The only “post-game analysis” of the The First Presidential Debate that makes any sense, by Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach. Was Dubya the winner merely because he didn’t mangle the English language too badly this time or claim that Poland is in Africa? Is Gore’s fallback position, if not elected, to demonstrate his readiness to be Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget?

Did Gore invent the Internet? Deceptive title there, Salon: not really about whether he invented it, but about whether he ever said he did. In other words, not really about Gore’s lies, but those of his detractors. Points us to Phil Agre’s excellent dissection of this “most successful of flat-out lies” by Gore-bashers.

“Students got an unusual assignment from their English teacher: Pick

out a victim, come up with a recipe for assassination and devise a successful getaway

formula.

The Covina High School teacher no longer works for the school district.” Sacramento Bee

Piercing led to woman’s death. ‘A coroner gave warning yesterday of the

“considerable risks” of bodypiercing after

recording a verdict of misadventure on a woman

who died after her 118th piercing.

The inquest on Lesley Hovvells, 39, in her home

town of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, heard that

she collapsed last New Year’s Eve, and died of

septicaemia in January. Miss Hovvells had 28 ear

studs, 13 ear rings, 11 belly bars through her

navel, 18 other bars, six lip rings, 36 body rings

all over her body and six nose studs. She is

believed to have had over 40 piercings in the

year before her death.’ The Times of London

Doctor: Toe-finger transplants progressing .

“My wife always use to say that my toes were so long that I

could wave with them. I guess she was right.”

Surfin’ and sippin’ at Starbucks. “Starbucks has been quietly testing whether customers will click

with wireless Internet access in its stores.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer

150-ft.-high tidal wave could threaten Atlantic seaboard. BBC

“I think that people need to be held responsible for the actions they take in life. I think that’s part of

the need for a cultural change. We need to say that each of us needs to be responsible for what we

do.” – George W. Bush in the first Presidential debate, October 3, 2000.

The Smoking Jet. Thanks to Chuck Taggart at Looka! for pointing to this expose of serious discrepancies between Dubya’s claims about his military service and facts revealed by an independent investigation by a former Air National Guard veteran and aviation consultant. Of course, it is posted at “democrats.com,” which creates at least the appearance of partisanship.

From the beginning of his Presidential campaign, George W. Bush has forcefully and repeatedly

insisted that he faithfully fulfilled all his military obligations by serving his time as a member of the

Texas Air National Guard.

But the first independent investigation of Bush’s military record by a former Air National Guard pilot

has revealed the following:

1. Pilot George W. Bush did not simply “give up flying” with two years left to fly, as has been

reported. Instead, Bush was suspended and grounded, very possibly as a direct or indirect

result of substance abuse.

2. The crucial evidence – a Flight Inquiry Board – that would reveal the true reasons for Bush’s

suspension, as well as the punishment that was recommended, is missing from the records

released so far. If no such Board was convened, this raises further questions of extraordinary

favoritism.

3. Contrary to Bush’s emphatic statements and several published reports, Bush never actually

reported in person for the last two years of his service – in direct violation of two separate

written orders. Moreover, the lack of punishment for this misconduct represents the crowning

achievement of a military career distinguished only by favoritism.

”I did the duty necessary … That’s why I was honorably discharged” – George W. Bush, May 23,

2000

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a

song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose.

No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too

young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs

that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard

travelling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air & my last

drop of blood…”

—Woody Guthrie, who succumbed to Huntington’s Disease in New York on this date in 1967, at age 55.

“Cause sometimes you hear’em when the night times comes creeping

& you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping

& you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin’

& you can’t remember for the best of yer thinking

If that was you in the dream that was screaming

& you know that it’s something special you’re needin’

& you know that there’s no drug that’ll do for the healin’

& no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding…

—Bob Dylan, “Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie”

Where Is Your Junk Mail From? “Why do these things arrive? It’s not quite random,

and figuring out why you’re on the owl lovers’ mailing list is part of the fun.”

US Funds Yugoslav Politicians; Why Not Do the Same Here? The shock waves from the charges of Chinese influence-buying in the 1996 US presidential campaign have yet to settle, but such action pales in comparison with the millions of dollars we are funnelling into supporting foes of Milosevic’s Serbian regime. “What if other nations adopted a similar approach to help level the playing field for

candidates here in the United States? After all, the terrain for campaigns is

severely skewed by access to big money and mass media.” But of course we want the rest of the world to do as we say, not as we do. Do we lose the moral authority to decry wrongs done us when our actions are not unimpeachable?

Fall Television Preview 2000: ‘Ed’ and ‘Bette,’ Standing Out in a Surly Crowd . I’m including this not ‘cuz of any particular interest in the new TV season, but for the continuing pleasure I take in Washington Post critic Tom Shales’ entertaining, caustic wit. One reader wrote to differ with me, saying Shales loses credibility by skewering absolutely everything and appreciating nothing, so I’ll point out that he actually does like a couple of the shows he’s previewing, as the headline indicates. Me? I don’t think I’ll be watching much if any TV this fall, with Homicide long gone, the X-Files tiresome and irreparable, and nothing but nothing on the horizon looking enticing. Saves an enormous timesink!

An Acquired Taste Via The Spike Report: ‘Despite his image as a charisma-impaired policy wonk, Al Gore is “America’s

most lethally effective practitioner of high-stakes political debate,” says

James Fallows. Fallows examines

Gore’s performance in debates dating back to 1987, tracing a Michael

Corleone-style transformation from naive idealist to cold-blooded pragmatist.

After steadily improving his skills throughout the 90s, says Fallows, Gore

has become “the political combatant most likely to leave his victims feeling

not just defeated but battered…We can’t be sure about what will be best

about Al Gore if he becomes President,” writes Fallows. “But what will be

worst is probably closely connected to the way he has learned to destroy

opponents in debates.” ‘ The Atlantic Monthly

Warner to bow albums in DVD audio format

Baby Born As Donor Raises Ethical Debate. “To any stranger, Adam appears to be just another healthy baby

boy. But he is not just any baby.

Unlike most infants, Adam was selected from among six embryos during in vitro fertilization… The embryo that would become Adam was chosen specifically to ensure that a rare genetic

disease called Fanconi anemia would not be inherited. But the embryo was also chosen to be

a good transplant match for Adam’s 6-year-old sister, who does have the disease.” Reuters

Can gorillas and dolphins communicate? Koko the gorilla “talks” with humans. Several Atlantic bottlenose dolphins do as well. Now they’re all moving to Maui to see if the two species can communicate with each other via sign language over video links. CNN

More Germans switch their mobile phones off at the movie theater than during sex, a poll shows.

Supreme Court Declines to Review ‘Cheers’ Case

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the actors who played Norm and Cliff

on the hit television series “Cheers” to sue over the use of two

robots that the actors claim commercially exploited their

identities.” In this fascinating case, the legal principle of the “right to publicity” (in which celebrities retain the right to profit from their recognizeability) clashes with the copyright on the likenesses of the characters the actors played. Reuters

A Rule of Thumb That Unscrambles the Brain. ‘A new breed of animal,

dubbed the “sand

mouse,” has been added to

the annals of biological

science, and it has become

the subject of a scientific

challenge.

Last week Dr. John J.

Hopfield, a Princeton

professor known for seminal

discoveries in computer

science, biology and physics,

posed an unusual test to his

fellow scientists.

Dr. Hopfield challenged

them to discover a simple,

new computational principle

— a general rule of thumb —

for how the brain of this

creature works, using only

the power of deductive

reasoning and a set of facts

about the animal that Dr.

Hopfield and a former

student, Dr. Carlos Brody,

have posted on a Web site.’ New York Times

Women with Male Chromosomes Say Life is Good

Girls born with male

chromosomes can still grow up to be women with normal sex lives, according to new

research.

Women with the rare gene mutation known as Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome

(CAIS) contradict a basic difference between men and women: That men have xy

chromosomes and women have xx chromosomes.

Women with CAIS, however, have xy chromosomes and started out as boys while still

embryos, say medical scientists at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, which

pioneered research into the syndrome. But because of the gene mutation, their bodies don’t

recognize or use androgens, which are male hormones, like testosterone, that cause the

development of male characteristics. HealthScout

CueCat Bar Code Reader Privacy Advisory. The CueCat is a pen-like barcode scanner peripheral for your computer that is being given out for free through Radio Shack, Wired, Forbes magazine, etc. Promoted as an easy way to visit websites by scanning barcodes included in catalogues, magazine articles and advertisements, each pen has a unique digital ID and the accompanying software appears to transmit a history of your surfing behavior back to the parent company, Digital:Convergence in Dallas. Even if, as the company insists, no tracking of individual data is done, The Privacy Foundation is concerned at the ease with which this might eventually occur. If you have concerns about being tracked in this manner, you should probably pass on the free CueCat and (gasp!) type in your URLs when you surf.

Banned Sect Stages Protest in Beijing on Holiday. Waves of Falun Gong protesters thwarted violent efforts of Chinese security forces to subdue their protests, embarrassing the Chinese regime by forcing Tiananmen Square to be cordoned off on Chinese National Day. New York Times

Banned Sect Stages Protest in Beijing on Holiday. Waves of Falun Gong protesters thwarted violent efforts of Chinese security forces to subdue their protests, embarrassing the Chinese regime by forcing Tiananmen Square to be cordoned off on Chinese National Day. New York Times

Banned Sect Stages Protest in Beijing on Holiday. Waves of Falun Gong protesters thwarted violent efforts of Chinese security forces to subdue their protests, embarrassing the Chinese regime by forcing Tiananmen Square to be cordoned off on Chinese National Day. New York Times

Youngsters infect themselves with head lice. Students in Sofia Bulgaria have begun buying and selling them to one another in matchboxes after learning that they would automatically get three days off from school if found to be infected. ‘A Bulgarian education spokesman told the Daily Trud
newspaper: “This regulation, that was aimed at
stopping head lice spreading, appears to have worked
against us, especially now when there are a lot of
exams.” ‘ Things bite back… Ananova

Sleepwalking in Seattle. A post-operative brain surgery patient wandered out of the hospital. Efforts to find him were fruitless until he was recognized by a group of street people queried by his family. His picture had been all over the media. He has no recollection of how he acquired the black hooded sweatshirt that covered his most prominent identifying details, a shaven head and surgical scar.

As soon as an online music-trading service gets big enough to be useful, it’s doomed: The Gnutella paradox. Online music traders waiting to hear if Napster will be shut down repeat, ‘There’s always Gnutella.’ “Is there, though? …Gnutella is hardly ready for prime

time — and is facing dilemmas almost as worrisome as the

Napster lawsuit. Over the last month, users of the system

have noticed a dramatic slowdown in responsiveness, and a

number of reports have revealed serious instabilities in the

Gnutella network. The open-source software developers

who nabbed the program after America Online forced its

programmers to abandon it are still striving to learn how to

work together. And Gnutella’s legal status is also murky:

The RIAA is already hinting that it may be preparing a

strategy to attack Gnutella.” Wired

Crowd panic simulated: “Mob stampedes have killed thousands of people in recent years, but they are usually explained in terms of psychology. Now, European

scientists say they can predict and prevent crowd panic by computer simulations using the laws of physics.

The new computer model relies on distances, sizes and velocities instead of emotional states but produces results similar to actual panics,

the researchers said in today’s issue of the journal Nature.” Lawrence Journal-World

Human Pheromone Link May Have Been Found: “In animals, researchers have documented the complex

neurological paths pheromones trace to stimulate parts of

the brain that are deeply rooted in instinct. Researchers

have long believed that humans also communicate through

pheromones, but until now had been unable to identify any

of the biological equipment needed to detect these potent

molecules.

Now, in experiments at Rockefeller and Yale Universities,

neurogeneticists have isolated a human gene, called V1RL1,

that they believe encodes for a pheromone receptor in the

mucous lining of the nose.” New York Times

Prions may play crucial role in evolution. “Prions, abnormally folded proteins associated with several bizarre human diseases, may hold the

key to a major mystery in evolution: how survival skills that require multiple genetic changes

arise all at once when each genetic change by itself would be unsuccessful and even harmful.”

Basic Differences in Rival Proposals on Drug Coverage

It is very difficult for the average

Medicare beneficiary to sit down with

the Bush and Gore plans and compare

how much she would pay in premiums

and co-payments and how much she

would receive in benefits. That is

because the approaches of the two

candidates are so different, and there

are so many unknowns about Gov.

George W. Bush’s plan.

Given what is known, many analysts and consumer advocates

consider Vice President Al Gore’s plan to be more generous;

he would devote much more money to it, they note, and he

promises a higher federal subsidy for premiums. Mr. Bush’s

health care advisers counter that his plan offers more

flexibility and more choices for older Americans. New York Times

Banned Sect Stages Protest in Beijing on Holiday. Waves of Falun Gong protesters thwarted violent efforts of Chinese security forces to subdue their protests, embarrassing the Chinese regime by forcing Tiananmen Square to be cordoned off on Chinese National Day. New York Times

Endangered Species: Time To Apply The Brakes Before We Go Over The Cliff. A Guardian/UK editorial: ‘The new “red list” of endangered species, published this week,

confirms that the diversity of life on the planet faces its greatest threat since the

catastrophe which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.’

The Doomsday Argument. “99

percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one

of our hominid ancestors. In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed

the “Doomsday argument,” a statistical way to judge when we might join them. If

humans were to survive a long time and spread through the galaxy, then the

total number of people who will ever live might number in the trillions. By

pure odds, it’s unlikely that we would be among the very first hundredth of a

percent of all those people. Or turn the argument around: How likely is it that

this generation will be the one unlucky one? Something like one fifth of all

the people who have ever lived are alive today. The odds of being one of the

people to witness doomsday are highest when there is the largest number of

witnesses around— so now is not such an improbable time.” Discover

Berkeley professor of linguistics John McWhorter, apparently brought to outcry from his experience of the inferior quality of work done by black students he taught at Cornell, Stanford and Berkeley, risks lynching by other African-Americans for passages like this from his new book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America:

…the time has come for us to reconceive the black college

professor who sits in the trendy new restaurant emoting

about how oppressed he is between forkfuls of gourmet

pasta, his free hand alternating languidly between his

six-dollar glass of cabernet and his white significant

other’s knee under the table, and [who is] about to catch

a twenty dollar shuttle to the airport the next morning to fly to a conference where

he will meet dozens of African Americans just like him, most of whom got special

attention on their job searches because of their color, and most of whose research

has been funded by universities that bend over backwards to shower grants upon as

much minority-oriented research as possible. Okay, four years ago this professor

was driving through a white neighborhood in his Honda Accord and a policeman

pulled him over on a drug check. But why, if ‘Success Runs in Our Veins,’ if we

survived centuries of slavery, if we are so wonderful, does that episode negate the

victory and richness of the rest of this professor’s life? What kind of oppression is

this?

McWhorter appears to courageously confront what he characterizes as the victimhood built into American black culture, rejecting both the “congenital dumbness” argument of Jensenism and the Bell Curve, and the forgiving noblesse oblige explanations of liberals which demand no responsibility from African Americans for countering their oppression. New York Observer

The Spike Report alerts us to the reports in both the New York Daily News and the New York Times of an apparition of the Virgin Mary on a cracked living room window of a home in Perth Amboy NJ. Believers are flocking to catch a glimpse. The two papers have different slants on this, and there’s quite a distinction between the photos which they choose to accompany their reports.

This whole Neal Pollack hubhub feels like a smarmy inside joke foisted on the rest of us. Makes sense Dave Eggers is involved. Getting It In related news, the Voice Literary Supplement reports on the explosion of literary journals into adventurous book publishing. (Pollack is Eggers’ McSweeney’s first book offering.)

Wacky uses for common products. The compiler uses brand names for each product, and obtains the manufacturers’ permission before he describes an offbeat use, so don’t expect anything kinky.

Child organ stockpile prompts inquiry, surgeon being sought for “…an indignity of human remains…” BBC

The Guardian weblog pointed me to this delightful little fiction by Margaret Gray on life’s frequently asked questions. The Blue Moon Review

Ecstasy variant kills six in Florida. “The deaths were attributed to tablets that in addition

to the usual ecstasy ingredients also contained either

PMA (paramethoxyamphetamine) or PMMA

(paramethoxymethamphetamine).” These are powerful stimulants that, in the amounts used to adulterate the MDMA (Ecstasy), have massively elevated body temperature. MSNBC

Snake charmers push for Olympics. A 3,000-strong Indian coalition’s answer to what it feels is the Olympics’ bias toward sports in which American and European athletes excel — make snake charming an Olympic sport. BBC

More zero-tolerance inanity: an 11 y.o. girl in suburban Atlanta received a 10-day school suspension because the 10″ chain on her Tweety bird wallet is construed as a potential weapon. ‘A spokesman for (the school

district) said: “These items have been used in the past

as weapons. A chain like the one in question can have

any number of devices attached to it and it becomes a

very dangerous weapon.” ‘

Ventura says he knows what it is to be black. Party bias like race bias, he says. Pioneer Planet

Lost wallet washes up four years later, intact. [via Obscure Store]

The Hanging Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz

More Jimi Hendrix-related news, and this item is pretty bizarre.

U.S. Approves Abortion Pill After 12-Year Battle. I’m wondering if part of the FDA’s timing involves an Administration attempt to assist the Gore campaign by highlighting Dubya’s predictable disagreement with the decision (indeed, he did speak out against it). This ought to give Gore the edge in the women’s vote. The abortion issue has been on the back burner in this campaign until now. Thsi wouldn’t be the first thing the Clinton Administration has done to help it’s own; keeping home heating oil prices down this winter by releasing some of the strategic oil reserves is another obvious example.

Sorry to be so inarticulate, but all I can say is that I wish they would finally just give it a rest. AP

Verizon Backs Ban on Hand-Held Car Phones. In a major turnabout, the nation’s largest cellular provider says it would favor legislation mandating hands-free communication for vehicular cellular users. Critics say it is not the handling of the device but the distracting absorption in conversation that poses the hazard. I have to admit I make calls — hands-free — while driving, and I have to agree that at times I have come to my senses to realize I’ve been driving without any conscious attention while engaged in a conversation…

The dumbing-down of the American palate continues. Health and Cheese: Am I Bleu? The FDA threatens to ban raw milk cheeses — made from unpasteurized milk — if tests show that harmful bacteria can survive the aging process that creates them. Soon the only cheeses you might be able to buy in the US would be the interchangeable pasty ones. Oh, and cheese whiz… Speaking of cheese, what would you do if you were out somewhere and the person of your dreams touched you lightly on the shoulder, smiled deeply and asked you, “So, what cheese are you?” Find out here…This is me, as it turns out: “St. Paulin is a round, semi-soft cheese from France. It has a thin leathery rind, and is a

yellow/orange colour. It has a creamy, butter-like taste, and was originally made by Trappist

monks.”

Subversive No More. ‘Ireland’s censor has cleared the film of James

Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses for cinema release — 33 years

after it was banned.

The film, directed by U.S. film-maker Joseph Strick, was refused a certificate in 1967 after

the censor of the time deemed it ‘subversive to public morality.” Reuters

Totally tropical Tokyo. “Tokyo is becoming tropical. But heat from buildings and cars rather than global climate change is mostly to blame,

say Japanese meteorologists. Torrential rain has wreaked havoc in the city, prompting Japan’s Environment Agency

to plan a city-scale experiment to tackle the problem.

Warm, humid air rises from Tokyo during the day, forming water-laden cumulonimbus clouds as it cools, says

Fumiaki Fujibe of the Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba Science City, 70 kilometres east of Tokyo. These

clouds cause torrential rain and thunderstorms in the early evening–as in the tropics.”

Wistful Whizzers: ‘Being “pee-shy” was interfering with

his career choices, his social life and his peace of mind. So he

sought therapy — and found that he shared the problem with an

estimated 7 percent of the population (17 million people). “It’s

probably second only to the fear of public speaking,” he

reports happily, adding, “It was silly that I wouldn’t open up to

anybody about it. I thought I was choosing not to give this

disorder any ability to control me — when in fact I was giving

it total control.”

Once coyly termed “bashful bladder,” difficulty urinating in

public is now dubbed paruresis, or avoidant paruresis (AP),

and it’s fast emerging from the water closet.’ St Louis Riverfront Times

You’re an excellent host. “Parasites can castrate their hosts, take

over their minds and short out their DNA. They can turn

healthy organisms into the living dead. And they can be

found anywhere — in our legs, our brains, our intestines, our

kitty litter.

Science writer Carl Zimmer’s new book, Parasite Rex:

Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous

Creatures, introduces readers to some of nature’s most

sinister characters: nematodes that cause blindness, worms

that swell up a scrotum until it fills a wheelbarrow,

60-foot-long tapeworms and deadly creatures so tiny they

hitchhike on the back of a fly.” Salon

A Hot-Button Issue. “The presidential campaign has

stopped talking about nuclear

defense because married women, the

critical swing voters, aren’t supposed

to be interested. (Our motto: If it

hasn’t come up on Regis it can’t be all

that important.)

Look, we’re not going to be satisfied

with six weeks of prescription drug coverage and dragging

Dick Cheney to kindergarten show-and- tell sessions. We are

thinking people. We ponder the big stuff…

You’re ready to talk weaponry, and you probably already

know more than you think. Check your nuclear I.Q. New York Times

Researchers Trace Roots of Vivid Memories, “…have found that calling up vivid

memories—the face of a loved one

or the chords of a favorite

song—activates regions of the

brain responsible for processing

sensory experiences. When a

person recalls a vivid memory,

some of the sensory regions of the

brain responsible for etching the

original memory are reactivated.”

Here’s a summary by Ian Pitchford, the moderator of the excellent evolutionary psychology mailing list, of the extensive discussion thus far on that listserv of the controversy ripping through American anthropology and related disciplines about James Neel, the Yanomami and measles vaccine. Links to further discussion. I blinked the BBC’s coverage of the issue below.

Slate‘s Ad Report Card column considers the offensive Nike ad everybody’s buzzing about. The ad’s been pulled, but you can click on links here to view it in Quicktime or the Windows Media Player. The columnist’s take: it’s not nearly as bad as everybody made it out to be. My take: Everybody wants to know how Nike could risk advertising budget on such a colossal flop. But Nike is thriving on the buzz, negative as it is. They knew exactly what they were doing. And see? I’m doing involuntary Nike advertising by discussing it here…

Michael Kinsley: Every politician’s favorite verbal tic: “…

when a

pol begins every third sentence with the word frankly,

what are we supposed to assume about the other two?” Slate

“Here’s a theory: (FBI Director) Louis Freeh has

photographs of key Republican

congressmen in compromising

positions with young boys.

What else could explain his J.

Edgar Hoover-esque immunity

on Capitol Hill?” The thesis is that Republicans bypass criticism of Freeh — e.g. for the pursuit of Wen Ho Lee — to get at Janet Reno at every opportunity. Because, since Watergate, the FBI has been insulated structurally from the Administration (the FBI director serves a ten-year term and can only be removed for cause), Freeh has been free to “cultivate his Republican paymasters”, in particular charming Sens. Orrin Hatch and Arlen Spector, using “leaks” to publicize FBI conflicts with Reno and the Dept. of Justice to use them for political gain.

Freeh’s invincibility depends heavily on Reno’s weakness. A

different attorney general might not have tolerated such

contrariness from the FBI. But Reno dislikes conflict, is

uninterested in political gamesmanship, and is willing to play

fall gal in cases embarrassing to the DOJ and the FBI. She

doesn’t want to alienate Freeh—they reportedly have a very

cordial private relationship. And unlike Freeh, she lacks a

power base on Capitol Hill, because she has never cultivated

legislators. Republicans have made Freeh her foil: Reno’s lack

of support and perceived incompetence make him gleam.

Freeh and his FBI profit from their alliance with the Hill and

the press. They escape interference by the AG and the

president, and they increase their budget. But the country pays

a price. The FBI has become a congressional tool. As the Lee

probe suggests, agents may be more inclined to pursue

investigations that interest Hill legislators. And the FBI now

functions as a congressional bludgeon against an unpopular

attorney general.

Slate

How the New York Times helped railroad Wen Ho Lee. “Its reporters relied on slim evidence, quick conclusions and

loyalty to sources with an ax to grind. Too bad the paper of

record learned nothing from its role in Whitewater.” Salon

Male Couples Could Conceive Child?

‘Male couples could in future conceive their

own children, a leading British scientist, Calum MacKellar, a lecturer in bioethics and biochemistry at

Edinburgh University, said … A healthy egg of a woman would be emptied of its genetic material and then chromosomes

from a sperm could be inserted, creating a sort of a male egg. Then you could fertilize this male egg with sperm from another man.

A surrogate mother would then be needed to bring to full term a child conceived in the

laboratory using the egg nucleus transfer technique.’

The lonely death of a reclusive witch. San Francisco Examiner

An Introduction to Crime Scene Recontruction for the Criminal Profiler

CogPrints: Cognitive Sciences EPrint Archive. “Welcome to CogPrints, an electronic archive for papers in any area of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Linguistics, and many areas of

Computer Science (e.g., artificial intelligence, robotics, vison, learning, speech, neural networks), Philosophy (e.g., mind,

language, knowledge, science, logic), Biology (e.g., ethology, behavioral ecology, sociobiology, behaviour genetics, evolutionary

theory), Medicine (e.g., Psychiatry, Neurology, human genetics, Imaging), Anthropology (e.g., primatology, cognitive ethnology,

archeology, paleontology), as well as any other portions of the physical, social and mathematical sciences that are pertinent to the

study of cognition.”

I’ll take Manhattan. British writer Anthony Holden writes of the vibrancy of the New York literary scene that has him moving there to escape London’s stodginess.

It’s not just that Britain, viewed from a real

democracy, more than ever exudes its

lethal combination of self-satisfaction and

backward thinking: still dithering

xenophobically about Europe (for me, its

only hope of any future as even a

wannabe world power); keeping 92

hereditary peers, for pity’s sake, not to

mention that pantomime horse of a

monarchy; blowing a billion pounds’ worth

of schools and hospitals on that hollow,

doomed, vainglorious Dome; grumbling

nationalistically about immigrants when

they are the pulsating lifeblood of my

adopted homeland, its raison d’ tre . No,

for me, it’s also that the intellectual,

cultural and literary life of the Eastern

seaboard is (like the language) more alive,

more alert, much feistier than the primping

and preening of London’s cosy circle of

back-patting glitterati. Viewed from here

after a month back in Britain, the old

country seems more than ever like some

overgrown, nose-in-air, single-sex Pall

Mall club, whose pettifogging rules it is so

rejuvenating to escape. The Observer

This article ends with small blurbs on prominent “Brits who love the US” and “Yanks who love the UK.” Salman Rushdie has thumbed his nose at London’s narrowness in favor of the Manhattan high life as well, prompting a firestorm of British literary umbrage for his apparent lack of gratitude for the support and shelter he received in the face of the Islamic fatwa against him.

Several months ago, I blinked to an article about American artists visiting London bemoaning the stultification of the U. S. arts scene in comparison to the liveliness they found in London. Go figure.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Living inside the looking glass: initially a struggle, but after awhile the brain adapts perfectly.

University of Maryland researchers create a new pathway for sight by ‘rewiring’ the brain in animal study. ‘By surgically “rewiring” the brains of newborn hamsters, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the

University of Montreal have shown that they can create new brain circuits that take over the functions of damaged ones. The

researchers found that the hamsters could still see visual patterns even after key areas of the brain devoted to sight had been

removed. In some cases, the researchers demonstrated that the animals were using the hearing regions of the brain to see.

Although it is not yet possible to create new neural pathways in humans, the research raises the possibility that a similar

technique might one day be used to treat brain damage in people.’

A third of U.S. schools don’t teach evolution, according to a recent study

in the journal Nature.

Putative most ancient sculpture in the world is found in the Golan Heights. Independent

Marauding monkeys pelt vehicles on Interstate in Virginia, and angry monkeys halt traffic in Assam, India, after a baby monkey was hit by a car on a busy street.

Emerging Disease News:

Rift Valley Fever Kills 44 Yemenis

New BSE Cases Linked to Blood in Food

a Yahoo-Google search on various scary diseases

another

a report on Preventing Emerging Infectious Diseases As We Enter the 21st Century, with background information on infectious diseases; details on the strategies of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations involved in dealing with emerging diseases.

Despair, Inc.: “Unfathomable incompetence…

Legendary miscalculation… Pitiable

misfortune… Almost stupifying hubris.” Portraits of burnout, doubt, idiocy, futility and pessimism to counter the empty-headed pronouncements of the motivational catchphrase industry.

The selling of “sanity”: American Gallery of Psychiatric Art. Reprints of ads for psychiatric medications from 1960 to the present. Many are now household names. If you scroll through the gallery, you’ll notice a sea change: after 1994 all the ads feature the face of relief — sound sleep, smiling relaxed faces — whereas previous ads emphasize the distress and terror of the psychiatric symptoms the medications are advertised as treating.

A “nightmarish story – a real

anthropological heart of darkness“.’ BBC

A New Republic editorial argues that The Olympics should be abolished both because they erase the moral distinctions between regimes of all stripes and because their founding spirit of amateurism has gone totally defunct.

In a sense, it’s too bad that the Olympics are being held

in Sydney and not Beijing, the early favorite. Were they

being held in China, the moral farce that the Olympics

today represent would be plain to see. Promoted to

foster “friendship, peace, and solidarity,” the games

now subvert the ideals of freedom and human rights on

which any meaningful international solidarity must be

based. Designed as a tribute to human excellence, the

Olympics are now a testament to human greed. On

October 1, the Olympic flame will be extinguished in

Sydney. Let’s never light it again.

Dubya: Afro-Americans should vote for me because, I swear to God, I really like you. Forget the past. The New Republic

I’ve been looking for the download of the Palm OS 3.5 upgrade since it began to appear in new Palm devices in February. Now it’s finally coming, and Palm argues that it is such a major upgrade that you’re going to have to pay to download it. The Register

Christopher Hitchens: Why Dubya Can’t Read.

I kicked myself hard when I read the profile of

Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month’s Vanity Fair. All those jokes and cartoons

and websites about his gaffes, bungles and malapropisms? We’ve been unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is

obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. Numerous experts and friends of the dynasty give Sheehy their

considered verdict to this effect.

The symptoms and clues have been staring us in the face for some time. Early in the campaign, Bush said that he did indeed

crack the odd book and was even at that moment absorbed by James Chace’s biography of Dean Acheson. But when asked to

report anything that was in the damn volume, the governor pulled up an empty net. His brother Neil is an admitted dyslexic.

His mother has long been a patron of various foundations and charities associated with dyslexia. How plain it all now seems.

So Bush is dyslexic. Should we compassionately temper our contempt, be ashamed of having such politically incorrect fun with someone with a disability? No, as Hitchens points out; his own chief of staff has noted that Dubya’s atttention span seems no longer than fifteen minutes. What does this make, for example, of his assertion that he personally reviewed the clemency petition of more than a hundred of Texas’ condemned prisoners? Can someone cripplingly dyslexic, even if nonverbal IQ is inflated in compensation (as I have often seen to be the case, but which Hitchens [and I] doubt is the case in Bush’s case), do the President’s job? The Nation

Do you recognize this blurb, commonly used by email spammers?

“This message is sent in compliance with the new email bill S. 1618.

Section 301, Paragraph (a) (2) (C) of S. 1618 states that further

transmissions to you by the sender of this email may be stopped at

no cost to you by sending a reply to this email address with the

word ‘remove’ in the subject line.”

This quotation refers to an amendment that Sens. Frank Murkowski and

Bob Torricelli added to S. 1618, a bill whose primary purpose was to

prohibit slamming, the practice of fraudulently changing a customer’s

long-distance provider. But guess what: the bill never became a law.

Libyan Hotel Dilemma for U.S. Delegates. U.S. representatives to the IMF-World Bank meetings in Prague face penalties if they stop for a drink or a snack at a neighboring hotel owned by a Libyan. Although the U.N. has lifted the economic embargo against Libya after it turned over the two Lockerbie bombing suspects for trial, the U.S. maintains its sanctions. The U.S. embassy in Prague has issued a warning to the U.S. delegates about compliance. Reuters

A small French Riviera town has issued a decree banning death to anyone who does not have a burial plot in the town cemetery. One-third of the town’s population is over 65. “I issued the decree yesterday hoping for official attention,” (the mayor) said Thursday. “No

one has died since then and I hope it stays that way.” Reuters