[Slate]: Timothy Noah notices something funny about Bayer. As part of the IG Farben German industrial conglomerate, the pharmaceutical giant was a key
player in the Final Solution (“it manufactured the Zyklon B used to
gas Jews in the death chambers; it designed ovens used to
incinerate the corpses; and it used as slave laborers those Jews
at Auschwitz who were still alive”) and has recently just barely, in a sense, acknowledged its role by conceding massive financial reparations to Holocaust survivors. Best known for Bayer aspirin, it has just decided that the next product for which it will create brand-name recognition is Bayer Advanced Home, a highly efficient poison to kill household pests. “Bayer, though dunderheaded enough to trumpet its valuable
brand name in a TV commercial that will remind people of this
history, was, sadly, just smart enough to deny Chatterbox’s
request to view the ad in question (and to instruct its ad firm to
do the same).”
Rethinking Tactics in War on Drugs. After 30 years of fervent support by the church-at-large for the war on drugs since
the Nixon administration declared war on
drugs in the late 1960s–a war pressed by each succeeding
administration–growing numbers of religious leaders are breaking
ranks.
Not only are they questioning the war’s effectiveness and its
burgeoning costs–they also charge that its execution violates
biblical imperatives of justice and mercy.
Rather than reducing the threat to society posed by illegal
narcotics trafficking, the war is making orphans of tens of thousands
of children by unnecessarily jailing their parents and
disproportionately targeting people of color, religious critics charge.
A new group, Religious Leaders for a More Just and Compassionate Drug Policy, counts many of the U.S.’s most influential religious leaders among its founding members. They focus on disparities in policing drug offenses by race and class; the decreasing opportunities for prosecutorial or judicial discretion in sentencing in face of “get-tough” policy pressures; and the lack of rehabilitative efforts in the penal system. (Update: Human Rights Watch report cites disparity in race-based drug offense sentencing in the U.S. [New York Times]) “When it comes to addiction, the rich go to Betty Ford, the poor
go to county jail,” the Rev. Scott Richardson, of All Saints
Episcopal Church in Pasadena, said recently.
A Rand Corp. study in 1997 found that treatment reduces 15
times more serious crime than mandatory minimum sentences and
that residential treatment programs cost a little more than half of the
$30,000 annual cost of housing a prisoner, Richardson notes.
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, “czar” of the White House Office of National Drug Policy, warns that if the public begins to think the war on drugs is unfair, it will lose crucial momentum and support. [LA Times]
In other WoD (War on Drugs) news, powerful U.S. anti-drug forces in Congress and the corporation supplying the raw goods are compelling Colombia to apply fusarium, a fungus that acts as an herbicide, to the coca crop in their country. Trouble is, it can destroy other crops and farm animals and may cause overwhelming infection to immune-compromised humans. Years of U.S.-backed aerial spraying of other herbicides has been at best useless against the coca and opium crops, and at worst harmful. “The New York Times reported in early May that US-funded
spraying of the herbicide glyphosate (marketed as Roundup by
Monsanto Company) may have exposed scores of Colombian
villagers to harmful toxins and damaged nondrug crops. But the
proposed Fusarium program, experts say, could unleash far
worse consequences.” [The Guardian]
David Brake just pointed me to his blog, with a worldview quite consonant with mine.
Stuffing Yer Holes: Feasting Black Hole Blows Bubbles.
“A monstrous black hole’s rude table manners include blowing huge bubbles of hot gas into space. At least,
that’s the gustatory practice followed by the supermassive black hole residing in the hub of the nearby
galaxy NGC 4438. These NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of the galaxy’s central region clearly show
one of the bubbles rising from a dark band of dust.” And: Black Holes Shed Light on Galaxy Formation. “Astronomers are concluding that monstrous black holes weren’t
simply born big but instead grew on a measured diet of gas and stars
controlled by their host galaxies in the early formative years of the
universe. These results, gleaned from a NASA Hubble Space Telescope
census of more than 30 galaxies, are painting a broad picture of a
galaxy’s evolution and its long and intimate relationship with its central
giant black hole. Though much more analysis remains, an initial look at
Hubble evidence favors the idea that titanic black holes did not precede
a galaxy’s birth but instead co-evolved with the galaxy by trapping a
surprisingly exact percentage of the mass of the central hub of stars
and gas in a galaxy.”
American ‘Culture,’ Cooked by the Melting Pot. In the strict (anthropological) sense of the word, culture no longer exists; we live in a post-cultural world, says Christopher Clausen, whose book Faded Mosaic is reviewed here by Jonathan Yardley. And the distinction is not merely a semantic one [Washington Post]:
“The truth is that “the connection with an ancestral culture is now so vestigial that whether to assert or deny it has become entirely a matter of choice.” The greatest influences on us are not ethnic or religious or racial (though this last, for African Americans, remains a powerful and unavoidable consideration) but “the expanding reach of a homogenizing federal government, universal access to the same products and television programs, interstate highways and a restlessly mobile population.” Today, Clausen argues, “what most ordinary people who call for multiculturalism want is something more like post-culturalism: no conflict based on cultural factors, none of the sharp edges that cause bleeding.” The idea of the melting pot may no longer be fashionable, but a melting pot is where we live.
Instead of a crazy quilt of conflicting cultures with specific rules, demands and expectations, we inhabit a mass society that claims to value individuals and that places “extreme emphasis on personal feelings and self-gratification” yet is in fact a society of “mass individualism, an individualism without much individuality.” We are “oriented to pleasure–the desires of the self, not its duties,” yet because we all worship at the same altars–most notably, or notoriously, mass entertainment and the cult of personality, or celebrity–the result is “a mass individualism that encourages people to assert themselves in nearly identical ways.”
New Statesman: Scott Lucas, a University of Birmingham cultural historian, asserts that George Orwell was not a socialist, despite usually being held up as having impeccable “English socialist” credentials. For one thing, he apparently “named names” in the British equivalent of the McCarthy witchhunt; for another, Lucas says, his values were not particularly socialist.
Praise, if you will, Orwell’s fighting spirit, praise his
generous anger, praise his free intelligence. Just
remember that, no matter how smelly the
orthodoxies, 19th-century liberalism and 20th-century
anti-communism did not, and still do not, constitute
socialism.
New Statesman: After a long preamble on Ted Hughes’ gatekeeping on Sylvia Plath’s posthumous legacy, Ian Hamilton decries the stranglehold T.S.Eliot’s widow has on his reputation.
So, one day, one day. In the meantime, let us hope
that, by the time an Eliot biography gets nodded
through, he won’t be consigned to the popular
histories as an anti-Semite who wrote amusingly
about pussy cats and had his first wife locked away
for keeps in an asylum – a first wife who may have
written certain of his best-known lines. Eliot’s
posterity, one feels, will always need an extra
measure of protection from the philistines, and
maybe, in his case, disclosure will serve his
reputation more effectively than reticence.
A Dangerous Masquerade
“Anyone watching the hostage
crisis in Luxembourg last week
would applaud the release of nursery
school children and their caregivers
after a crazed gunman was shot by
local police. But by using a camera crew as camouflage for
their gun and by shooting the suspect who thought he was
getting ready to give a television interview, the Luxembourg
police have now made it more dangerous for other
journalists to do their jobs and thus harder for them to get
news of critical importance.” [New York Times]
The Guardian: Iranian link to bomb on Pan Am 103. CNS News last night reported that an Iranian defector (who reportedly controlled his country’s terrorist operations for a decade and is being debriefed by the CIA) has proof that Iran planned and financed the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.
Blair gets tough with doctors, comes back from his paternity leave ready to move British medicine away from professional self-regulation and the “consultant is king” culture of the National Health Service.
GoodBye! The Journal of Contemporary Obituaries, “an opinionated bimonthly magazine which chronicles the dead – famous, infamous and non-famous.”
A science writer I like very much, Matt Ridley, summarizes the evidence for a controversial theory that AIDS was caused when thousands of Africans were given a live polio vaccine grown on chimpanzee kidney tissue in the ’50’s. “(A) particular type of live polio vaccine called Chat may have been grown in the 1950s in cells
derived from chimpanzee kidneys. Chimpanzees are the probable animal source of the AIDS virus; live
vaccines could have been contaminated if an infected animal was used. Chat was tested on more than 1 million Africans in 1957-60, in the very areas where AIDS subsequently became epidemic for the first time.
Two other, less serious forms of AIDS developed in parts of west Africa at about the same time, each epidemic closely associated with an
area in which similar live polio vaccines may have been tested.
Stated thus, the theory seems purely circumstantial. It boils down to seven assertions, all of which must be tested to destruction….”
‘The descent into scumdom is a slippery slope, as
(Harry) Stein notes in his charming new memoir, How I
Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing
Conspiracy (And Found Inner Peace)…His
fellow converts from the pre-fab liberalism of their
youth will know what he means. One day you get
an inkling that maybe affirmative action isn’t very
fair; the next thing you know, you’re joining the
NRA, even though you hate guns…Like the good conservative he now is, he
blames it all on a woman…’
Philospoher Ian Hacking is tired of “the social construction of…”
Joey Skaggs is at it again: cemetery theme parks. [Salon]
New Scientist reviewer says frothy book deserves cult status.
The Punch Lines: ‘Although the literati like to think they’re
superior to the millions of simple folk who tune
into Jerry Springer and Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire, their savage attacks on each other
are often as ugly, tacky, and phony as any
World Wrestling Federation bout. Still, a quick
breeze through last month’s Manhattan
publications proves that literary fuck-you fests
are alive and kicking, along with our
fascination for them.’ [The Voice Literary Supplement]
Salon: If code is free, why not me?
“Some open-source geeks are as open-minded about sex
as they are about hacking,” says reporter Annalee Newitz from a rapturous position “at the feet of three charming naked men…” in a state of partial undress.
The New York Times calls it a Rebel Outpost on the Fringes of Cyberspace. It’s going to be interesting to see how this shakes out. A group of libertarians has struck a financial deal with Roy Bates (a British businessman and former army major who has maintained that the abandoned antiaircraft bunker in international waters six miles off the coast of England of which he took possession in 1968 is the independent Principality of Sealand, and that he and his wife are its regents) to allow them to establish a “data haven” there for “a diverse
clientele that may wish to operate beyond the reach of large
nations for reasons of privacy or financial necessity. They
expect their customers to include people who wish to keep
their e-mail safe from government subpoenas as well as
other businesses seeking to avoid regulation, like
international electronic commerce, banking and gambling.” In other Sealand news, purported representatives of the principality “tried to
acquire arms worth at least $50 million from Russia, Spanish
authorities said Friday.” The investigation also revealed that Bates has commissioned a tailor to design battle uniforms for Sealand, “reserving one with the rank of Colonel for himself”, and that a vigorous trade in driver’s licenses, university degrees and passports from Sealand goes on. When investigated, those pursuing these activities have claimed diplomatic immunity for their actions.
How U.S. Left Sierra Leone Tangled in a Curious Web. 1998: Clinton goes to Africa, promising an African Renaissance and greater U.S. involvement in the continent. 1999: U.S. brokers peace accord empowering rebels. 2000: U.S. invisible in the faltering peacekeeping effort. “When the Rev. Jesse Jackson, President Clinton’s special
envoy for democracy in Africa, came to West Africa to help
defuse the crisis, he was forced to cancel a stop in Sierra
Leone because he was not welcome.
Mr. Jackson was given the role of special envoy to Africa
after helping to keep the black vote solidly behind Mr.
Clinton in 1996. He is a vocal proponent of intervening in
Africa’s conflicts.
In May last year, Mr. Jackson criticized the administration for
protecting Kosovo Albanians but leaving Africans to defend
themselves so that Sierra Leone’s war was “fought in the
dark” for seven years.” [New York Times]
Matan Has Two Mommies, and Israel Is Talking. ‘A classic Israeli idiom, which means to proclaim that there’s
no one like mom, says, “There is only one mother.” And the
government felt that the catch phrase should be taken
literally: it was biologically impossible, the government
insisted, for anyone to have more than one.’ [New York Times]
Nymphet at the Net: skin-deep still counts. [New York Times]
Living in the Shadow of Chernobyl’s Reactors. A current status report from the site of the 1986 disaster. There’s continuing thyroid cancer downwind; the concrete “sarcophagus” is on shifting ground, admitting rainwater to corrode pipes and girders and increase the risk of collapse; President Kuchma has promised to close the remaining operating reactor at Chernobyl but international wrangling about the costs of decommissioning it and replacing its electricity generating capacity has stalled implementation; the “forbidden zone” turns into a post-industrial resurgent wilderness tempting poachers in search of burgeoning deer populations; and — this is just nuts — employees of the plant wearing surgical masks stir up the radioactive soil with hoes to till the earth to plant flowers. Someone with post-apocalyptic credentials — Lewis Shiner, Jack Womack or Samuel Delaney come to mind off the top of my head — should write a novel set there.
Hate Sites Bad Recruiting Tools. Several hate-watchers say that, contrary to public concerns, the aggressive and expanding web-presence of right-wing hate groups has not paid off in terms of recruitment. Moreover, increased public scrutiny may be harmful to them. [Wired]
“This isn’t just a
decent film or a good film. If everything comes together right, this could stand as a beloved film, something that not only honors the memory of Dr. Seuss, but actually adds to the luster of his name.” [via Robot Wisdom]
Another new tick-borne disease, HGE, human granulocytic erlichiosis. First recognized in 1994, around 1,000 cases have been reported. 2-3% fatality rate reported when prompt diagnosis and care are not received, according to the CDC.
Archaeologists’ playtime: Ancient Cities Reported Found Under Sea Off Egypt, and Lost City Discovered in Peruvian Jungle.
Canada Funds Clinical Trials of ‘Invisible Condom’. This probably deals with the male concerns about the notorious loss of sensation caused by conventional condoms, but of course it appears to be inconvenient to use and the burden falls on the woman (in heterosexual sex).
Look at it this way. This is one of those things that is perfectly obvious once you think about it but took a long time for anyone to recognize. Engineers at Fuji have realized that the world has more horizontal and vertical lines than oblique ones, probably because both natural and manmade things organize themselves in relation to the pull of gravity. That means that the linear gaps in a conventional horizontal array of photodiodes in a digital camera will result in more loss of detail than an innovative, different arrangement of the diodes they are now introducing. [New Scientist]
Raising a stink. The methane produced from decaying vegetation in stagnant water makes hydroelectric power schemes worse greenhouse-gas offenders than large coal-fired power plants, says the World Commission on
Dams, a group of scientists, engineers and environmentalists supported by the World Bank, the world’s biggest funder
of large dams.
The New York Times Book Review summer reading list 2000.
Salon TV critic Joyce Millman reflects on the debut episode of The Survivor, finds few surprises. “When the president of CBS TV, Leslie Moonves, tells
reporters that he participated in the casting of “Survivor,”
helping choose the final 16 contestants, and gets all giddy
describing the show’s “voyeuristic appeal,” then you can bet,
my friends, that this is not “reality,” but some winking faux
version of it. Still, I’m sure that won’t stop “Survivor” from
becoming this summer’s national obsession and then, who
knows, maybe next year’s sweeps programming main event.
I can see the celebrity edition of “Survivor” now: Bobby
Knight, Oprah Winfrey and the cast of “Friends” vs. Martha
Stewart, the Dixie Chicks, Jerry, George, Kramer and
Shaquille O’Neal.”
The Turn. “At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked
turn, a procedure that by now seems so routine and
familiar that airline passengers appreciate neither
its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously
delusive character. The author, a pilot, takes us up
into the subject.” One of the points in this essay is the way in which the aerodynamic forces in a turn can counteract the inner ear’s positional sense and contrary to common sense one may be unable to feel one’s position relative to the vertical, especially when flying without visual cues. A pilot friend of mine explained to me the way in which, if I understood it correctly, this can easily get inexperienced pilots in trouble and may have caused the fatal crash of JFK Jr’s plane. [Atlantic Monthly]
Salon: L.A. to serve toilet water. One proposal for the Southern California water shortage. In the ’70’s, I worked briefly for an environmental concern that promoted wastewater recycling. But they were talking about “grey water” — bath-, sink- and laundry-drainage. In this scheme, waterless composting toilets keep human waste contamination out of the recycling stream and “stop the five-gallon flush”; seemed like a good idea then and now. In recent years, I’ve been delighted to discover this system in use at several of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s backcountry huts in the White Mountains, but imagine the economy of scale and public acceptance that could come from its LA-wide introduction!
Cal State Long Beach (CSLB) psychology professor Kevin MacDonald, as a recent New Times LA article describes it, uses
evolutionary
psychology to argue that Judaism is not merely a religion; it is
also a Darwinian strategy that serves to raise Jewish IQ, and
that anti-Semitism can be understood rationally as a by-product
of natural selection. He writes that Jews have reacted to
anti-Semitism by taking over intellectual movements and
attacking Gentile culture to promote Jewish interests. The
result, he warns, is a “present decline of European peoples in
the New World.” He also asserts that Jews protect their
interests by suppressing criticism of Judaism, and cites David
Irving as an example of a writer whose work has been
suppressed by Jewish groups.
MacDonald agreed to testify on behalf of Irving at the prominent London libel suit Irving recently lost against Deborah Lipstadt, whose academic criticism of Holocaust deniers claims distortions in Irving’s work. MacDonald says he is an “agnostic” about the question of the reality of the Holocaust because he has not studied its history extensively enough and that his decision to support Irving was based on academic freedom considerations. (He writes here about his reasons for testifying.)
Now critics on the faculty of CSLB want him to defend his own controversial doctrines in a public academic forum, which he refuses to do partially on the grounds that it is not appropriate to ask a tenured professor to present such complicated ideas orally to an audience that is likely to be hostile. CSLB, whose enormous psychology dept. (with over 1200 students and 55 faculty) was criticized in a 1994 external audit for doing too little to foster open debate of academic issues, has put off until the fall its decision on calls for a public forum on MacDonald’s ideas. Many colleagues say they’ll be reading his work this summer, vowing to move forward with criticism in the fall whether MacDonald participates or not. His colleagues point out that they believe MacDonald’s right to do the kind of research he does is protected by academic freedom, and no one is calling for his discipline or expulsion.
One prominent critic is UC Santa Barbara professor John Tooby, arguably the founder of the discipline of evolutionary psychology in the early ’90’s. Tooby wants to defend the good name of evolutionary psychology against what he perceives as a disreputble extremist extrapolation. He has recently reportedly denied that MacDonald’s work is even evolutionary psychology at all. ‘Blaming the new science for MacDonald’s views, Tooby says,
is like asking doctors, “What do you physicians have to say
about Josef Mengele?”‘ A lengthy refutation of MacDonald’s work on which Tooby is currently at work is slated to appear on his website later this summer.
MacDonald may essentially be cursed simply by being a shy, reluctant public speaker whose trio of books on Judaism, published between 1994 and 1998, received little attention (except among rightwing extremist hatemongers, whose websites have been laudatory), but he may now regret the visibility his decision to participate in Irving’s trial has engendered. Academic work in which there is such a dramatic tension between scholarly freedom and the use of the work in the service of extremist hatred and divisiveness has long provoked heated ethical controversy on campus. I recall the very similar bitterness of the debate over the work on the genetic basis of intelligence done by Harvard professor Roger Herrnstein in the early ’70’s, EO Wilson’s sociobiology (also engendered at Harvard in the ’70’s), and the Bell Curve flap (Herrnstein again, with Charles Murray) several years ago. Critics always claim that these are bad science even if well-intentioned; prejudice presented as if it were undistorted scientific fact. It’ll be interesting to see how explicitly MacDonald paints himself as a victim of the “Jewish agenda” he sees at work against threats to its “eugenics program” in public defenses.
Read an earlier New Times LA article about MacDonald and his work here. And, thanks to Jorn Barger who commented that the above exposition was one-sided (I actually feel I’m not being unfair to MacDonald as much as noting with interest a one-sided groundswell of response), this link to MacDonald’s replies to the New Times LA publicity. MacDonald says in part:
Ortega quotes me as saying that the Jews brought the Holocaust on
themselves. This is just wrong. I claim only to have a theory of anti-Semitism,
not a theory of the Nazi Holocaust. In my book, Separation and Its
Discontents, I argue that perceptions of real conflicts of interest engendered
and exacerbated widespread popular anti-Jewish feelings in Germany prior to
and during the Nazi era, as they have in many other times and places. These
perceptions of conflicts of interest are related complexly to real conflicts of
interest. For example, exaggeration and even fantasies may color the
situation once the battle lines have been drawn between groups. Other
scholars have also argued that Jewish behavior—very often Jewish success—is
an important factor in anti-Semitism; see, e.g., Albert Lindemann’s Esau’s
Tears[Cambridge University Press, 1998]). My position is that we should not
simply assume that every instance of anti-Semitism is completely irrational.
Rather, we should suppose that in general there are indeed real conflicts of
interest between groups and that outbreaks of hostility are a complex
interplay of fantasy and reality. Anti-Semitism has taken many different
forms from simple dislike to economic boycots, pogroms, expulsion and
genocide.
And:
In the last chapter of The Culture of Critique I suggest that the
increasing ethnic division in the U.S. and other European-derived societies
resulting from high levels of immigration and the rise of multiculturalism will
lead to increased ethnocentrism on all sides and a decline in the
Enlightenment values of de-ethnicized individualism. I state only that this is
a dangerous situation and I do so on the basis of psychological theory and my
reading of the history of the Jews as well as a great many examples of ethnic
conflict in contemporary and past societies.
This is just a start; I imagine MacDonald would agree with me that a “soundbite”, or weblog, review cannot be thoughtful enough about these complex issues. If this controversy interests you, I’m sure you’ll delve further.
In connection with my post on this issue, Barger has also referred me to his page on Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor turned anti-Zionist civil rights campaigner in Israel. He has paid special attention to the efffects of Jewish fundamentalism on Israeli policy and politics. I’m just beginning to absorb this material. Thank you again, Jorn.
CokeSpotlight. Greenpeace and Adbusters kick off a massive campaign against Coca Cola’s environmental hypocrisy as a polluting sponsor of the first “Green” Olympics: ‘To be Number One in the world: that’s the
goal of The Coca-Cola Company. That’s
why Coke is the longest running
corporate sponsor of the Olympic Games.
It’s a partnership that has helped make
Coke the world’s best known brand, sold
in nearly 200 countries.
But there’s something different about the
2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney,
Australia. They will be the first Green
Games, a global celebration of sport,
culture, and the environment.
In the Green Games, Coca-Cola isn’t winning the race. Coke keeps
its products “always cool” with the help of HFCs, some of the most
potent global warming gases ever produced.’
Mental Health is Not an Issue…Yet. “Then, you realize you’ve asked the wrong question. You are asking how many of the downtrodden have to die. Nobody gives a rat’s ass about
the mentally ill. They’re crazy. Not until the mentally ill begin to see who is responsible for their continued suffering, and find that person, and show
up on his doorstep with their agony, and share it with him, will mental health care be available for all who need it.”
“…simply a mistake where a piece of type accidentally fell onto the page during production”, or (much more likely, it would seem) a clever culture-jam by a guerrilla Seattle Times employee?
I want one of these!
Alas, Inability to secure funding stream axes NewsWatch.
‘On Tuesday, May 30,
NewsWatch.org, a daily media
criticism Web site run by The Center
for Media and Public Affairs, ceased
operations. Described by Smart
Computing as one of the “best
little-known Web sites,” on the Web,
NewsWatch.org was launched a year
and a half ago to serve as a
“consumer’s guide to the news.”
Rather than look at the inside stories
behind the day’s news – who was up,
who was down and who did what to
whom – NewsWatch focused on news
content, examining inaccuracies,
distortions, lack of context and other
controversies of interest to the
consumers as well as the producers
of news.’
Scientists Excited by Rare Meteorite Find in Canada:
like “…sampling on the surface of a comet”. But why does Reuters confuse meteorites and asteroids?
A Spelling Test of fifty commonly misspelled words. I consider myself to be a strong speller yet I’m chagrined to say I only scored 86%.
Adult stem cells can produce a wealth of cell types, Science authors report. This exciting study by a Swedish team shows that, when grown within an embryo, adult neural stem cells can revert to a precursor state that can give rise to lineages of a variety of tissue types. The pluripotentiality of embryonal stem cells has long been recognized, but current ethical concerns have led to a ban on tissue from embryos. This discovery about the open-ended potential of stem cells from adults opens the way to therapeutic advances, such aas growing replacement organs, that do not require embryonic tissue. Of course, neural stem cells are among the most difficult cell types to obtain from living adults, so it would be nice if we discovered similar versatility in other types of adult stem cells.
Toshiba euthanasia laptop goes on display. “The patient got a needle in their arm, while the computer sat on the bed. The laptop
asked the patient twice if they knew what they were doing. The third time they had to
hit the space bar to confirm they wanted to die. Fifteen seconds later a message was
sent to a switching unit, which turned on a compressor.” [The Register]
New Scientist: Before the big bang. One cosmologist’s attempt to apply string theory to the thorny problem of the singularity at the origin of the universe has some surprising results:
“Our Universe is a patch of the inside
of a black hole,” amd there was a time before the Big Bang. Something like this notion is all over science fiction, however, from even before we knew about black holes. Does anyone remember the culmination of James Blish’s Cities in Flight series from the late ’50’s?
Survey: Online Therapy Bad Idea. I don’t think I’m just trying to protect my market niche as a psychiatrist when I say that I agree with this survey finding.
Little-known ventriloquist puts words into Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ mouth.
Annals of the Age of Depravity (cont’d.): Mother Kept Son Locked Up for 30 Years.
‘”Why didn’t we report it? Because this was something between the two of them,” one person from the village was quoted as saying.’
The Travel Guide Says what? Words fail me.
“They’re Going to Eat What?” World nettle-eating challenge in Dorset UK; sponsored by Ben & Jerry’s, to be netcast live…
Wet, Windy Atlantic Hurricane Season Starts Thursday. I’ve always wondered. Do the hurricanes know they’re okay to come as of Thursday but not Wednesday?
The mysterious death of Carlos Ghigliotti, freelance infrared photography expert engaged by the House Committee on Gov’t Reform to investigate whether the FBI had fired first in the siege of the Branch Davidians. [Washington Post]
Superluminal Speeds [New York Times]
I’m neglectful by several days in saying this: R.I.P. Sir John Gielgud, whose voice was described as being like “a silver trumpet muffled in silk.” I’ll never forget his Prospero in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books. Unfortunate that it appears he’s most destined to be remembered as Dudley Moore’s butler in Arthur!
The Solo Retreats From the Spotlight in Jazz. “I’m
often left wondering how it is that solos — and especially
that theme-solos-theme format — became such a necessary
part of jazz. Not everybody solos particularly well, after all,
and the number of bona fide stars whom you’d always want
to hear solo, because you identify with them, is at an
all-time low. Sometimes — too often — solos make listening
to jazz drudgework yet are nevertheless applauded, when
the real strength of the piece lay in some other part of it.” [New York Times]
New Scientist: Phantom cats revealed. Anaerobic bacteria introduced into the fibers of new carpets during the manufacturing process emit butyric acid. Many people find this to have an odor reminiscent of urine; customers, even in cat-free homes, raise vexing complaints that their new carpets smell of cat urine.
Haiku movie reviews. And a query engine for more comprehensive movie reviews.
On Left-Handedness, Its Causes and Costs. The New York Times organizes a discussion of the mystery of why some people are left-handed around the work of a geneticist who believes that about twenty per cent of the population lacks a specific dominance gene that makes others right-handed; people without the gene have a 50-50 chance of being right- or left-handed. Most interesting fact for me in this discussion: around 18% of identical twins have different handedness.
Amex Nixes X-Rated Exchanges. American Expres decided this month to terminate all of its adult website merchant accounts because of the unacceptable number of disputed charges arising from that sector. ‘…Many porn
surfers deny they’ve made the charges when confronted by a spouse — something
pornographers refer to as the “gak factor.” (Husbands run up a credit card bill at a smut
site, then go “gak” when their wives see the monthly statement).’ No matter; opportunity knocks — Visa will be there to pick up the slack.
JAMA for Java: Association of Coffee and Caffeine Intake With the Risk of Parkinson Disease: data from a prospective study of over 8000 Japanese-American men suggests that caffeine intake is associated with a lower Parkinson’s Disease incidence. [Journal of the American Medical Ass’n.]
Putin and Other Parasites by Stephen Kotkin. The Russian government can’t manage the failing Russian economy and society, because the Russian government is the biggest problem Russia has. In this light, the director of Russian studies at
Princeton University and the author of a forthcoming
book on “the Soviet collapse 1970-2000” tells us how to integrate this failing, worrisome Russia into the New World Order. Some of his advice: allow Russia an enhanced sphere of (economic) influence over the other former Soviet states; forge a tripartite mutual defense alliance with Russia and Germany; and exercise “China-like” considerations in foreign policy approaches to Russia.
For Memorial Day: A UNICEF report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children;
a newsletter from Swedish Save the Children on the use of children in armed conflict;
an under-construction site from the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, whose aims are
the adoption of, and adherence to,
an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC) prohibiting the military recruitment and use in hostilities
of any person younger than 18 years of age, and the recognition
and enforcement of this standard by all armed forces and
groups, both governmental and non-governmental;
and a Human Rights Watch mobilization to stop the use of child soldiers.
U.S. Uncovers New Evidence Against Pinochet. Finally, the Justice Dept. may have enough data to implicate Pinochet in the Washington car bombing that killed exiled Chilean socialist Orlando Letelier and U.S. peace activist Ronni Moffitt in September 1976. Since he had taken power in a coup that had overthrown Chile’s populist socialist leader Salvador Allende three years earlier, Pinochet had been obsessed with Letelier’s opposition. Just excused for health reasons from trial in the UK after the Spanish had tried to extradite him for civil rights abuses, he will doubtless never stand trial in the U.S. for the Letelier assassination even with the new evidence.
Utne Reader: Sidewalk Redemption: ‘I hang from an iron fence
a banner with the message “Confessions
Heard Here,” then sit beneath it with a
pen and notebook and wait to see what
happens. I have established some ground
rules: I will make it clear to anyone who
stops to talk to me that I’m writing a
story and plan to record their confessions
in my notebook. I’ll use only first names
or made-up names. I will not offer
absolution because I do not consider
myself empowered to do so. “I have
come to hear confessions” is all I will
offer; the interpretation of confession will
be up to the person before me.’
Cryptographic challenge: crack a “numbers station.” These mysterious shortwave broadcasts consist of a monotone human voice endlessly reading a series of numbers. There’s been some thought that these are a way for intelligence agencies to communicate with agents in the field, but no one’s sure. Reputedly, a civilian has never decrypted a numbers station message. Reputedly, the NSA has.
The Numbers Station Crack
Challenge is inspired by the RSA Laboratories Secret Key challenges which are designed to demonstrate the weakness of short key
lengths in commercial cryptography applications.
With the advances in networking that are available to everyone, an unprecedented amount of processor power can be rallied to crack
mathematical problems. Previously, only Governments that could afford Cray Supercomputers has access to this type of computational
power, and in the case of Cray the American Government forbade the export of such machines, effectively making them unavailable to
the rest of the world. Now with client based network cracking, almost any brute force cryptanalytic attack can be mounted with a more
than reasonable chance of quick success. Spectacular cracks have already been successfully mounted on problems that seemed
insurmountable only a few years ago. This can be done, the problem is, how can it be done? You are free to use any methods that you
can devise, using whatever you have at your disposal.
Martha Graham Dance Troupe suspends operations due to dire financial straits. Insufficient support for one of the world’s preeminent dance companies. “This would never have occurred in France or Germany
or Denmark. They would not let this happen. The arts
flourish in this country because of the people who pay for it.
But it’s not enough.” [New York Times]
Seventh-Grade Boy Held in Killing of Teacher in Florida: “…the boy had taken the pistol a week ago
from a dresser drawer in the home of his grandfather, who
owned it.” The boy had been ejected from the last day of class for throwing water balloons, and returned late in the day with a Saturday night special.[New York Times]
I generally like muckrakers, but the gentleman profiled in this article presents as an irresponsible, unoriginal attention-seeker. I knew him during his training; having had some pretty inspiring mentors back then, he appears to have been burdened ever since by the problem of his reach exceeding his grasp.
Salon.com: Who will care for the crazy? “The benefits provided by insurance companies for mental
illness are starvation rations. Reimbursement to providers for
face-to-face services have been cut in half over the past 10
years. Dr. John Iglehart in the New England Journal of
Medicine described typical benefits as consisting of ‘a
maximum of 20 outpatient visits and 30 hospital days each
year.’ “
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
–Abel Meeropol (Lewis Allan)
A friend suggests that, if we refer to weblogs as blogs, shouldn’t we call the links they contain blinks? If it catches on, you saw it here first. I think.
It makes intuitive sense that dietary cravings can indicate something about brain chemistry. For instance, a new study suggests that “alcoholics with strong cravings for carbohydrates may form a distinct
subgroup of patients with this disease. This type of alcoholic may drink to increase their serotonin levels, and may
increase their intake of carbohydrates if not drinking, to achieve the same effect, the researchers suggest.” Recognition of this alcoholic subgroup, if valid, might impact their drinking with therapeutic strategies that affect serotonin.
What To Do With Your Single, Precious Presidential Vote? Environmental activist Donella Meadows ends up not making much of an argument for her plan to “waste” her vote on Ralph Nader. Even if voting Green robs Gore of the chance to beat “George the Gerbil.”
Miami Herald op-ed piece calls for Repeal of The Second Amendment: “The right to bear arms made sense in the 18th Century to provide for the common defense
and afford citizens a guarantee against the encroachment of absolute monarchs. But today
we don’t rely on a militia to defend the country, and tyranny would involve a monopoly of
media, not muskets. Born as a bulwark of democracy, the Second Amendment is the last
refuge of gun fundamentalists and their well-financed lobbyists indifferent to the tragedies
their liberal gun laws produce. Who will be the first politician to stand up and shout:
‘Repeal!'”
Dennis Hans, freelance writer and occasional adjunct professor of American foreign
policy and mass communications at the University of South Florida, reports on the Merger of CBS and the Colombian government. [Common Dreams]
His knighthood is well-deserved, IMHO, but he had to wait two years to have it conferred until he was cleared of pedophilia charges.
CNN.com – Technology – Microsoft to delay Outlook patch : “Microsoft said it will delay
until the week of June 1 the release of a
major security update to its Outlook 98
and 2000 e-mail software. The delay will
allow Microsoft to make certain
last-minute modifications to the software
in response to feedback from customers.” The new, kinder, gentler, Microsoft?
There’s alot in Salon.com’s health column that’s fascinating this week, for various reasons. Take your pick:
Sound and fury Thousands of deaf
kids can hear, and speak, thanks to a
stunningly effective ear implant. So
why is the deaf community in an
uproar?
By Arthur Allen [05/24/00]Into the closet Can therapy make gay
people straight?
By Barry Yeoman [05/22/00]Ladies who spray If you sprinkle when
you tinkle, cut it out!
By Mary Roach [05/19/00]Skin trade Are burn victims going
without so that supermodels can
engorge their bodacious bodies?
By Art Allen [05/19/00]
Very little catches my eye on TV, and very little caught my eye in Salon’s preview of the fall TV lineup. These items did, for different reasons. On ABC,
People Who Fear People “stars David Krumholtz as a paranoid guy
who thinks everybody is spying on him. Jon Cryer plays
his neighbor, who’s spying on him.” Sorry to be a stick-in-the-mud, but as a mental health professional I’m worried this will be another insensitive attempt to make a joke of mental illness. And it’s an old joke, a one-liner really: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” And, also on ABC, Gideon’s Crossing, ‘starring Andre Braugher of Homicide: Life on the Street and executive produced by
Homicide creator Paul Attanasio. The ABC
announcement describes Braugher’s character, Dr. Ben
Gideon, thusly: “The voice of reason, empathy and
wisdom in a world of medical chaos, bureaucracy and
hypocrisy … he is Disease’s mortal enemy.” ‘ As over-the-top as that is, this one makes me worry that Braugher, an estimable and charismatic actor, will repeat David Caruso’s mistake in leaving NYPD Blue and flounder in a star vehicle without strong ensemble support. And speaking of Caruso: David Duchovny, in reluctantly signing on for another season of The X-Files, praised Caruso’s courage for walking out on a lucrative TV contract. (To self-destruct on the large screen, and then crawl back to the TV world with his tail between his legs and complete the act?)
Scholars, artists and fans from around the globe gathered in Romania Thursday for the Second World Dracula Congress, four days of
lectures and debate on the blood-sucking legend.
‘Bob Auger of Electric Switch, a DVD production
company, says: “This is the first time DVD is being seen as it is meant to be seen.” ‘
This doesn’t surprise me at all: “Concern over the accidental planting of genetically modified seed on several farms in Europe reached fever pitch
last week. And now a company in the US has warned that the problem is probably commonplace…In tests done last
year, but not widely publicised, 12 out of 20 random American consignments of conventional maize seed contained detectable traces of
GM maize. Two of these contained almost 1 per cent GM maize…Low levels of mingling are inevitable.” One more Pandora’s box has been opened.
Creative Skills Can Develop With Dementia. “In some patients with dementia, specific musical and visual skills can be
enhanced, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and Los Angeles report….Miller and his colleagues explain that ‘these processes have in common the recall of previously learned
information or images’ that permit them to continue ‘without the mediation of language.’
Importantly, while creativity continues, the quality of the creativity is different since it lacks an abstracting
or symbolic component, the researchers explain. In paintings, this results, for example, in realistic
depictions.” The researchers are fascinated by this glimpse into the machinery of creativity and the neurological locus of dementia. But, for the families devastated by the development of dementia in a loved one, this would be at best a poignant consolation prize, if you ask me.
House Vote on China Trade. Analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics shows the influence of PAC contributions on the China vote. If you simply divide the House members into two groups across party lines based on whether they voted for or against PNTR for China, you’ll find that supporters took in 76% more than opponents from members of the Business Roundtable; and that unions contributed 150% more to opponents than supporters.
Brain — Impaired Social Response Reversal. As if there was any question of the role of brain regions, especially in the frontal lobe, in the control of social behavior, the authors present a case of a patient who acquired hallmarks of antisocial personality disorder, or sociopathy, after a right frontal injury.
New Scientist: Stress express. I was taught that the link between stress and illness was the negative effect it had on the functioning of various components of the immune system. Now it appears that stress hormone levels may directly facilitate disease-causing pathogens in your body.
New Scientist: It’s not simply antibodies. We know less than we think we do about how vaccines work, and this ignorance is hampering the development of effective AIDS immunization. Once effective vaccines for other diseases have been developed, basic science research on their mechanism of action stops.
A rose by any other name is one step nearer: Presbyterian Church court approves gay ‘holy unions’
Local congregations are permitted to conduct religious ceremonies celebrating gay unions
if it is made clear they are not marriages, according to the highest court of the Presbyterian Church.
There’s something I find particularly outrageous about the killing of war correspondents by combatants. An Associated Press cameraman and a Reuters correspondent were killed in an ambush by rebel forces in Sierra Leone yesterday.
Brain scans of Gulf War veterans show brain damage. As compared to healthy veterans, those who came home from the war sick had loss of brain cells (on a new more sensitive imaging technique called magnetic resonance spectroscopy) of a comparable magnitude to that found in degenerative neurological diseases, although affected areas were different.
“You need to ask yourself if you would be willing
to give up 5 percent to 25 percent of the brain cells in vital parts of your brain that serve as the relay station for all automatic
and subconscious functions of your brain.” Some researchers propose three Gulf War Syndromes with differing symptom patterns that roughly sort out according to etiology. These new MR spectroscopy findings were in veterans complaining of the most debilitating of the syndromes, Type 2, which appears to correlate with low-level nerve gas exposure during the war. Type 2 patients may have genetically lower levels of a blood enzyme that protects against nerve gas damage, thus making them more vulnerable to damage from low levels of nerve gas (something no one knew about when we sent them into battle in Kuwait, of course). In the new study the subjects with the greatest evidence of brain damage were the ones with the lowest levels of the neuroprotective enzyme.
Bullying for More Than Milk Money. An L.A. Times Tokyo correspondent tells an incredible story of what’s happened to schoolyard bullying in Japan – extortion to the tune of a half-million dollars in one case. School authorities and police knew about the problem but failed to step in. The bullies’ plot, which included killing their victim, making it look like suicide by forcing him to write a suicide note, was foiled only by the once-wayward son of a Japanese mobster seeking redemption. Although the drama and magnitude of this case grabbed headlines and prompted national soul-searching, Japanese social scientists say that extortion routinely accompanies schoolyard bullying in Japan. Picking on those cast as weak is significantly easier in a society with such an emphasis on group conformity.
“More than 20 years of Israeli spying operations in
Washington culminated in the interception of
e-mails from President Bill Clinton, intelligence
sources claimed last week.
The revelations come at a sensitive time as Ehud
Barak, the Israeli prime minister, is expected to
fly to Washington today for talks with Clinton
about the Middle East peace process.”[Times of London]
All this back and forth between the pharmaceutical industry and its detractors about whether selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants (Prozac [fluoxetine], Zoloft [sertraline], Paxil [paroxetine], Celexa [citalopram], Luvox [fluvoxamine], etc.) cause or contribute to suicidal feelings misses the point. A potential side effect of these medications is an intense kind of restlessness called akathisia that makes people feel so unbearably frantic that some may be driven to take their lives. Every mental health professional prescribing these drugs knows that, and it is useless for the pharmaceutical industry to argue that it is merely the patients’ depression, and not a drug effect, that contributes to the SSRIs’ suicide statistics (which indeed, as critics charge, may have been “spun” by the manufacturers to preserve profits). But the point is that the makers of these drugs have for the past decade or more aggressively marketed them to primary care providers (PCPs) over and above psychiatrists. The drug companies’ strategy is to persuade non-psychiatrists that they are so easy to prescribe that patients’ depression can be managed without needing to refer to psychiatrists or psychotherapists. Do we hear inadequate care here?? Most PCPs do not have the time or the expertise to track a patient’s suicidality adequately, and they are not sophisticated enough psychopharmacologically to recognize and address akathisia. (I know; I teach both suicide assessment and psychopharmacology and, at various times, have been approached by pharmaceutical companies to train PCPs,) I’ll bet that the proper analysis would show that any excess suicide mortality over the last decade or so in patients on SSRIs has a correlation with the proportion of SSRI ‘scripts written by non-psychiatrist MDs. ( No offense to the primary care physicians among you; you are victims of the no-holds-barred marketing tactics of Eli Lilly et al as well!)
But maybe it isn’t SSRIs at all. If there were a different reason over the past ten or fifteen years that depressed patients were committing suicide more (like the adverse impact on quality of mental health treatment caused by the penetration of managed care), this might be misconstrued as an SSRI effect. Since SSRIs became the first-line medications for depression during that time period, totally supplanting older antidepressants, treatment with medication for depression during that time period has been virtually synonymous with treatment with an SSRI.
Coup News Back on Fiji Site. “For the first several hours of the attempted overthrow of the government of the South Pacific island of Fiji,
one small website was feeding the world with news.
When it was inaccessible after that, fears were raised that the insurgents, led by coup leader George
Speight, had cut access to fijilive.com. As it turns out, it was probably a case of server overload. The site is back up, as is a mirror.” [Wired]
