An otherwise uninteresting blog pointed me to this item on how Microsoft perverts our kids’ understanding of the world. Knowledge Base article says they are “researching this problem and will post new information…as it becomes available.”
… And by the Way, a Tsunami May Hit D.C. by Timothy Noah I blogged below the original reports about the tsunami risk. Here is a column on Washington’s vulnerability. “The Geology article doesn’t actually
address the possibility that Strom Thurmond, or some other
slow-moving senator, might drown in the basement cafeteria
of the Hart building, but let’s face it: The Capitol stands not
too far from the banks of the Potomac River, as do the swank
salons of Georgetown, the John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts, the Republican political consulting firms that
line the streets of Old Town Alexandria, and the airport
recently renamed Reagan National.” Because the risk of the undersea landslide that could trigger the tidal wave may be related to global climate change, it would serve Trent Lott right if he drowned in the Washington subway, Noah notes.
Slate’s Politics column has a couple of interesting tidbits today: Clinton’s reflections on his lame duck waning-days status; the phenomenon of Clinton nostalgia in light of the deficiencies of the men who vie to succeed him; the Republican plan to revamp the Presidential primary system; and Gary Coleman’s impending entry into politics.
Deconstructing the media’s obsession with Generation Y.
Slate Diary: A police officer looks at casual marijuana use. “A cop is a cop 24 hours a day, and even when I’m off
duty, I find it difficult to observe drug use nonchalantly.
That’s why, as my girlfriend dressed and her roommate
consumed her “Chinese food” on the roof, I found myself
hitting the redial button on their phone pad, trying to get
the number of the delivery service.”
NLPstuff Michal Wallace has started a “wiki” about Neurolinguistic Programming. This “wiki” tool intrigues me, as a medium for web-based collaborative learning. This is the first time I’ve run across it. NLP, on the other hand, is something I’ve long been interested in, as both a set of specific techniques for helping people change through changing beliefs, and as a unique way of describing what change agents may be doing without knowing it.
When I was newer to weblogging, I noticed that everyone had a big list of other weblogs as a sidebar, so I made one myself. I found a list of one week’s most popular logs (in terms of how many others linked to them), so I linked to them. I think it was a sign of progress when I changed the header to “weblogs I read,” but I just tonight finished culling out the ones I don’t really follow. There are a few others I need to add…
Do you think this was deliberate, or was it really a typo? [courtesy of Metafilter]
Here are librarians’ accounts of the stupid people about whom they snicker with other librarians.
David Bianculli, New York Daily News TV critic, finds “Buffy the
Vampire Slayer” pushes the envelope.
Relieved to report that Cruise and Kidman appear to be defecting from S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y, according to Hollywood gossip. “And (Cruise) appears not to have been very
supportive of fellow S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-i-s-t John
Travolta’s attempts to turn B-a-t-t-l-e-f-i-e-l-d E-a-r-t-h (by L. R-o-n H-u-b-b-a-r-d, the founder of S-c-i-e-n-t-o-l-o-g-y) into a movie.
While working on Eyes Wide Shut, it is
claimed that he hinted to executives at
Warner Bros, the studio behind both movie
projects, that releasing B-a-t-t-l-e-f-i-e-l-d E-a-r-t-h would
be a mistake.” (No matter, the film is likely to be a bomb anyway, but maybe a few more people will avoid it if its provenance is known.)
Indian village is ostracised for one murder too many: “In India, daily reports abound of crimes against women – dowry burnings,
gang rapes, female infanticide and cases of low-caste women stripped and
paraded through villages.
Many of these crimes pass barely noticed. Ms Devi’s death would also have
gone unpunished – her attackers are wealthy and would probably have
bribed the police – had it not been for the mahapanchayat.”
Germans fooled by D. Duck. Two journalists from the venerable Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung admit they’ve been having more than a chuckle or two at the expense of the culturally authoritative German newspaper’s highbrow readers. Members of a society called Donald that promotes Donald Duck, they’ve been slipping Donaldisms into the paper’s headlines and captions with astonishing regularity for more than ten years.
Will Frank Gehry’s stupendous proposed waterfront “cumulus cloud of titanium” design for a new Guggenheim Museum branch in New York ever really get built?
If it’s only rock and role [sic] why should we like it? by Hannah McGill: “Can we really trust our rock stars to venture beyond the
boundaries of their job descriptions? Increasingly, they are
getting above themselves. They produce movies. Star in
movies. Write movies. Write novels. Diddle about with stocks
and shares and web-related ventures. Import absinthe. Model
for Calvin Klein. Become priests. Today’s pop star has the
attention span of a cocaine-addled gnat. No wonder it takes
them an average of six years to make an album.” [The Scotsman]
“Lucian Freud has long been regarded as one of Britain’s
greatest living artists, and auctioneers at Sotheby’s were
delighted when one of his paintings came up for sale at their
august institution.
But two porters at the Bond Street auction house did not quite
see it that way and when it arrived they threw it into a giant
crushing machine, where it was destroyed. Yesterday
Sotheby’s was coy but it is understood the porters were not
making a critical evaluation on Freud’s artistic technique. The
plant study, valued at £100,000, arrived in a wooden case the
porters put out with the rubbish, believing it to be empty.” [The Independent]
New PBS President Seeks Input on Future of Network, plans a creative summit of film and TV heavyweights to brainstorm on what PBS ought to be doing. Do you really want the likes of Steven Spielberg, Katie Couric, and Ted Koppel to reinvent public television for you?
In the Quantum World, Keys to New Codes. Researchers report that they are using the previously arcane philosophical concept of quantum entanglement as the basis for an almost-fully-realized system of secure cryptography.
Who’s Filling Your Prescription? I don’t know if this is true in your state, but in Massachusetts, if it walks like a pharmacist and talks like a pharmacist, and wears a white coat and performs many of the same functions as a pharmacist, it’s not necessarily a pharmacist and, thus, not necessarily regulated by the state. “Pharamacy technicians” have little required training beyond a high school degree and, by some accounts, are responsible for half of all prescription errors.
Lake Monster Now Has a Price on His Head: “After years of unconfirmed sightings, Ogopogo — Western Canada’s equivalent of the Loch Ness monster — now has a reward on its head
thanks to local businessmen, who have taken out an insurance policy just in case it is found.”
Wild at heart
“Paleontologists have found what appears to be a fossilised dinosaur heart in the chest cavity of a 300-kilogram
plant-eating beast that died 66 million years ago. The discovery may help resolve a long-running debate over dinosaurs’ metabolism.”
Two new medical research findings with potentially very important implications in reducing suffering: Researchers Target Mechanism for Cancer Pain, finding a protein that may block some of the bone destruction responsible for the excruciating pain in bone cancer. And Researchers Reduce Transplant Rejection in Mice: by using antibodies against a T-cell surface antigen, they block activation of the T-cells that cause graft-vs.-host disease, a major cause of catastrophic failure of bone marrow transplants.
A warning for you parents of young children: Mixing Fever-Reducing Drugs Is Bad for Children. Many pediatricians have advised fever-phobic parents that, instead of holding to the four-to-six-hourly dosage interval for either ibuprofen (Motrin etc.) or acetaminophen (Tylenol), parents could alternate doses of the two agents every two or three hours. Word is that this can cause additive side effects and do more harm than good.
Tsunamis Seen Possible Along U.S. East Coast. Newly-discovered sea floor cracks off the mid-Atlantic coast, if geologically active, could trigger tsunamis along this heavily-populated coast. Geologists predict that the “tidal waves” would be on a par with the storm surges caused by class-three or -four hurricanes. 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, a class-four storm, was the costliest natural disaster in human history, largely because of its storm surge damage.
Study Sees No Benefits From DARE. “Cash-strapped schools are still relying primarily on the DARE program to keep their students off
drugs even though a number of studies have questioned its effectiveness, according to a survey of educators.
In recent years, several studies have concluded DARE does little to keep children off drugs….(T)he study’s author, said she
was disappointed to see so many schools continuing to use the program.”
I know I shouldn’t be linking so often to the New York Times, because the links expire pretty quickly, but this is one fascinating article — read it quickly! The Human Family Tree: 10 Adams and 18 Eves: “…geneticists, by tracing the DNA patterns found in people
throughout the world, have now identified lineages
descended from 10 sons of a genetic Adam and 18 daughters
of Eve.”
On the record: NASA plans to put flight data recorders in future Mars missions, preparing for mission failures.
The Epidemic of Cyberstalking: the Internet can be a truly scary place to live. [Wired]
Because she reported that her obesity prevented her from getting a job, a British woman qualified for a grant to join a slimming club under a government scheme aimed at helping the long-term unemployed find work. (She ended up losing 180 lbs. but still hasn’t found work.)
The Secret Service is taking a closer look at ‘Where’s George’, the site I previously described where you follow bills whose serial numbers you’ve registered and marked with its URL.
Webdweller – Home of the average human face. This site collects photos of viewers and morphs them together, aiming at portraying the “average human face.” So far they have around a hundred contributions, almost all of them Caucasian, but they hope that will broaden in time. Not ’til the ethnic mix of web users broadens…
‘This is a new disease and we are
entering the unknown.’ Britain may still
harbour CJD timebomb, warns professor.
I’d been following this (Boston) story. The survivor’s story just didn’t add up. Now, desert mercy-killing man charged with murder.
More Rx-Free Medications: “The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that it would
consider making several kinds of drugs — from blood pressure
treatments to birth control pills — available without a doctor’s
prescription for the first time.”
A Brazilian Convict’s Path From Poverty to ‘a Very Dark Place’: ‘”This is a shadowy place,” Mr. Dias said, stirring from his
reverie. “Fear lives inside every prisoner. Anyone who
denies that is lying. Fear of the violence. Fear of this
all-male darkness. Fear you will never get out. But I talk to
God every day and ask him to see me through.”‘[New York Times]
Mikhail Gorbachev Warns The US Of Its Dangerous “Superiority Complex” ‘and said that, if the 21st century became known as the second “American
Century”, the rest of the world would have suffered.
Speaking in New York, the former Soviet President criticised Madeleine Albright, the US
Secretary of State, for saying that there were exceptional circumstances in which the US
had the right to use military force unilaterally, even if other countries objected.’
[BBC]: beer ‘may be good for you’; “However, one should not drink alcohol to
become healthy.”
special feature : Wake up and smell the chocolate. Good news for chocoholics: it’s not only good but may be good for you. (And we’ll ignore the opposite possibilities.) [Nature]
Top Internet Art Prize Goes to Science-Fiction Writer
Neal Stephenson, the only science fiction author to riffle my imagination seriously in the last few years, will receive the top
prize in the Internet category of the Prix Ars Electronica, the prestigious computer arts award. This is the second consecutive year that the award
has gone to something other than an online art work.
As I said, I’m a psychiatrist who liked Wonderland. Now it’s been cancelled after just two episodes. Acclaim Couldn’t Assure a Home for Dark `Wonderland’
“ABC executives said that as proud as they
were of the unsettling series, “Wonderland” was simply rejected
by audiences, who probably found it too dark and harrowing.
Those executives said that viewers were turned off by the show
and that neither protests from mental health professionals nor
the skittishness of some advertisers had any bearing on their
decision. ABC had ordered eight episodes, which leaves six
unseen on television.” [New York Times]
U.S. Says Russians May Want a Deal on Missile Defense
‘But they acknowledged that Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov and
the chief Russian arms control negotiator, Georgi Memedev, had
revealed no significant shift in their opposition to the missile
defense plan. “The Russians have shown a willingness to intensify
the process,” a senior administration official said. “But we’re not
seeing a huge shift.”‘
Sure, we’re not seeing a shift. That’s because the US wants to abrogate the ABM treaty to develop the Star Wars missile defense system. We say we’re trying to defend ourselves against rogue states’ or terrorists’ ballistic missile attacks. But because Russia can’t afford to build all the extra warheads that would be necessary to overcome our new defensive umbrella, the deterrence parity between our two nuclear arsenals would be lost. So, quite naturally, they don’t want to let us bow out of the ABM Treaty. I still say that the solution would be to develop anti-missile defenses jointly with the Russians.
Peace, Love and Murder: Punk Rocker Stalks Killer Hippie for A&E: “I’m a short film maker. On the strength of one of my Super 8 films I was hired as a cameraman for a documentary
entitled Peace, Love & Murder–The Search For Ira Einhorn, that would be airing on A&E’s Investigative Reports. I
was sent by myself to France for a month, armed with my wits and a digital video camera, to shoot footage of Ira
Einhorn, a 60’s hippie leader from Philadelphia, who killed his girlfriend Holly Maddux in 1977 and has been
hiding in the south of France ever since.” [broken pencil]
Jorn Barger points us to this information about Pynchon’s next one.
“Imagine an innovative
new transportation
device, representing a
change as significant as
the motor car’s invention
almost 100 years ago.”
Whether you are a thrill-seeker or complacent may come down to a tiny protein that controls how much stimulation it takes to cause adrenaline release. [New Scientist]
Egg Breakthrough Lifts Hopes for Infertile Women: even with donor eggs, infertile women can have their own genetic children, it appears.
Two Pairs Beats All: Woman Gives Birth To Two Sets Of Twins. “The odds are one in 24 million, but a Groton, Mass. couple beat the odds when they became the parents of two sets of identical twins.
Cheryl Scammell-Battles gave birth to four boys by C-section at St. Elizabeth’s Medial Center in Brighton early Saturday morning.” My very best wishes to the Scammell-Battles!
A writer named Jay Jennings whines about how his New York Times op-ed piece got passed around the Web without attribution. In the process, he makes bad jokes about amputees (really). Too bad this Slate article by him isn’t worth passing around without attribution.
Slate: economist Steven Landsburg on why shopping carts keep growing. Really. And it’s interesting.
Jury Nullification: Judge Flips Over Jury’s Verdict by Coin Toss: “A Kentucky judge has declared a mistrial in a murder case after finding out that the jury decided the defendant’s
fate with the flip of a coin.”
“Jailing a woman with a newborn baby for a traffic offense and allowing testimony from a 500-year-old spirit are just two stories
recounted in the National Law Journal’s ‘Stupid Judge Tricks,’ a compendium of injudicious judicial behavior.”
Yahoo! News – Almost human: Completing the sequencing of the human genome is only the beginning. How to figure out what are the significant parts of the data derived, and how to use it? Sequencing the mouse genome may turn out to be the Rosetta Stone for understanding the human genome. “Both genomes have about three billion bases,
only about 3 per cent of which codes for functional genes–the other 97 per cent being “junk DNA”. In the many millions of years since
mice and humans diverged from a common ancestor, much of the important DNA has been conserved, while the “junk” has mutated
freely and is now very different. That means that simply comparing the two genomes will be an efficient way of identifying vital
stretches of DNA, including genes and sequences that regulate gene expression.
Even better, by “knocking out” selected genes in lab mice, we get a good idea of what they do. The equivalent genes in humans should
have very similar functions.”
Toronto’s Homeless Live Longer Than U.S. Homeless
“Possible contributory factors include the effects of universal health insurance and access to health care in Canada, lower homicide
rates, particularly among young men, and the differential health effects of short-term versus chronic homelessness,” said study author
Stephen Hwang of St. Michael’s Hospital at the University of Toronto.
Going Backwards: U.S. Nuclear Stockpile Plans Draw Scrutiny. >180 signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty are critical of U.S. plans to refurbish and upgrade more than 6,000 deployed strategic warheads and decisions to maintain an “inactive reserve” of weapons withdrawn from deployment due to weapons reductions negotiated in disarmament treaties. [Washington Post]
Send a free fax from the
ACLU website to your Senators, in opposition to the proposed “Victims’ Rights Amendment” to the Constitution.
This week’s Senate vote is expected to be
close as proponents have already lined up more than 40 co-sponsors. More than 20 senators still have not
indicated how they will vote on the proposed amendment.
Why on earth oppose victims’ rights?? In my opinion, as that of the ACLU, although victims should be heard and protected in
the criminal justice system, this proposed amendment would jeopardize the
principle of innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trail.
Amending the Constitution to allow victims to voice their opinions at every
step of a prosecution could undermine the foundation of our justice system
and the ability of the courts to operate in an impartial and fair manner.
In addition to Wendy Kaminer and other leading columnists, the amendment
has drawn the opposition of domestic violence groups and other victims
advocates, hundreds of law school professors, editorial boards from across
the country and more than 8,000 civil liberties activists.
Drugging Elián: Was there a tranquilizer behind the blissful picture of Elian reunited with his father? Will Elian fall prey to the Soviet-style machinations of Cuban psychiatrists and be “brainwashed” into the desireability of Cuban life? Are U.S. psychiatrists their moral equivalents, having already started the process? [Slate] And here’s more discussion of the sensationalized photographs, by William Saletan.
Swap meat: Salon profiles
David Schisgall’s “The
Lifestyle: Group Sex in the Suburbs,” a new documentary that
“explores the huge, secret, all-American world of suburban
swingers and finds that it does not resemble a ’70s porn movie
in the least.”
In-Eliánable Rights: Slate reviews the European press’ reactions to the Elian affair. There seems to be a remarkable consistency behind sentiments like this:
In the Observer, Hugh O’Shaughnessy…described Cuban-American activists as “one
of the most unattractive group of voters on the US electoral
roll short of the Ku Klux Klan” and said that by teaming up
with “nationalist extremists such as Senator Jesse Helms in
Congress, the exiles have screamed and shouted and
flourished their voting power so that most US politicians have
quailed at the thought of crossing them….I certainly would not
want the six-year-old Elian—or indeed any of my own
grandchildren—to be constrained to grow up amid the
sickening lawlessness of South Florida.”
Death notice pinned on door: Coroner’s policy distresses mother. ‘But as Mary Sprague stood near her front door April 5, she wondered the same thing she
wonders now: “Is this how they do it? Is this how they tell you that your only son is dead?”‘ [Sacramento Bee
Radio station’s egg promotion poses a taxing problem at post offices. _It was a raw sort of idea whose time was not now ‘Philadelphia radio station managers and personalities have egg on their faces after promoting a contest that
asked listeners to mail raw eggs to the station in a letter-size envelope…. the first person to
successfully mail an unblemished and properly packaged egg in a No. 10 envelope was to win $1,000.’
Diary by John Lanchester, John detects the seeds of disaster in London’s new, eight-digit phone numbers. [Slate]
The new Impressionists: “John Kennedy, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, is busy showing
that paying close attention to the blind may tell us a whole lot about art, after all.
Over three decades of experiments, the Irish-born scientist has shown that the blind can
make and understand pictures in ways that no one had imagined. And that fact forces us
to rethink many of our preconceptions about representational art in general.”
Chilling effect of Kimberly Glasco’s reinstatement – CBC Infoculture: a prima ballerina is ordered back to work at the National Ballet of Canada by a judge pending the outcome of her wrongful dismissal suit. Extremely uncomfortable for all concerned.
Martyrs, demons, or splendid anti-role models? David Edelstein reflects on the cultural significance of the Three Stooges, dares to admit he finds them hilarious, and even lets his toddler watch them on TV. She promptly smacks him upside the head. [Slate]
An Inquiry Out of Control: “No one investigates the investigators. So they sometimes
run wild.” New York Times, tell us something we don’t know…
David Irving Unrepentant After Libel Suit Dismissed: “The worst was the way
he kept repeating in an insinuating manner that if he
were Jewish, he would be asking himself exactly what
his people had been doing for thousands of years to
make everyone hate them so much.
He was clearly trying to imply that the Jewish people
deserved what happened to them during the Holocaust,
and they should be looking to correct their errant
behavior and perhaps redeem themselves.” [Jerusalem Post]
Genteel Auction Houses Turn to Hearse-Chasing: “Every weekday a list of rich New Yorkers who have died
recently is faxed to desks at the city’s dominant auction
houses, Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Compiled by an outside
service, it contains names of the deceased, the value of
their estates and names and addresses of relatives and
executors.” [New York Times]
Tom Lehrer spotting! [SF Weekly]
Put Ananova, the computer-generated virtual newscaster, through her paces.
The New York Times makes public the history of the CIA-engineered coup in Iran which returned the Shah to power in 1953 and toppled its elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. The document was written in 1954 by one of the coup’s main planners.
Bedbugs make their return in UK and perhaps US.
Feds Try Odd Anti-Porn Approach: “The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly recruiting critics of filtering software to help it
defend a controversial anti-pornography law in court.
Government attorneys are asking librarians and academics who have published criticisms of the
controversial filtering products to testify in an expected trial over the Child Online Protection Act. The Justice Department’s reasoning is simple: If products like Cyberpatrol and Surfwatch are
so badly flawed that they don’t block what they should, then the judge in the case should
uphold a federal law making it a crime to post erotica online instead.” [Wired]
FBI works to head off plans to pardon Leonard Peltier: ‘FBI officials across the nation are mobilizing to prevent a presidential pardon for Leonard
Peltier, the American Indian activist imprisoned for murder whose claim of innocence has inspired a two-decade protest movement in his behalf.
(Officials)… say they fear that Peltier, in prison for killing two FBI agents will be freed by President Clinton on his way out of office.
“Recently, information has been received to indicate that Leonard Peltier, who has been convicted for his direct participation in the murders of
two Special Agents of the FBI, will be considered for release from prison as a result of executive intervention,” David Williams, special agent in
charge of Milwaukee’s FBI office, wrote in a letter to the Journal Sentinel, one of a number of letters the FBI sent to newspapers around the
country….Amnesty International considers Peltier to be a political prisoner who should be unconditionally released. Gina Chiala, a coordinator for the
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee in Lawrence, Kan., said “the Justice Department has been pretty tight-lipped” about any possible plans for
Peltier’s release.
With Peltier’s growing status as a political prisoner in Native-American circles, the FBI appears to be taking the unusual step of entering into a
public relations battle to affect the possible actions of the executive branch. ‘ Fascinating development, as is the fact that for the first time an Administration might finally be listening to the longstanding fervent advocacy on Peltier’s behalf.
Pot Calls Kettle Black: “They said they were going to do this in a sensitive way. What does this do to this little boy? What have
they done to this boy? He lost his mother, and now this.”
I realize that I seem to be posting more stuff recently related to my interests as a physician. I’m thinking about recent days’ items such as the feuding addictionologists, the research findings about face recognition in autistic-spectrum disorders, and the comparative ratings of state medical boards. Is this stuff meaningful to you lay people or would you rather see it shifted to a second weblog geared more for medical or mental health professionals? I’ve toyed with the idea of separating it out. [Of course, then I could have two weblogs nobody reads instead of just one!] Comments?
“Mafiaboy” wiretaps also land his father: Police allege that surveillance in international hacking case turned up plans for assault. [Montreal Gazette]
Showdown With The Pinkertons
“…Jim told me something I hadn’t quite grasped: the anonymous reporting culture is a growing
business, now deeply entrenched in the United States, a result of the victimization movement
and lawsuit epidemic rampant for nearly a generation. Encouraged by federal and local
governments, and many corporate and educational institutions, hotlines operate all over the
country to report date rape, sexual harassment, abuse, and other forms of brutality and
insensitivity. Since so many institutions in the United States are now presumed to be
unresponsive to the needs of one group or another, privately-administered anonymous
reporting hotlines are spreading. Pinkerton itself runs more than 800 such lines. It was
inevitable, said Jim, that they would move into schools…”
[via Phil Agre’s Red Rock Eater News Service]: PRIVACY Forum: Massive Tracking of Web Users Planned — Via ISPs!. “Picture a world where information about your every move on the Web,
including the sites that you visit, the keywords that you enter into search
engines, and so on, are all shipped off to a third party, with the willing
cooperation of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). None of those pesky
cookies to disable, no outside Web sites to put on block lists–just a direct
flow of data from your ISP to the unseen folks with the dollar signs (or
pound, yen, euro, or whatever signs) gleaming brightly in their eyes behind
the scenes. You’ll of course be told that your information is “anonymous”
and that you can trust everyone involved, that you’ll derive immense benefits
from such tracking, and that you have an (at least theoretical) opt-in or
opt-out choice.”
This is seemingly one round fired in an internal battle between two luminaries in the addiction medicine field. Stanton Peele’s website attacks Doug Talbott’s Recovery Program by hosting the open letters of a disgruntled attorney who had a terrible experience under Talbott’s care and knows an ethical violation when he sees one. But, since you probably don’t care about Peele or Talbott, this is interesting to read as a good encapsulation of the clash of two treatment paradigms. Patients best understood as “dual-diagnosis” are often, in my opinion, ill-served and even damaged at the hands of rabid “recovery” proponents. [As an aside, Talbott’s Recovery Campus has been one of the flagship sites of Charter Behavioral Health Systems, the largest for-profit owner-operator of mental health care facilities in the country which is about to be liquidated under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I’m currently acting as medical director of a psychiatric hospital that was until recently a Charter facility.]
“It’s virtually impossible for animals to consent to sex with humans…”
Health officials warn of transgender tuberculosis risk.
Newest installment in the Annals of the Age of Depravity: Mich. Moves to Ban Sale of Babies
The Cosmos is Coming:
“When it comes online in six months to a year, Microsoft’s SkyServer will be the astronomical
equivalent of the company’s popular TerraServer, which catalogs aerial images of the Earth
and is one of the biggest databases on the Internet.
In the same way users of the TerraServer choose a region of the planet and drill down for
pictures of the ground at ever greater resolution, users of the SkyServer will be able choose
a region of the sky and probe deeper and deeper into space…
But unlike the TerraServer, which is essentially a collection of unprocessed pictures, the
SkyServer data will be somewhat ‘cooked’ –- analyzed and catalogued — allowing members
of the public to do science with the data.” [Wired]
The Sociable Media Group at MIT investigates issues
concerning identity and
society in the networked
world.
I just found out that Dave McReynolds, whose work for the New York-based pacifist organization the War Resistors’ League I’ve watched for more than thirty years, is running for President on the Socialist Party ticket.
[Salon]:
“On the eve of the
Columbine massacre anniversary, stunning new allegations
about the killings emerged from long-expected lawsuits filed
by victims’ families late Wednesday. They include charges that
a law enforcement officer, not Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris,
killed student Daniel Rohrbough, and that officers knew early
on that Klebold and Harris were dead, and thus could have
saved teacher Dave Sanders, who bled to death four hours
after he was shot.”
Born to pop pills:
“I was a Girl Scout in pursuit of my pharmaceuticals badge. I
was a walking medicine cabinet; I nearly rattled when I
walked. I trusted pills. I could have kissed the chemist who
created gel caps. Two blue-green gel caps — meditate on that. I
mean, was there any image more soothing? Not for me.” [Salon]
Molly Ivins tries to goose up your outrage level.
