A new
cryptography
patent may be the record-holder for the longest the
US Patent Office has taken to issue a patent: the application
was received on July 25, 1933.
Somehow, I don't think a lot of people will be applying to the NSA
for permission to build an Enigma machine.
None of the following is surprising, but it's nice to see that people
are doing the research to test such things:
*Most cola drinkers
can't
taste the difference between regular and caffeine-free cola
*Tracking students into different math classes works against
poor
children
*Children and adolescents who
threaten
violence are more likely to attack people than those who don't.
From
the universe next door, a scathing
review
of Michael Moore's improbable novel in which Bill Clinton was actually
elected president, avoiding the bloody Somalia war and sustaining an
economic boom even past the 1997 stock market crash.
It is at this point in the book that Moore's portrayal of the Republicans descends into total caricature. The Republicans sponsor a sexual-harrasment lawsuit against Clinton, then use his evasive answers at a Grand Jury hearing concerning a tryst with a White House intern to launch a full-scale impeachment hearing against him. The Republicans persist in pursuing their vendetta against Clinton despite a mid-term election debacle which costs both Gingrich and his successor, Congressman Bob Livingston, the office of Speaker of the House. Congressman Henry Hyde, one of the most upright and fair-minded men in the House of Representatives, is transformed in Moore's hands into a vindictive hypocrite who dismisses his own adulterous affair as a "youthful indiscretion" while sacrificing his own reputation in his attempt to bring down Clinton. And of course, as might be expected in such a liberal fairy tale, the Republicans' malicious maneuverings come to nothing, and Clinton emerges from the impeachment trial more popular than ever.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
The
Guide Horse Foundation
offers miniature horses as an alternative to seeing eye dogs.
They claim that the horses "can be easily housebroken" and are
cheap to maintain; for some reason, though, they're only suitable
for non-urban settings.
Everything is bad for you, even the foods that are
g ood
for you. You may as well go ahead and eat what you like.
Librarians are reminding parents that the library
is
not a day care center or a babysitter. Children are welcome to
use the library, like any other users--to sit and read, to browse the
shelves, and to borrow books. That doesn't mean parents can drop an
eight-year-old off without a word, and then come back and yell at
the staff because the girl finished her book and walked home.
Royalty and reality: The New Statesman
reports on the
death
of Britain's Queen Mother, and considers when and how
it will be publicly announced.
[via Need to Know,
which you're probably all reading anyway]
New Epinion editorial, more of a public service announcement:
it's probably time for your
tetanus
booster.
A Saskatechewan professor's
transgenic
triffids
look
harmless, but a name change might be in order. The inventor,
Alan McHughen, insists he was thinking of the
Trifid
Nebula, not the plants from John Wyndham's book.
Remember when the Internet was supposed to recover
after a nuclear war? Well,
Cheyenne
Mountain, which was
also supposed to be nuke-proof, now has a Website.
Unfortunately,
Although Cheyenne Mountain would probably not survive a direct hit from today's accurate and high-yield nuclear weapons, it could survive lower yield nuclear and conventional weapons impact. It is also well protected against other actions such as sabotage and terrorism. It is self-sustaining, capable of providing its own power, water, air, and food for up to 800 people for 30 days.If that's not an invitation to a hypothetical well-armed enemy, I don't know what is. Br'er Rabbit rides again?
Richard Nixon's secret plan for peace in Vietnam appears
to have been
sabotaging
the peace talks before the 1968 election. Oddly, Johnson and
Humphrey knew about this, but kept quiet because they were afraid
of being accused of "dirty tricks."
At least that explains why it was a secret.
It's a cliche that people don't understand risk--that, for example,
people will smoke cigarettes but worry about plane crashes.
Nick Pidgeon argues that what's going on isn't a failure to
understand statistics--the
underlying
issues are control and trust. First, people are
more comfortable with risks we can choose--skin cancer
from sunbathing versus the possibility of leukemia from a nuclear
power plant accident. Second, and crucially, no amount of
statistical data will convince
someone who thinks you're cooking the books. A person or
organization that loses the public's
trust has a hard time regaining it, as the British government
found after admitting it had lied about BSE:
Lack of trust makes it particularly hard to communicate scientific information. Crucially, if people do not trust the person giving them the message, they will not trust the message itself.
"Headaches
without pain" sounds like an oxymoron,
but pain is only one symptom of cluster headaches.
The case report follows a 22-year-old man who was experiencing the neurologic symptoms of cluster headache including nasal stuffiness, a droopy eyelid, and contraction of the pupil in his left eye -- without the head pain normally associated with the condition.This is the first case reported showing evidence that these symptoms may be initial symptoms and not a response to the pain, as experts have believed.
This British plan to provide
first
aid kits to the homeless sounds good, except for one thing:
to avoid the dangers of anything being misused, the only "medications"
being provided are homeopathic. The kits do include bandages and
sunscreen, but not antibiotics.
Overheard
in the elevator at work:
My credit's still going to be bad, no matter what.
I don't know how you get to this place.
Maybe I'll go home and let my parents destroy me for a year.
Law enforcement officials were in too much of a
hurry to check simple details like fingerprints, and
an
innocent
man spent two years in prison under the wrong name.
Nobody listened when he insisted he wasn't Robert Sanders:
they assumed it was a symptom of his schizophrenia.
Incredibly, the prison psychiatrist now claims
He got medication, free meal, food, everything," the doctor said in his deposition. He should say, 'Thank you, for two years you guys treated me very nicely.'
B.C. Holmes presents some humorous
scenes
from trannieland. (These are stories from her own life.)
A federal judge has ruled that New York State's
laws on kosher certification are
unconstitutional
because they entangle the state in religion.
I hadn't even realized New York had a
Division of Kosher Law Enforcement.
Science fictional moment of the month:
In Ursula Le Guin's novel Always Coming Home,
the Great Valley of California has become an inland sea. NASA
has produced a satellite image of
North
America at night on which the Inland Sea practically jumps out
at the viewer. It took me a moment to get my bearings in the here and
now and reanalyze it as city lights.
[Warning: this is a large image.]
This article on
cell
phone etiquette, and why it's needed gives extreme examples of
when not to use your cell phone--while taking an exam--and some
sensible advice, like warning people if you need to leave the phone on
during a meeting. [Once again, stolen from
Rebecca's pocket]
Researchers faced with
bacteria
they could not kill in semiconductor fabrication
cleanrooms not only figured out how the bacteria were
surviving, they're working on using them to build
"biotransistors."
Copyright 1999, 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page.
