Awake!
The big sleep: "There is a fascination with this deep state of unconscious, a 'twilight zone' between life and death and a place few of us ever explore.
Even fewer have lived to tell their stories, but two women in the UK who recovered after weeks in a coma give a rare insight."
(BBC)
Wave that Flag
Victory for Fair Use: "In a unanimous decision, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out the broadcast flag, the FCC rule that would have crippled digital television receivers starting July 1. The ruling came in ALA v. FCC, a challenge brought by Public Knowledge, EFF, Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association.
The court ruled, as petitioners argued, that the FCC lacks the authority to regulate what happens inside your TV or computer once it has received a broadcast signal. The broadcast flag rule would have required all signal demodulators to 'recognize and give effect to' a broadcast flag, forcing them not to record or output an unencrypted high-def digital signal if the flag were set. This technology mandate, set to take effect July 1, would have stopped the manufacture of open hardware that has enabled us to build our own digital television recorders."
(Electronic Frontier Foundation)
The Time Traveler Convention - May 7, 2005
"Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT on Saturday, and WE NEED YOUR HELP to PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them."
They got their New York Times puff piece:
Time Travelers to Meet in Not Too Distant Future: "Suppose it is the future - maybe a thousand years from now. There is no static cling, diapers change themselves, and everyone who is anyone summers on Mars.
What's more, it is possible to travel back in time, to any place, any era. Where would people go? Would they zoom to a 2005 Saturday night for chips and burgers in a college courtyard, eager to schmooze with computer science majors possessing way too many brain cells?
Why not, say some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who have organized what they call the first convention for time travelers.
Actually, they contend that theirs is the only time traveler convention the world needs, because people from the future can travel to it anytime they want.
'I would hope they would come with the idea of showing us that time travel is possible,' said Amal Dorai, 22, the graduate student who thought up the convention, which is to be this Saturday on the M.I.T. campus. 'Maybe they could leave something with us. It is possible they might look slightly different, the shape of the head, the body proportions.'
The event is potluck and alcohol-free - present-day humans are bringing things like brownies. But Mr. Dorai's Web site asks that future-folk bring something to prove they are really ahead of our time: 'Things like a cure for AIDS or cancer, a solution for global poverty or a cold fusion reactor would be particularly convincing as well as greatly appreciated.'
He would also welcome people from only a few days in the future, far enough to, say, give him a few stock market tips."
The Technium
Kevin Kelly: "This is a book in progress. I'm thinking and writing aloud. The origins and objective of the book are detailed here; please read this background before commenting. Since my posts are often long, only two will show on the front page. The rest I move quickly off to the side archive. There is no order to the postings; I'm just exploring here. Comments on particular posts welcomed."
[thanks, walker]
Dozens Contract Illness From Small Pets
Apocalypse Soon
"Robert McNamara is worried. He knows how close we’ve come. His counsel helped the Kennedy administration avert nuclear catastrophe during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, he believes the United States must no longer rely on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. To do so is immoral, illegal, and dreadfully dangerous."
(Foreign Policy) One more in a series of warmongers who repent and advocate for peace and disarmament as they grow older and wiser. I wish there were a way they could come to their senses when they still had any real influence.
Bang Up to Date?
Book Review: Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku: "Cosmology books, explaining the probable origins and possible futures of our universe, have become the latest little black number: everyone seems to have one, many are appealing, but few match the classics. Michio Kaku is the latest to enter the lists, with his version of the history of the discovery of modern cosmology, of the mind-stretching array of mathematically-based calculations and speculations about possible far futures, including travel outside our universe into other multi-verses, and of his speculations on what it all means. Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson award for non-fiction, this is not a classic, but does raise many interesting ideas." (Guardian.UK)
Statistically Improbable Phrases
Judging a Book by Its Contents: "Name that famous book from just these phrases: 'pagan harpooneers,' 'stricken whale,' 'ivory leg.' Or how about this one: 'old sport.'
Yes, it's Herman Melville's
Moby Dick and F. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby, respectively, but the words aren't just a game. They are Statistically Improbable Phrases, the result of a new Amazon.com feature that compares the text of hundreds of thousands of books to reveal an author's signature constructions.
...(A commentator) thinks Amazon is currently just experimenting, but it will soon find intriguing ways, such as using authoritative texts to answer user questions, to wring profit out of what may well be the largest collection of electronic books in the world.
Bill Carr, Amazon's executive vice president of digital media, confirms that this is a serious attempt to sell more books. "
(Wired)
In Clinical Trials, Drug Protects Brain From Stroke Damage
If continued trials are positive, "this is going to be a revolution in acute stroke", says a neuroscientist commentator. "Cerovive, given by an infusion over 72 hours, traps free radicals - highly reactive molecules that can cause cell damage. The drug will not save the brain cells immediately downstream of a clot, which quickly die from lack of oxygen. It is meant instead to counter damage over a wider area of the brain that can occur in the days following a stroke." (New York Times )
After Sudden Lucidity, Firefighter Is Less Animated
As I predicted yesterday, inappropriate analogies to Terry Schiavo and allusions to his having been, in the words of his treating physician, "close to the persistent vegetative state", are now emerging. Although I emphasize that I have no firsthand knowledge of his condition other than what I am reading, subsequent descriptions of Mr. Herbert's condition over the last decade in the article suggest that he has always continued to show evidence of consciousness even though cognitive functions such as memory and language had been markedly damaged by the oxygen deprivation his brain suffered in his accident in 1995. This is a more crucial detail of his case than the more 'sexy' one the Times coverage is focusing upon, the admittedly fascinating Rip van Winkle-like drama of the information overload he will suffer, if he remains alert, in taking in all that has happened in both his personal life and the larger world over a missed decade. [Inexplicably, the Times' hyperbole in that sphere focuses on things like the Buffalo Bills' performance over the intervening decade rather than, oh say, 9-11...]
According to the Times coverage, Mr. Herbert's awakening may relate to a recent change in the cocktail of medications he has been taking. "Mr. Herbert's doctors said yesterday that they had tried using various combinations of drugs to revive him. Three months ago, when his condition worsened, they switched him to a cocktail of drugs that is normally used to treat depression, Parkinson's disease and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. His doctors would not name the drugs they had administered, but a number of medications have been shown in the past to stimulate awareness in a handful of people who were minimally conscious, even after several years."
Realize that a psychopharmacologically based approach to altering his level of consciousness necessitates that there was a substrate of brain activity there to modify with medications! This is quite distinct from a persistent vegetative state, in which bodily functions such as respiration and circulation persist in the absence of demonstrable brain activity.
Reject Pat Robertson
"On Sunday morning, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson told TV viewers nation-wide that the threat posed by liberal judges is "probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings." When an incredulous George Stephanopoulos asked if Robertson really believed that these judges posed "the most serious threat America has faced in nearly 400 years of history, more serious than al Qaeda, more serious than Nazi Germany and Japan, more serious than the Civil War?," he responded, "George, I really believe that." [1]
These comments were not made in isolation. In fact, Robertson's statement is only the most outrageous example of a growing effort from the extreme right to whip up an intense fear and hatred of American judges — including comments from Republican congressmen and senators intimidating, threatening and even justifying outright violence against judges. [2] The strategy is designed to build support for the Republican "nuclear" scheme to break the rules and stack the courts — and it is poisonous to our democracy. It must stop here.
That's why we are launching
a national petition demanding that Bill Frist and Tom DeLay publicly reject Robertson's statement. If they do, it will send a clear signal that this type of dangerous incitement against officers of the law is not welcome in our democracy. And if they don't, it will send an equally clear signal about how far they are willing to go. Please sign today."
(Move On)
Aging: Clues for the 'Stay Sharp' Diet
Its routine inclusion in multivitamins aside, many health-conscious people have deliberately added folate supplement to their diets because of evidence that it has cardiovascular benefits. This is in addition to its established benefit in averting certain birth defects in the developing embryo when taken by women in pregnancy.
PBS Goes Inexorably Republican
GOP-Style 'Objectivity' Rules! "The CPB is the private, nonprofit corporation that Congress established in 1967 to bankroll PBS and its member stations, public radio, and online media. The CPB charter mirrors the language of the Fairness Doctrine, stipulating that the corporation adhere to 'objectivity and balance in all programs or series of programs of a controversial nature.'
The new CPB chairman, Republican Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, invokes the 'objectivity and balance' clause to demand that PBS abandon what he considers to be its liberal line. Tomlinson's crusade, documented in a Page One story in yesterday's (May 2) New York Times, includes the hiring of two CPB ombudsmen to inspect public television and radio content for bias. The Times says he's put in the fix for a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee to take the recently vacated slot as CPB president and CEO. Tomlinson also helped raise funds for The Journal Editorial Report, the leaden public-affairs program produced in conjunction with the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, and has implored public stations to air it. Tomlinson cracked the CPB 'objectivity and balance' whip in December 2003 with a letter to the head of PBS stating that 'Now With Bill Moyers does not does not contain anything approaching the balance the law requires for public broadcasting.'"
(Slate)
Brain-Injured Fireman's Recovery Takes Science Into a Murky Area
"When Donald Herbert broke 10 years of virtual silence on Saturday and announced that he wanted to speak to his wife, his family and doctors were astonished and bewildered.
Mr. Herbert, 44, a Buffalo firefighter who suffered severe brain damage after being struck by debris in a burning building in 1995, had mustered only 'yes' and 'no' answers sporadically throughout the years, passing his days in front of a television that he could barely see because his vision was so badly blurred.
Neurologists said yesterday that such remarkable recoveries for people with severe brain damage are rare - but perhaps not as rare as the medical literature suggests."
(New York Times ) And, no, just to head off the inevitable Rabid Right take on this, his recovery has absolutely no bearing on Terry Schiavo's case. You heard it here first.
Embracing the Random
The New York Times review of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival draws interesting parallels between the shape of a festival and the metaphysics of our technologically-mediated listening habits: "A few years ago, some music festivals seemed to reflect a world that was increasingly organized around obsessive fan Web sites. Like-minded listeners were forming micro-communities online, and you would see something similar at multistage festivals: ravers in the D.J. tent, hip-hop kids watching the rappers, thrift-store shoppers swooning over the indie-rockers, and so on.
But this year's Coachella festival suggested a different model: narrow obsession has come to seem less appealing than broad familiarity. Insular Web sites seem positively old-fashioned compared to the scrupulously eclectic world of MP3 bloggers and iPod Shuffle owners, all of them finding ways to make chaos part of their listening experience. As the current Apple slogan has it, 'Life is random,' and listeners seem to be finding ways to make that truism true." (New York Times )
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