Thursday, February 16

TTFN 

My family and I are leaving for distant lands. I will be away from keyboard and monitor for the rest of February. FmH will resume posts as of March 1st.

It often seems that some of the most compelling stories break while I am away from the media and the web. (Let us hope we have not nuked Iran by the time I return.) Please feel free to email me links to anything that pops up before I'm back, especially anything you think I might want to comment on here.

Enjoy the rest of February; see you soon.

2/16/2006 06:56:00 PM   •  

The Abu Ghraib Files 

• “ Never-published photos, and an internal Army report, show more Iraqi prisoner abuse -- evidence the government is fighting to hide.



• A gallery of Abu Ghraib photos



• Why we're publishing the new Abu Ghraib photos: America -- and the world -- has the right to know what was done in our name” (Salon)

Technorati tags: Iraq torture Abu_Ghraib

2/16/2006 06:48:00 PM   •  

Israeli Anti-Semitic Cartoon Contest 

“The story so far: Danish paper publishes cartoons that mock Muslims. An Iranian paper responds with a Holocaust cartoons contest. Now, a group of Israelis announce their own anti-Semitic cartoons contest. Amitai Sandy, the publisher of Tel-Aviv, Israel-based Dimona Comix, and founder of the contest jokes, “We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published! No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”” (Drawn! via boing boing)

Technorati tags: anti-semitic anti-semitism cartoon controversy

2/16/2006 06:27:00 PM   •  

Ecstasy and loud music are a bad mix 

“Partygoers who take the recreational drug ecstasy may face a greater risk of long-term brain damage if they bombard themselves with loud music all night long.

The warning follows experiments in rats that were simultaneously exposed to loud noise and MDMA, aka ecstasy. The noise both intensified and prolonged the effects of the drug on the animals' brains.

Michelangelo Iannone of Italy's Institute of Neurological Science in Catanzaro and his colleagues gave rats varying doses of MDMA while bombarding them with white noise for 3 hours at the maximum volume permitted in Italian nightclubs.

Those given the highest dose of ecstasy, equivalent to the average amount taken by a partygoer on a night out, experienced a slump in electrical power of the cerebral cortex for up to five days after the noise was switched off. Previous studies suggest that such loss of power is related to brain hyperactivity and can ultimately lead to depression.

Rats on high doses that were not exposed to noise, and those exposed to noise but given lower doses of MDMA, experienced equally large slumps in brain power, but these only lasted for about one day (BMC Neuroscience, DOI :10.1186/1471-2202-7-13).

Since the experiments were in rats, it is hard to work out what the results mean for humans, but they do suggest that we need to know more about how ecstasy users are affected by their environment.” (New Scientist)

Technorati tags: MDMA Ecstasy risks

2/16/2006 06:17:00 PM   •  

The Shooter-in-Chief 

[This is an expanded and hopefully more coherent version, with the obvious advantages of some hindsight, of the nascent and inchoate reactions to Cheney's 'blunder' I scribbled yesterday morning. — FmH] Of course the White House played the joke angle on Cheney's shooting of his hunting partner. It was just a 'minor' load of buckshot birdshot and it caused just a 'minor' heart attack. If someone had written fiction revolving around the accidental shooting victim suffering a cardiac event, we would consider it too implausible to believe, an old-fashioned clumsy deus ex machina plot device. Just when the v.p. thought it was safe to come out of the brush and take his licks for "peppering" his friend in the face with a little birdshot, the guy has the nerve to have some cardiac ischemia and make it impossible to trivialize the event.

This was no trivial flesh wound, however, if the blast impelled a shotgun pellet all the way to the heart! And we have a White House so obsessed with secrecy and covering its tail that neither Cheney nor Bush made a public statement about the vice president's crime until Cheney's flip and blasé remarks on Wednesday. No wonder Scott McClellan was abit testy having sole accountability. What a lousy job, having to defend this dysadministration's egregious failures! It is of course a tried and true administration tactic, with the footprint of Karl Rove all over it, to shift the blame onto the press for being too interested in an official's failings, and to obscure the difference between prompt and full disclosure and the Bush cabal's pitiful excuse for public relations. Sympathetic observers style Cheney as some sort of hero for not being responsive to the dictates of public opinion and not knwtowing to the press. In reality, he betrays his utter contempt for any accountability. "L'état, c'est moi" indeed.

As Sidney Blumenthal (who authored one of the best recent dissections of Cheney's reign) points out in radio interviews since the shooting, the handling of this event is emblematic of the pathology in the way this administration, and particularly Cheney, exercises power. Blumenthal marvels at the fact that Cheney misled not only the press and the public but the White House as well. (Not that Bush would have done anything about it if he had learned the truth in a timely fashion...) If Bush were anything other than an ineffectual and clueless puppet, he would realize, in the light of this incident if he has not seen it before, that he is treated with contempt by his Shadow President and puppeteer-in-chief.

Another tried and true Rove tactic, of course, is to blame the victim. McClellan tried, obviously given his talking points. Unfortunately, even the hunting lobby, no enemy of the G.O.P., has put a stop to that with an outpouring of straight talk about the responsibilities of the gun user. Clearly, Cheney has no more attention or concern for the rules of gun handling than he does for the rules of anything else. For those who opine that this was "just an accident" and "not a crime", my nonlegal opinion is that it fits the bill of criminal negligence, although it is somewhat a moot point given how unlikely it is that a prosecutor, a judge or a jury in the state of Texas would try or convict him.

Of course the real reason there was no notification to the press or local authorities until the next day, despite the v.p.'s paltry excuses about how he had no press attaché with him, was probably the scramble there on the ranch to get everyone's stories in line and confer with Rove about how best to spin it. I imagine Cheney did his best to get someone else to take responsibility but did not succeed. And I imagine he had to wait for his blood alcohol level to zero out before he gave permission to his Secret Service blockade to allow local law enforcement through. The lady certainly did protest too much that there was "no alcohol involved" (later amended to "just one beer"). I found myself fantasizing that Armstrong had to call the local paper to tip them off about the event to preempt Cheney's bullying everyone to tell a different version of the story, although most people think it was some sort of closing ranks. Blumenthal points out that both Rove and Cheney owe their fortunes to the Armstrong dynasty by the way — Rove's original Texas consulting work having been bankrolled by Katherine Armostrong's father, and Cheney being hired into Hallibutron by her mother.

2/16/2006 03:40:00 PM   •  

Hit Refresh? 

Why Bush May be Thinking about Replacing Cheney: “He's been painted as the dark force of the administration, and now there's a mental picture to go with the reputation. Pull! Sorry, Harry! Pull!” — Peggy Noonan (WSJ Opinion Journal)

Technorati tags: Bush Cheney Noonan

2/16/2006 02:46:00 PM   •  

WTO Director-General's weblog 

Miguel wrote to point out that WTO Director-General: Pascal Lamy started a weblog/diary with links to a public commenting forum. So far, there are entries from the Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in December. While some of the comments are merely ingratiating compliments to Lamy, there seems a nascent attemtp to get a dialogue going on the limitations of what the WTO can do; Lamy has acknowledged his frustrations.

2/16/2006 07:21:00 AM   •  

Wednesday, February 15

Marilyn and Me: 

Dealing With Illusions (or Life on a Parkinson's Drug): “I was drinking coffee in the kitchen one night a few years ago when I heard, emanating from our stereo system two rooms away, the unmistakable voice of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President."

Startled, I asked my wife, Gina, what that recording was doing on our stereo.

"You're hallucinating," she said. "That's the Grateful Dead. It's not even close to 'Happy Birthday,' much less Marilyn Monroe."” (New York Times)

Technorati tags: Parkinson's hallucinations illusions psychology neuropsychology neurology

2/15/2006 07:11:00 AM   •  

Tuesday, February 14

Nuclear Transport 

“For the first time in more than 20 years, U.S. nuclear-weapons scientists are designing a new H-bomb, the first of probably several new nuclear explosives on the drawing boards.

If they succeed, in perhaps 20 or 25 more years, the United States would have an entirely new nuclear arsenal, and a highly automated factory capable of turning out more warheads as needed, as well as new kinds of warheads.

"We are on the verge of an exciting time," the nation's top nuclear weapons executive, Linton Brooks, said last week at Lawrence Livermore weapons design laboratory.” (Oakland Tribune)

2/14/2006 11:15:00 PM   •  

'Mission Accomplished' Dept., cont'd 

Harvard study blasts Bush education policy: “President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind education policy has in some cases benefited white middle-class children over blacks and other minorities in poorer regions, a Harvard University study showed on Tuesday.

Political compromises forged between some states and the federal government have allowed schools in some predominantly white districts to dodge penalties faced by regions with larger ethnic minority populations, the study said.

Bush's 2001 No Child Left Behind Act was meant to introduce national standards to an education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for black Americans and Hispanics.

But instead of uniform standards, the policy has allowed various states to negotiate treaties and bargains to reduce the number of schools and districts identified as failing, said the study by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project.” (Yahoo! News)

Technorati tags: anti-Bush education No_Child_Left_Behind

2/14/2006 11:11:00 PM   •  

Monday, February 13

The Secret Cause of Flame Wars 

Egocentrism and the web: a recent study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that, although people think they have correctly interpreted the tone of emails they receive 90% of the time, they have only random odds (50/50%) of being right. And people think that the tone they intend to use in sending a message will be sensed correctnyl by the receiver around 80% of the time. The researchers suggest that this is because of 'egocentrism':

"People often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they 'hear' the tone they intend in their head as they write," Epley explains. At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations.

A better term, I think, is 'subjectivity'. Perception is inevitably shaped by our mindset and expectations. Communicationon the web is quite prone to this trap, it seems. First of all, it is usually pithy and condensed, leaving fewer clues from context. It is a tenet of communication theory that redundancy improves the signal-to-noise ratio, yet those who include more explicit statements of their emotional state (which I find prescient anticipation of the fact that their tone would otherwise be opaque to their readers), such as smileys or written interjections such as "[grin]", are considered kitschy. Keep watch — the temptation to add these extra clues varies inversely with the average size of a message, being greatest in instant messaging and SMS. In conditions of decreased certainty about the intentions of a stranger interacting with you, it makes evolutionary sense to assume hostility and respond defensively.

Web communication may be more susceptible to this problem for another reason. It is a stereotype of social psychology, although I believe it, that women are on the whole more sensitive nuanced communicators; web communication on the whole has been dominated by males. And recall the speculation several years ago that geekiness is a watered-down version of Asperger's Syndrome? This is the autistic-spectrum disorder which comes without intellectual impairments and is characterized by some or all of the following: impairment in nonverbal behaviors and gestures to regulate social interaction; impairment in age-appropriate peer relationships; lack of social or emotional reciprocity; restricted, repetitive or stereotypical behavior patterns; etc. This might be a neurological basis for the predominant insensitivity to nonverbal factors in composing and interpreting web communications. (Wired News via walker)

Technorati tags: internet psychology communication

2/13/2006 06:51:00 PM   •  

Sunday, February 12

"...an excellent, conscientious shot..." 

As a friend wrote me today, you really can't make this stuff up. (Reuters)

2/12/2006 11:58:00 PM   •  

Photo: Bush with Abramoff 

George W. Bush: "...no recollection of meeting Jack Abramoff..." Jack Abramoff: "...met Bush almost a dozen times over the past five years..." (truthout)

2/12/2006 08:56:00 PM   •  

Mind Control by Parasites 

"Half of the world's human population is infected with Toxoplasma, parasites in the body—and the brain. Remember that.

Toxoplasma gondii is a common parasite found in the guts of cats; it sheds eggs that are picked up by rats and other animals that are eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts in the bodies of the intermediate rat hosts, including in the brain.

Since cats don't want to eat dead, decaying prey, Toxoplasma takes the evolutionarily sound course of being a 'good' parasite, leaving the rats perfectly healthy. Or are they?

Oxford scientists discovered that the minds of the infected rats have been subtly altered. In a series of experiments, they demonstrated that healthy rats will prudently avoid areas that have been doused with cat urine. In fact, when scientists test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to induce neurochemical panic.

However, it turns out that Toxoplasma-ridden rats show no such reaction. In fact, some of the infected rats actually seek out the cat urine-marked areas again and again. The parasite alters the mind (and thus the behavior) of the rat for its own benefit.

If the parasite can alter rat behavior, does it have any effect on humans?" (Yahoo! News)

2/12/2006 07:34:00 PM   •  

Bottled water consumption is taxing the world's ecosystem 

In western countries, it is usually no safer than tap water but can cost 10,000 times more. The energy consumption, raw materials for the petroleum-based plastic bottles in which it is sold, and transportation costs associated with its production induce massive costs. Bottling water for export has also actually induced water shortages in some regions of the developing world. And increasingly, the bottled-water market has been taken over by the multinational beverage corporations. Even if you started drinking bottled water back when it was "spring water", don't imagine it is anymore. Much bottled water started out as tap water, often with minerals of dubious value added. In many places, the quality of drinking water is regulated more stringently than that of the bottled water people drink instead. A fool and his money are soon parted, the saying goes. If you are concerned about the health or the taste of your home water, a far better solution is at-home filtration; a matter of true trickle-down economics, it seems to me. (Yahoo! News)

2/12/2006 07:19:00 PM   •  

Miss Manners for a Pandemic Age 

Enter the 'Elbow Bump': “To the pantheon of social arbiters who came up with the firm handshake, the formal bow and the air kiss, get ready to add a new fashion god: the World Health Organization, chief advocate of the "elbow bump."” (New York Times)

Technorati tags: pandemic etiquette

2/12/2006 07:07:00 PM   •  

Survival comes first for the last Stone Age tribe 

"Two poachers lie in shallow graves beside the Indian Ocean after they trespassed on an endangered tribe's island. Now even relatives of the victims' want the killers left alone. " (Guardian.UK)

2/12/2006 07:02:00 PM   •  

The Lowdown on Sweet? 

A seven-year study of aspartame (NutraSweet) comes down on the side of cancer risk. Unlike prior aspartame studies, Dr Morando Soffritti's group from Bologna used dosage ranges in rats which, mg. per kg. were in the range of what a heavy diet soda drinker might consume... and these resulted in increased rates of leukemias, lymphomas and other tumors, although the New York Times piece does not say how much the relative risk was increased. Predictably, the Calorie Control Council — an artificial-sweetener industry trade group with the manufacturers' interests, not those of consumers of low-calorie foods, at heart — objects. One of their points is that the rats exposed to the aspartame had been allowed to live until their natural deaths, longer than the two-year standard established by the United States government's National Toxicology Program, so the cancers could have been from causes other than the aspartame. Pretty absurd objection, first, because I am confident that the methodology compared cancer rates with known background rates in rats. And many studies which are investigating subtly-developing delayed effects will appear to have negative findings if the duration of the study is arbitrarily limited.

The Soffritti study was motivated by inadequacies in the original pharmaceutical industry studies of the '70's used to establish the safety of the additive. Incidentally, for a decade encompassing much of the approval process for aspartame, Searle was headed by none other than Donald Rumsfeld. The FDA had found that the Searle studies had been so poorly conceived and executed that it had asked the Justice Dept. to open a grand jury investigation into whether they were fraudulent. Lo and behold, Samuel Skinner, the U.S. attorney handling the investigation, was hired by a law firm which had a plum contract with Searle and later appointed George W. Bush's transportation secretary. The deputy who handled the investigation after Skinner left was also hired by the same law firm. A grand jury has never been convened. An independent panel reviewing Searle's own data concluded that one of the studies had shown an increased incidence of brain tumors in rats fed aspartame and suggested that approval of the additive be withheld pending further studies. They were overruled by an FDA commissioner who granted approval to aspartame a short while after his appointment. Shortly after, he left and joined the public relations firm which represented Searle. But the Calorie Control Council says it is absurd to think that Searle was trying to influence government regulation with lucrative job offers. Looking at one five-year period of aspartame studies in medical journals, one critic found that, while 74 of 74 industry-funded studies found that the additive is safe, 84 of 92 independently funded articles identified health concerns.

In my own field of psychiatry, many practitoners feel that aspartame exacerbates mood and anxiety disorder symptoms and that treatment is easier if it is eliminated from the patient's diet. Aspartame is made up of the two amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid, the former of which is speculated to upset neurotransmitter balance. The carcinogenicity studies speculate that the morbidity and mortality may be accounted for by the metabolism of aspartame to methanol and thence to the known carcinogen formaldehyde.

The abstract and full text of the Soffritti study are available here, from Environmental Health Perspectives.

Technorati tags: carcinogens food sweeteners aspartame

2/12/2006 06:58:00 PM   •  

Laura Bush: Hilary's Criticism is Out of Bounds 

Laura Bush, fed her lines on ABC News, responded that yes, indeed, Hilary Clinton's criticism of her husband was "out of bounds". She suggested Clinton exercise somewhat more empathy in light of her own experience as First Lady. What disingenuous hypocrisy. Susan G's commentary on Daily Kos just about says it all:

“Mrs. Bush, forgive me if I think Mrs. Clinton faced a bit more personal humiliation and vitriol from the "compassionate conservative" side of the aisle during President Clinton's term of office than your husband faces today (and with a lot more grace and class than he does, I might add). Her intimate life was combed over with glee by opponents during and after the Lewinsky scandal; she was - and remains to this day - the target of some of the most misogynistic, woman-loathing rhetoric on the American scene.

Many wives in Mrs. Clinton's circumstances would have dumped their philandering spouses and slunk off to a corner of Montana to float the rest of their lives away in a lake of chardonnay. Instead, she ran for political office and won. She's not a member of some mythical Former First Ladies Club in which you, Mrs. Bush, can call in chits, nor did she ever position herself to be.

She's a working opposition senator, and calling your husband's administration on its lies, deceptions and ineptitude is her job as part of those quaint checks and balances. She's calling him to task for his public policies. It's not, as you put it, "out of bounds," as one could argue the details of her husband's sex life were.

If she is made of sterner stuff than you or your husband, Mrs. Bush, well ... if you can't take the heat, get out of the national kitchen (please? Pretty please?). ” (Daily Kos)

Technorati tags: anti-Bush Clinton

2/12/2006 12:52:00 PM   •