Detailed studies of one patient's brain have led to some
insight into the
physiological
basis of multiple personality disorder. Unlike most multiples,
"Marnie" has achieved conscious control over which personality
comes out, and she was willing to work with
the researchers to study what happened during the shifts.
There are other Y2K worries than computer crashes. I just got the
following memo from our office manager:
Due to the security measures that Jones Lang LaSalle (the Building Management company for 1515 Broadway) [the building is on Times Square] and the New York City Police Department have in place, there will be no access to ACM's office over the New Year's weekend....You should not plan on being in the office over the Friday, December 31 - Sunday, January 2 timeframe.I think this makes me the only systems administrator I know who has been explicitly forbidden to work the night of the Y2K rollover.
South African scientists have found a complete
arm
and hand of an Australopithecus, the first to be found. This
is part of an excavation at Sterkfontein; the researchers hope to
eventually unearth the entire skeleton.
A Web log is a
clipping service without portfolio,
in which someone collects things she (or he) finds interesting
and passes them along. Sort of a primitive version of an
anthology: none of the material is actually in the log, all you
get is the pointers.
The inspiration for this Web log is Raphael Carter's
Honeyguide
Web Log, which is well worth a look, and not just because
Raphael has been doing this quite a bit longer than I have.
Web loggers all seem to read each other's work, but I'm
trying not to duplicate too much of what I see elsewhere.
YAWL is broken up into chunks based on size; at the moment
that seems to be working out to about two weeks per section.
The newest links in each segment are at the top of the page,
of course.
Stale links are in the nature of such a project, but please
let me know if any new links appear broken.
Note: dates given here are when I add an item to the log;
items are added when I notice them, not necessarily when they
first reach the Web.
YAWL is updated most weekdays (sometimes more than once a
day) and occasionally on weekends. (For some reason, less of
the material I'm interested in is posted on weekends.)
However, this is purely an amateur project. If there are no
updates for a few days, that might mean I'm traveling or
otherwise busy, and not surfing the Web,
or just that I haven't come across anything that seems to
belong here.
Copyright 1999 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at
vr@interport.net.
If you like this, you might also like
my home page.
Everyone has
been choosing the man, athlete, music, what-have-you of
the century. The Onion puts all this in perspective,
with their choice for
Man of the
Millennium: Death. They make a good case for the choice. All
that's missing is the
14 December 1999
The Indonesian government has decided that
discussing
Y2K with the public would be a bad idea. Meanwhile, some of the
Indonesian people, when asked, are sure there's nothing to worry about
because, if there were, the government would have told them about it.
Relativity
explained in
words
of four letters or less, including the history of the
idea and the reaction to it.
[via Robot Wisdom, which
you ought to be reading if you're not.]
13 December 1999
Something
is missing here: Alamogordo, New Mexico has a
Web site run by the Chamber
of Commerce that promotes an annual balloon event, a nearby
zoo, a racecourse, and even go-cart facilities, and mentions the
impressive dunes at White Sands National Monument, but never
even hints at the reasons some of us are curious about Alamogordo
and White Sands. The National Park Service page about White Sands
mentions that missile testing at White Sands occasionally forces
the closure of a couple of the roads there, but you really have to
hunt to find any mention of the Trinity Site: it's buried behind
an invalid redirect command under a link for "Missile Park," between
a zoo and a campground.
Joseph
Heller,
whose phrase "Catch-22" describes an all-too-common feature of
modern life, died yesterday of a heart attack.
His first novel may well have been his best, as well as his most
popular--not an easy position for any writer to be in.
Genetically modified Bt corn
releases the Bt toxin into the soil it's growing in.
This was unexpected, and the researchers are trying to figure out
whether it's good, bad, or neutral--the released toxin might
kill insect pests and thus improve crop yields, or it might
speed the spread of insecticide resistance.
Or, of course, both.
A brief glimpse
of
elves
in a California sewer.
12 December 1999
Bruce
Schneier on
why
computers are inherently insecure.
December
window lights for the
determinedly
anti-Christmas.
Warning: this site uses the "blink" tag.
10 December 1999
I've always
been fond of Ferris wheels, but hadn't thought much about their
history. Here's an reprint of a contemporary article about the
very
first ride on the first Ferris wheel, including a champagne
toast at the top, during the Columbian
Exposition of 1893, and a photo of George Ferris.
9 December 1999
Phil Agre
begins a selection of messages about the recent WTO meetings in
Seattle with an excellent discussion of how
our
old ways of thinking
don't fit the new global economy:
in particular, the distinction between domestic and foreign policy
is both outmoded and deceptive, as is the easy equivalence of
government with centralization and business with decentralization.
A new
episode of Dave Barry's
Mister
Language Person, including the distinction between "you're"
and "yore" and the correct way to end a formal letter to a cable
television company.
Based mostly
on mathematical modeling, a researcher at JPL claims that
Comet
Hale-Bopp has a satellite. Some other researchers think he's
reading more into the data than is there, but the possibility is
intriguing.
8 December 1999
Vaclav Havel writes about the
value,
and danger, of the way his fellow Czechs celebrated a victory
by the national hockey team. He's glad that "elementary patriotism"
still exists in the Czech Republic, but asks a number of good
questions: "Who, in fact, won that
championship? All of 'us'? And specifically, was it those
who were celebrating in the streets? Or was it the
players who represented the Czech Republic?"
Starting with those celebrations in the streets, Havel considers
patriotism and its dark obverse, hatred of the other. His questions
have no obvious answers, but we need to consider them:
"How, for example, do you recognize the moment when a set of
living ideas becomes a dead ideology?
[via Arts and
Letters Daily]
Cannabinoids have an
important
role in retinal function, in a wide variety of different
species. As the researchers note, something that is conserved over
species as varied as rhesus monkeys, mice, and goldfish is
probably important. The research throws light both on how vision
works and on why marijuana and hashish have the effects they do.
I'm coloring
outside the lines again: what was supposed to be a straightforward
epinion about
iWon turned into a rant about
brand
loyalty. As far as I can tell, "brand loyalty" means that you
spend good money on a product, and in return the corporation that
sells it treats you as an asset: it doesn't mean that they'll show
any loyalty in return. Amazing how many people think this is a
reasonable exchange. Of course, I have a cat whose slogan seems to
be "will let you pet me for food," but at least she knows who I am.
7 December 1999
Mine Howe,
in the Orkneys, is a mysterious underground structure, uncovered
in 1946 and sealed up for over half a century. The earlier excavation
found stone axes and other tools; the current work involves trying
to figure out what the site was used for--an animal skull and an
older name meaning "mother howe" suggest ritual use--and whether
there was more to the structure above ground. If it is an
underground tomb, it's the first with a staircase.
6 December 1999
They're
going to destroy the city to save it: the Russian government has
announced that
nyone
still in Grozny on Saturday will be killed. Now, this is part
of an anti-terrorism initiative, right?
As part of a
"time capsule" issue of the New York Times Magazine,
Niles Eldredge offers a sobering
field
guide to the sixth extinction, a short list of species that
he suspects are doomed. As he says, "it would be wonderful if
these predictions proved inaccurate."
3 December 1999
An excellent,
sympathetic remembrance of
Quentin
Crisp.
2 December 1999
I've written
an
epinion
on Cordwainer Smith's
The
Rediscovery of Man. If you already know who Smith was, just
follow the link to NESFA Press to get your copy; if not,
my epinion is a perhaps feeble attempt to explain why you want
this book. Or, if you're broke or short on shelf space, NESFA does
good enough work that you can probably convince your library to
order a copy, and then lots of people can enjoy Smith's impressive
prose style. [I spoke to someone at NESFA, and they don't have
online ordering, but will be happy to fill your order by mail.]
Nobody can
say the New York City Police Department is lazy: according to the
Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, the
number
of arrests in 1998 for each crime reported that year was 1.1.
[This is a pointer to Harper's Index, which has the usual collection
of interesting numbers.
Alex Beam
complains that the tasks new "service" companies offer to take on
aren't
the ones he'd like to evade: he's happy to do his own grocery
shopping and drive his sons to school, but would pay someone to
listen to his mother-in-law, fight American Express,
and attend pep meetings at work for him. Personally, I'd be glad
if Peapod served my neighborhood, but agree with the general point.
1 December 1999
A skeleton
of a
juvenile
Tyrannosaurus rex has been found. It's about 90 percent
complete, and is already producing hypotheses about diet and
behavior.
Today is
World AIDS Day:
Gay Men's Health Crisis
is a good starting point for information on the continuing
epidemic.
Recent
observational data showing that the speed at which the universe
is expanding has increased over time hasn't just forced the
return of the cosmological constant: it has physicists pondering
the puzzle of
how
much does nothing weigh?
Brunching
Shuttlecocks presents
ratings
of insects: ladybugs, unsurprisingly, do well, but potato
bugs are at the bottom of the heap, complete with a quote from
Wm. Shakespeare's Betty and Veronica, act 1, scene 23.
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