May 11, 2008

Where can I get one of those? 

Safety in numbers for speeding drivers: "Speeding drivers in south China are getting clear away thanks to machines which switch the numbers on their licence plates in seconds, state media said on Tuesday." (Reuters)

1:41 AM   •  

May 9, 2008

Higher Suicide Risk for Smart MDs 

"There's a grim, rarely talked-about twist to all that medical know-how doctors learn to save lives: It makes them especially good at ending their own. An estimated 300 to 400 U.S. doctors kill themselves each year — a suicide rate thought to be higher than in the general population, although exact figures are hard to come by.

Some doctors believe the stigma of mental illness is magnified in a profession that prides itself on stoicism and bravado. Many fear admitting psychiatric problems could be fatal to their careers, so they suffer in silence." (Time)

5:49 PM   •  

Rafe Coburn: 'Why I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton' 

"...A victory for Hillary Clinton would be a victory for shameless pandering and for all that is small within us. We can do better." (rc3)

12:22 AM   •  

Hauntology 

"The shades of the past become more vivid than anything turned up by the present. The spirit of the times is itself spectral. Faced with the apparent triumph of global Capital and the collapse of cultural innovation, artists and critics impatient with postmodern culture’s ‘nostalgia mode’ are forced back to a time before the End of History. They engage in mourning and melancholia for what has disappeared and what never came to be. Everyday life becomes ghostly… a saturated culture is unable to forget that things were not always like this." (Strange Attractor)

12:18 AM   •  

May 8, 2008

Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder (b. 05/08/30) 

this poem is for deer

I dance on all the mountains
On five mountains, I have a dancing place
When they shoot at me I run
To my five mountains"

Missed a last shot
At the Buck, in twilight
So we came back sliding
On dry needles through cold pines.
Scared out a cottontail
Whipped up the winchester
Shot off its head.
The white body rolls and twitches
In the dark ravine
As we run down the hill to the car.

deer foot down scree
Picasso's fawn, Issa's fawn,
Deer on the autumn mountain
Howling like a wise man
Stiff springy jumps down the snowfields
Head held back, forefeet out,
Balls tight in a tough hair sack
Keeping the human soul from care
on the autumn mountain
Standing in late sun, ear-flick
Tail-flick, gold mist of flies
Whirling from nostril to eyes.

Home by night
drunken eye
Still picks out Taurus
Low, and growing high:
four-point buck
Dancing in the headlights
on the lonely road
A mile past the mill-pond,
With the car stopped, shot
That wild silly blinded creature down.

Pull out the hot guts
with hard bare hands
While night-frost chills the tongue
and eye
The cold horn-bones.
The hunter's belt
just below the sky
Warm blood in the car trunk.
Deer-smell,
the limp tongue.

Deer don't want to die for me.
I'll drink sea-water
Sleep on beach pebbles in the rain
Until the deer come down to die
in pity for my pain.


Gary Snyder



this poem is for bear

"As for me I am a child of the god of the mountains."

A bear down under the cliff.
She is eating huckleberries.
They are ripe now
Soon it will snow, and she
Or maybe he, will crawl into a hole
And sleep. You can see
Huckleberries in bearshit if you
Look, this time of year
If I sneak up on the bear
It will grunt and run
The others had all gone down
From the blackberry brambles, but one girl
Spilled her basket, and was picking up her
Berries in the dark.
A tall man stood in the shadow, took her arm,
Led her to his home. He was a bear.
In a house under the mountain
She gave birth to slick dark children
With sharp teeth, and lived in the hollow
Mountain many years.

snare a bear: call him out:
honey-eater
forest apple
light-foot
Old man in the fur coat, Bear! come out!
Die of your own choice!
Grandfather black-food!
this girl married a bear
Who rules in the mountains, Bear!

you have eaten many berries
you have caught many fish
you have frightened many people

Twelve species north of Mexico
Sucking their paws in the long winter
Tearing the high-strung caches down
Whining, crying, jacking off
(Odysseus was a bear)

Bear-cubs gnawing the soft tits
Teeth gritted, eyes screwed tight
but she let them.

Til her brothers found the place
Chased her husband up the gorge
Cornered him in the rocks.
Song of the snared bear:
"Give me my belt.
"I am near death.
"I came from the mountain caves
"At the headwaters,
"The small streams there
"Are all dried up.

-- I think I'll go hunt bears.
"hunt bears?
Why shit Snyder.
You couldn't hit a bear in the ass
with a handful of rice!"

Gary Snyder

3:07 PM   •  

Census Atlas of the United States 

"More often than not, trolling websites that end with “.gov” is about as much fun as renewing your driver's license. But if you check out the U.S. Census Bureau’s website, you can fully access a truly awesome book: the Census Atlas of the United States.

True to the federal government’s prominent place on the trailing edge of information technology, the 302-page report, containing 800 maps populated by data compiled through 2000, is available in 18 PDF files (very Web 1.0). Sure, it’s a bit of a slog — the largest PDF weighs in at 21 MB — but it’s fun to wander such diverse sections as college dormitory population, prevalent language spoken at home, and percentage of commuters who carpool." (Very Short List)

3:06 PM   •  

May 7, 2008

turtlewheels 

"Little Bit, a young Eastern Box Turtle was hit by a car in September of 2000. Her shell was crushed and she was left partially paralyzed... After some weeks Little Bit seemed to have made a full recovery except for the use of her hind legs. So some wheels seemed to be the way to go. Some lightweight model airplane wheels on a wire frame did the trick... She was eating, drinking, and exploring all the rooms of my house. Eventually she was able to move around outside as well." (via kottke)

11:57 PM   •  

Is the personal Web site a thing of the past? 

"It’s interesting that having your own domain and Web site once set you apart from the crowd because it meant you were an early adopter, perhaps soon it will mark you as unusually old fashioned." — Rafe Coburn (rc3)

11:54 PM   •  

How does an Etch-a-Sketch work? 

I know you have all been dying to know for all these years. (Howstuffworks)

11:22 AM   •  

The best and worst of medicine 

"spiked and Wellcome Collection have launched a website to debate and discuss the top-dog medical breakthroughs that transformed humanity’s fortunes, and the worst-ever harebrained medical schemes that should be stuffed in the sin bin of history." (sp!ked)

10:05 AM   •  

May 3, 2008

Why We Sleep 

The Temporal Organization of Recovery — Emmanuel Mignot, Stanford University ('Unsolved Mysteries' discuss a topic of biological importance that is poorly understood and in need of research attention). (PLoS Biology)

8:49 AM   •  

I See Dead People['s Books] 

at LibraryThing: "A group for those interested and involved in entering the library catalogs of famous readers."

8:45 AM   •  

visualcomplexity.com 

A visual exploration on mapping complex networks: "VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.

Not all projects shown here are genuine complex networks, in the sense that they aren’t necessarily at the edge of chaos, or show an irregular and systematic degree of connectivity. However, the projects that apparently skip this class were chosen for two important reasons. They either provide advancement in terms of visual depiction techniques/methods or show conceptual uniqueness and originality in the choice of a subject. Nevertheless, all projects have one trait in common: the whole is always more than the sum of its parts." (thanks, abby)

8:43 AM   •  

May 1, 2008

"Your Eternal Webpage" 

Kevin Kelly asks how much data a person generates during their lifetime, and what happens to it after the person dies? (Conceptual Trends and Current Topics)

12:08 AM   •  

Apr 30, 2008

Linking spiral arms... 

"...two large colliding galaxies are featured in this Hubble Space Telescope view, part of a series of cosmic snapshots released to celebrate the Hubble's 18th anniversary. Recorded in astronomer Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 272, the pair is otherwise known as NGC 6050 and IC 1179. They lie some 450 million light-years away in the Hercules Galaxy Cluster. At that estimated distance, the picture spans over 150 thousand light-years. Although this scenario does look peculiar, galaxy collisions and their eventual mergers are now understood to be common, with Arp 272 representing a stage in this inevitable process." (APOD)

11:49 PM   •  

Dumb as We Wanna Be 

Thomas Friedman: "It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks." (New York Times op-ed)

11:43 PM   •  

One of Denver's 'Most Wanted' 

"Following Rush Limbaugh's broadcast calling for violent riots in Denver, city officials issue a warrant for his arrest. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper called Limbaugh a 'dangerous domestic terrorist' that should be locked up." (Unconfirmedsources.com)

11:40 PM   •  

Why Things Cost $19.95 

"What are the psychological 'rules' of bartering?" (Scientific American)

11:37 PM   •  

Bush pokes fun at his successors 

"US President George W Bush poked fun at his potential successors during his last White House Correspondents' Association dinner." (BBC) And the petty little man's jibes don't display an ounce of wit.

11:35 PM   •  

Light at the End of the Tunnel? 

Howard Dean: Obama Or Clinton Must Drop Out In June (Huffington Post)
(depictions by Julia Suits)

11:22 PM   •  

Scientists link 17 living people to an aboriginal man found in glacier 

"direct link between the frozen remains of a man found in a glacier in northern B.C. and 17 people living in B.C., Yukon and Alaska..." (Globe and Mail)

11:20 PM   •  

PBS breaks ‘media blackout’ of NYT story on Pentagon propaganda 

"On Sunday, The New York Times published an explosive report exposing the Pentagon’s secret campaign to use analysts in order to “generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.” Since that time, TV news organizations have largely been silent on their role in the propaganda. Ari Melber notes that last night, PBS’s Newshour finally broke this blackout, but couldn’t convince the other networks to participate." (Think Progress)

11:14 PM   •  

Does the Earth's magnetic field cause suicides? 

Study shows geomagnetic activity correlates with self-destructive behavior in Kirovsk, Russia. Speculation that magnetic flux contributes to depression by desynchronizing human circadian rhythms. (New Scientist)

11:10 PM   •  

R.I.P. Albert Hofmann 

'Father of LSD' Dies at 102: "Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life." (New York Times)

10:31 PM   •  

R.I.P. Jimmy Giuffre 

Adventurous clarinetist, composer and arranger dead at 86. His "50-year journey through jazz led him from writing the Woody Herman anthem “Four Brothers” through minimalist, drummerless trios to striking experimental orchestral works...

Among the half-dozen instruments he played, from bass flute to soprano saxophone, it was the clarinet that gave him a signature sound; it was a dark, velvety tone, centering in the lower register, pure but rarely forceful. But among the iconoclastic heroes of the late ’50s in jazz, he was a serene oddity, changing his ideas as fast as he could record them." (New York Times)

10:26 PM   •  

Apr 11, 2008

Parts Unknown 

As in, "I'm off to...". My family and I will be out of the country and I will not be posting or responding to comments for the next two weeks. See you at the end of April, and thank you for your continued visits here.

11:10 PM   •  

Apr 10, 2008

White House Torture Advisers 

Dan Froomkin: "Top Bush aides, including Vice President Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement, according to an ABC News report aired last night.

Discussions were so detailed, ABC's sources said, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group. In addition to Cheney, the group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft." (Washington Post op-ed via dangerousmeta)

11:20 PM   •  

The Greenest Way to Die 

"Cremation uses somewhere on the order of 250 kWh of power, and is anything but emission-free; most burials in the western world involve a big clunky coffin sporting plenty of metals that aren’t going to break down anytime soon; it’s essentially littering! But the awesomely-named Magnus Hølvold over at Ecogeek just turned me on to a new way to die: resomation." (Mental Floss)

10:35 PM   •  

Text Alerts to Cellphones in Emergency Are Approved 

"Federal regulators approved a plan on Wednesday to create a nationwide emergency alert system using text messages delivered to cellphones." (New York Times )

10:33 PM   •  

The Great Outdoors 

Is that a nude woman reflected in Cheney's mirror shades? (Official White House Vice-Presidential Site)

10:20 PM   •  

Apr 9, 2008

Su last year 

"Sudoku has furrowed the brows of a generation of commuters, but will it be replaced by a new puzzle from Japan? ...Like sudoku, the smaller kenken consists of a numbers square where the figures cannot be duplicated within rows and columns.

But with the new puzzle, there's the added dimension of having to reach certain target numbers inside smaller blocks by adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing the numerals in the cells within..." (BBC)

10:36 PM   •  

Whisky and Soda Man 

Thomas Jones on JG Ballard: "When I was 12, I read a story by J.G. Ballard about a boy who has lived all his life in a vast city. One day, he decides to take a train out of the metropolis, to find a wide open space where he can fly a kite. But after many days on the train, he starts to recognise landmarks from the window that he has seen earlier in the journey: he has travelled all the way around the world without leaving the city. There are no wide open spaces left." (London Review of Books)

10:32 PM   •  

Calling Al Gore 

"Any number of top Democrats have attempted to step in and bring some order to this process, but none possess the stature to help the candidates, the superdelegates and the rest of the party structure come together. Former President Bill Clinton is compromised, of course, former nominee John Kerry has been marginalized and most other high-level Democrats have already endorsed a candidate, undermining their credentials as impartial brokers." — Dan Schnur, who was the national communications director for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 (New York Times op-ed)

9:56 PM   •  

Clinton Praises Gordon Brown for Beijing Boycott 

"Hillary Clinton just reacted to the announcement from London that British prime minister Gordon Brown will not attend the opening of the Beijing Olympics. She said she 'congratulated' Brown on what she termed 'an important decision' and called on Barack Obama and John McCain to join her in urging President Bush to also boycott the ceremony." (The New York Observer)

(Emphasis added.) 'Beijing boycott', I mouthed excitedly after reading the headline... Kudos to Clinton for getting out in front on this, but skipping the opening ceremony alone is an empty gesture. The call should be for an outright boycott of the entire Olympics. [The piece is accompanied by what has to be one of the most unflattering pictures of the unphotogenic Clinton I have seen in awhile. Zombified, no?]

9:55 PM   •  

Aryan ideals, not ancient Greece, were the inspiration behind flame tradition 

"There is a two-word answer to those who think the Olympic torch is a symbol of harmony between nations that should be kept apart from politics – Adolf Hitler." (Independent.UK)

9:51 PM   •  

Olympic regret 

"Why China is the only world government scared of Bjork: ...In the span of a few weeks, as international protest movements have grown louder and more pointed, the mood around the Olympics has notably changed. A source of undiluted pride has become a source of insecurity, even in the heart of the capital." (The Boston Globe)

9:50 PM   •  

MRI Magnet Madness 

A discussion of how insanely powerful the magnets in MRI machines are, including discussion of the effects of either unwittingly or deliberately (!) introducing magnetic metals into their fields. Illustrated by video clips. (Mental Floss)

9:40 PM   •  

Cause for alarm 

...[T]he most ingenious alarm clocks on the market - from the pleasantly surprising to the downright sadistic: "Finally, perhaps the ultimate in snooze-punishments, the SnuzNLuz is a ridiculously monikered but utterly dastardly way of stopping anyone from getting 'just ten minutes more'. Press snooze and the clock will connect to your bank account and start making donations to a pre-chosen charity or organisation. In order to spur you on all the more, it is suggested that you make the beneficiary of your generosity a cause - political, ethical, whatever - you do not support in the slightest. If you sleep in, they'll receive donations of your hard-earned cash. You want to hit them where it hurts? Get out of bed." (Guardian.UK)

9:38 PM   •  

Top 10 Evil Human Experiments 

One person's "list of the 10 most evil and unethical experiments carried out on humans." (The List Universe via kottke)

9:15 PM   •  

The Federman Collection at Spineless Books 

"Federman’s masterful and economical utilization of strange loops, mise-en-abime, and other metafictionalist maneuvers will be received by readers versed in writing of this type with a smile of familiarity and a nod of admiration. Like Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, Federman has internalized this type of writing to the point where the use of innovative and challenging narrative techniques such as metalepsis and hypodiegesis never seems contrived." –Jeffrey R. di Leo

9:09 PM   •  

Apr 7, 2008

US Army toyed with telepathic ray gun 

Recently declassified DoD document details developments in maturing nonlethal technologies for warfare: "Some of the technologies are conceptual, such as an electromagnetic pulse that causes a seizure like those experienced by people with epilepsy. Other ideas, like a microwave gun to 'beam' words directly into people's ears, have been tested. It is claimed that the so-called 'Frey Effect' – using close-range microwaves to produce audible sounds in a person's ears – has been used to project the spoken numbers 1 to 10 across a lab to volunteers'." (New Scientist)

A number of the schizophrenic patients with whom I work, some of whom have similar explanations for the voices they hear in their heads, would be interested in the report, which is available here (pdf). 'Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you', the saying goes. Perhaps it should be 'Just because you are paranoid means they are out to get you'?

10:38 PM   •  

The Strangest Secrets 

'Real Government Files on the Unknown': Nick Redfern's study of official documents on weird, X-Files-style phenomena, including Sea-Serpents, UFOs, ESP, Remote-Viewing, the Loch Ness Monster, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Crop Circles and much more."

10:29 PM   •  

Robot aliens? 

Does TV sci-fi get it right?: "Some aspects of the [Battlestar] Galactica universe may be as bogus as other science-fiction creations (such as spaceships with artificial gravity that instantly jump from one star system to another). But when it comes to the idea that the first intelligent aliens we meet may actually be machines, astronomers say the show is definitely on the right track.

'There are two kinds of encounters with aliens you can have,' said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the California-based SETI Institute. 'Either you pick up a signal, or you pick them up on the corner. But I think it's safe to say that in both instances they will be synthetic. They will be artificial constructions.'" (MSNBC)

10:25 PM   •  

Apr 6, 2008

Drug Makers Near Old Goal: 

A Legal Shield: "The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts. The Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted." (New York Times )

A very bad idea for anyone other than Big Pharma, in my opinion. The drug companies are sitting pretty if pro forma approval by an overwhelmed agency that has not effectively regulated in decades is the sole legal standard.

8:18 PM   •  

In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop 

"They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece — not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment." (New York Times)

You know I am enslaved to you, serving up tidbits 'round the clock, day in and day out, dear readers...

8:15 PM   •  

Unrecognized Heroes 

"Amid all the bad news surrounding Nouri al-Maliki's failed offensive against the Sadr militia in Basra, no one has noticed that about thousand people did the right thing. Maliki asked the army and police force to break a cease fire and attack their countrymen and fellow Shi'ites. About a thousand of them, including 100 officers, refused.

No one in the media will call these men heroes. For them, deserters on our side are always either traitors or cowards. Just as deserters on the other side are always loyal and brave. Fuck that. If you are given an inhumane, destructive order, and you decide to put down your gun and walk away, you are a hero." (Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk)

7:52 PM   •  

7:46 PM   •  

Eating Octopus 

An ethically dubious proposition? "It seems that you can't go to a chic restaurant nowadays without encountering octopus on the menu. Like its cephalopod cousins, octotpus is best cooked according to the "two-minute or two-hour" rule. You can either grill the octopus quickly, imbuing it with a meaty smoke flavor, or you can braise it for hours until its tentacle chewiness gives way to a pleasing tenderness. Serve with some bold Mediterranean flavors, like tapenade, paprika or oily beans.

Now I happen to really enjoy eating octopus. But I can't help but wonder if it's an ethically dubious proposition. The problem is that octopi are really, really smart. Dr. Jennifer Mather and Roland Anderson have done some interesting research on the surprising cognitive talents of these short-lived, utterly unsocial, yet rather cunning invertebrates. They've demonstrated, in a series of experiments and field studies, that octopi play with toys, have short and long-term memory, exhibit rudimentary tool use and have distinct, individual personalities. See here for a nice summary of their work.

What do you think? Is it wrong to eat such an intelligent creature? I'm pretty certain that octopi are the smartest species I consume. While I like all farm animals, and I'm pretty disciplined about only eating humanely raised beef and poultry, I struggle to imagine a chicken or cow using tools. I thought David Foster Wallace, in his essay "Consider the Lobster," made a pretty compelling case that the ability of a creature to experience pain should alter the moral calculus of eating that creature. (That said, I still eat lobster every chance I get.) But shouldn't the intelligence of a creature be even more important? After all, intelligence correlates with so many other variables that are clearly relevant to the ethics of food." (Frontal Cortex)

7:37 PM   •  

The Elusive Allure of Messiaen 

"Originality may be overrated in the arts. All creators emulate the masters and borrow from one another. Big deal! The composer and critic Virgil Thomson routinely debunked what he called the 'game of influences,' which he considered 'about as profitable a study as who caught cold from whom when they were standing in the same draft.'

But the French modernist master Olivier Messiaen, who died in 1992 at 83, was truly an original. No other music sounds quite like his, with its mystical allure, ecstatic energy and elusive harmonic language, grounded yet ethereal. Rhythmically his pieces slip suddenly from timeless contemplation to riotous agitation then back again, sometimes by the measure. In the introduction to his 1985 book on Messiaen the critic Paul Griffiths calls him 'the first great composer whose works exist entirely after, and to a large degree apart from, the great Western tradition.' " (New York Times)

10:56 AM   •  

Guitar Licks That Resonate and Lyrics That Linger 

What Billy Bragg is listening to. "There are some albums that take you back to your early teens — before they invented Guitar Hero III — when you’d get by with your bedroom mirror and a tennis racket for a guitar. This would be my tennis racket album of the year." I usually find these New York Times "listening with..." pieces interesting; I just wish they discussed more than 5-6 selections. (New York Times )

10:38 AM   •