Marylaine Block
points
out that TBS may claim they're "only programming" our
world, but that programming is incredibly influential. She
discusses some of the facts and viewpoints that are consistently
omitted from mainstream news.
Marylaine Block
points
out that TBS may claim they're "only programming" our
world, but that programming is incredibly influential. She
discusses some of the facts and viewpoints that are consistently
omitted from mainstream news.
Some good thoughts on
voluntary
micropayments for Web material--or, in theory, anything else
you appreciate--from Dru Jay.
In the most pointless survey of the week, the Nine Planets
invites you to
vote
for your favorite planet. A surprising number of people picked Pluto.
From McSweeney's,
an interview with a scientist who is
extracting
usable fiber from chicken feathers. It looks interesting, and we are
assured that "This interview is real," unlike much of the material on this
site. Applications range from paper to pet food to flower pots.
Mars Global Surveyor may have
found
water!
"The images show what appears to be brackish water
seeping from beneath the Martian surface" in Valles Marineris--this
deep canyon has a higher atmospheric pressure than most of
the Martian surface, apparently higher to make a real difference.
If you're taking vitamins or "nutritional supplements," take
a look at
ConsumerLab.com and
see if you're getting what the package promises.
Note: CL does not test whether, say, glucosamine chondroitin will
really help your arthritis--but they will let you know whether a particular
brand of pills really contains the amount of glucosamine chondroitin
that it claims.
Can you say prior art? British Telecom is claiming
patent
rights on hyperlinking.
Molly Ivins on the
Texas
Republican convention, full of ads for the companies that have
been buying that party:
(Everyone was on the virtues-and-values theme, usually referred to "our virtues" and "our values.")And I was just strolling along that wall of ads, studying those virtues and values.
A high school biology teacher looking up something else online
found the Darwin Awards, with an odd shock of recognition: he thinks
something he and a few buddies did back in 1978 may be the
source of the story about the idiot
driving
a JATO-enhanced car into a cliff. Warning: this one is
long.
Another blow to American democracy: you can't vote the bastards out
if you don't know who they are. An
anonymous
senator has introduced a bill that seems to be designed to
make lots of money for a drug company. The rules Congress has written
for itself allow such anonymity.
[via Rebecca's pocket]
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory has found
sugar molecules
in space.
Conditions in interstellar clouds may, in some cases, mimic the conditions on the early Earth, so studying the chemistry of interstellar clouds may help scientists understand how bio-molecules formed early in our planet's history. In addition, some scientists have suggested that Earth could have been "seeded" with complex molecules by passing comets, made of material from the interstellar cloud that condensed to form the Solar System.
In
Follow
Me Here, after a discussion of the state of the New York Police
Department, Eliot asks
is why the police didn't stop this even the right question to ask? It's unbelievable to me that we have come to the point of living in the kind of world where bystanders are going to be savaged at a public celebration unless they have police protection.
The problem is, groups of young men have often, throughout human history, felt they had the right to do anything they weren't physically prevented from doing--they're young, they're in a group and away from people who can tell their families about their actions, they have testosterone, they believe the rules don't apply to them. Much of the time, they've gotten away with it. One of the things we have a police force for is to stop them from getting away with it. In this case, police officers told women who had been assaulted that stopping crime and arresting criminals wasn't their job. Something is very wrong here. I seem to recall hearing the phrase "quality of life" used to define the current administration's approach to policing. Not being attacked when walking in the park in broad daylight seems to be a pretty basic element of quality of life.
Sure, it would be nice not to need police, because everyone treated neighbors, relatives, and strangers right. Until that happens, one thing we need to do is keep an eye on those police, to make sure they do their jobs right.
We keep being told that American voters aren't interested in issues.
Maybe that's because at least some in the press are doing their
best to
make
sure we never hear what the candidates think about those
issues. How dare a candidate for President talk
about "boring" things like health care and breathable air when
the press asked him how strong a candidate his opponent is?!
The
dark side of life in
the
land of the free, the home of the brave, paid for
by our tax dollars.
[via Lake
Effect]
NASA is working on a
plasma
engine that could cut the travel time to Mars in half.
Everything
in the Phantom Library
is real, and can be checked out--if you work for the right
people. This isn't a list of imaginary books, it's a collection
of models for
calibrating radiation detection systems.
Randolph Nesse, M.D., offers a novel explanation of the
current stock market boom:
Is the
Market on Prozac? In addition to reducing depression, the current
anti-depressants can make their users less cautious about
real dangers.
Sexually selecting their way to
extinction:
female Pecos pupfish will choose mates of a different species in
preference to male Pecos pupfish, and the hybrids are displacing
the purebred fish.
DNA doesn't care about individuals or about species, it
only cares about perpetuating itself.
The list of
the
World's
Worst Convenience Foods combines inherently dubious items,
such as musk Life Savers, with things that sound plausible in
the abstract, but apparently not when removed from the can
and considered as food.
A doctor describes a difficult job nobody trained her for:
telling
people that a loved one has died.
A French astronomer has made the best and most
detailed observations yet of
"transient
Lunar Phenomena," areas of the Moon that glow briefly.
He suggests that the glow may be the result of gases escaping from
the Moon's interior and carrying dust up into the sunlight.
An
eight-meter
long geode has been found in Spain. It's absolutely beautiful,
nothing similiar has ever been found, and it's
being guarded by police--and five tons of rock--to protect it
from souvenir hunters. The discoverer wants to turn it into a tourist
attraction.
Photomicrographs of
ice
cream, found via a typically unsuccessful Ask Jeeves search
for an ice cream parlor.
I wish I could say this surprised me: patient
race
and gender affected the likelihood that physicians would diagnose
their mental health problems. If you're a non-white male and think you
might be depressed, see a specialist: your primary care physician is
likely to miss the problem. Of course, if you're depressed, you
probably don't have the energy to pursue this.
Tired of e-mail, e-commerce, e-life? So is the
Society for
the Preservation of the Other 25 Letters of the Alphabet.
(There's too much Javascript here, but the front page is good.)
What
did the CIA know, and when did they know it? Despite all
the attacks on the San Jose Mercury News for
connecting the CIA, the Nicaraguan contras, and the cocaine trade,
the agency admitted to Congress, in secret testimony, that it
tolerated drug trading by the contras.
For instance, one key finding stated that "the CIA as an institution did not approve of connections between contras and drug traffickers, and, indeed, contras were discouraged from involvement with traffickers." The phrasing is tricky, however. The use of the phrase "as an institution" obscures the report's clear evidence that many CIA officials ignored the contra-cocaine smuggling and continued doing business with suspected drug traffickers.The finding's second sentence said, "CIA officials, on occasion, notified law enforcement entities when they became aware of allegations concerning the identities or activities of drug traffickers." Stressing that CIA officials "on occasion" alerted law enforcement about contra drug traffickers glossed over the reality that many CIA officials withheld evidence of illegal drug smuggling and undermined investigations of those crimes.
[via Robot Wisdom]
The
Space Weather Bureau
is predicting impressive auroral displays--and the concomitant
problems with radio transmission--in the Northern Hemisphere
for the next couple of days. The best viewing is around
midnight, local time.
Copyright 1999, 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@interport.net.
If you like this, you might also like my home page.