Oliver Sacks: The Abyss
‘Though one cannot have direct knowledge of one’s own amnesia, there may be ways to infer it: from the expressions on people’s faces when one has repeated something half a dozen times; when one looks down at one’s coffee cup and finds that it is empty; when one looks at one’s diary and sees entries in one’s own handwriting. Lacking memory, lacking direct experiential knowledge, amnesiacs have to make hypotheses and inferences, and they usually make plausible ones. They can infer that they have been doing something, been somewhere, even though they cannot recollect what or where. Yet Clive, rather than making plausible guesses, always came to the conclusion that he had just been "awakened," that he had been "dead." This seemed to me a reflection of the almost instantaneous effacement of perception for Clive
Hillary Health Care II
‘Democratic Presidential frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) outlined her health care plan on Monday. "I believe that everyone
Ranks Of Child Soldiers Swell Again In Congo
‘Kitchanga, Congo – The prisoners are huddled in a classroom, on display for journalists visiting the rebels led by Gen. Laurent Nkunda. The setting is appropriate, because half of these soldiers are boys who should be in school but have been pressed into war.
‘Fourteen-year-old Bahati Mugisha, a soldier with a Hutu militia, says he was told in early September that he was going to join the Congolese Army. Instead, he was thrown into a fierce battle against Tutsi neighbors in the district of Ngunga, and was captured just days ago, on Sept. 9.
‘"[T]hey told us we were going to fight the Tutsis," says Bahati, speaking in the presence of a rebel intelligence officer. "I’m 14, but there are many boys younger than me. It’s hard to know how many died in battle, but I saw two who died."’ (Christian Science Monitor article).
Time To Panic?
‘Barack Obama is improving rapidly as a presidential candidate. His showing at the Service Employees International Union’s spring health-care forum was so bad, an Obama adviser labeled it a "searing experience." But he was dazzling at an SEIU forum on Monday, putting to rest any concern that Obama is too cool and abstract to talk to regular folks. His Tuesday speech unveiling a middle-class tax-cut proposal demonstrated that Obama has moved past the uplifting, but vague, rhetoric of his early campaign and toward concrete policy ideas.
‘This is good news for Obama and his fans, but is it enough good news? While he’s been improving, Hillary Clinton has been improving faster. He was once the Democratic Party phenomenon, but she’s the one with the momentum in the polls. She now leads the national polls by 20 points. In the crucial states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, she’s way ahead, too. Obama, by contrast, is…
Bolivia Needs Our Solidarity
‘For Bolivia’s indigenous majority there is no going back. The election in 2005 of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, marked a watershed
Phil Noir Bulletin: Deadlock
‘"The jury believes they are hung."
‘
The air suddenly went out of Department 106 when Judge Larry Paul Fidler told the courtroom Tuesday afternoon that the Phil Spector trial jury was deadlocked. Apprehension had been building with each passing day that the nine men and three woman were at an impasse. Then, about 11 a.m. this morning, court media and spectators were jolted by two buzzes from the jury room
HillaryCare 2.0
‘Will she flinch? For months now, that’s been the big question about Senator Hillary Clinton and health care. Nobody questioned her command of the issue or her interest in the subject. She’d proven all of that in 1993 and 1994, when she headed up her husband’s health care task force and then became chief spokesperson for his ill-fated plan. But precisely because she "has the scars" from that experience, as she likes to say, many people wondered whether she’d be up for trying all over again. Would she be vague, figuring she had the least to prove on the matter and that details could only come back to haunt her? Would she settle on something less than universal coverage, figuring the political support for it was too weak? Would she kowtow to the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies, which had started donating to her campaigns?
‘The answer seems to be no, no,…
Sexuality In The Confessional: ‘Everything You Know About God Is Wrong’ Exerpt’
Muslim students’ conference, the Sixth Dalai Lama’s erotic poetry, the actual Jesus you find in the Bible, the unknown authors of the Gospels, the musical legacy of nonbelievers, the non-legacy of the Ten Commandments, anti-Semitism in the "Left Behind" novels, sexy Hindu sculpture, atheism, exorcisms, Confucius, the Tibet myth, dung gods, Osho, snake-handlers, Magdalene Asylums, Mark Twain’s little-known takedown of Christianity, and much more, plus 50 images (including a photo of three little girls smoking pot as part of a church service) and a comic (by Neil Gaiman). (More information is here.)
‘"Good Books" contains definitely informative and hopefully entertaining reviews of thirteen religion books, most of which are unfortunately hard to find. Over half were published by university presses and carry hefty price tags, so they typically are spotted only in university libraries, but the info they contain is simply too fascinating to let molder on dusty shelves. A case…
RU Sirius: DC Sex Diarist Bares It All
‘In 2004 bloggers discovered the online sex diary of a Republican Senator’s staffer. Now three years later, and facing a vindictive lawsuit from one of her "outed" lovers, blogger Jessica Cutler has declared bankruptcy.
‘But in this new interview, Cutler says that ironically, she’d started her anonymous online sex diary because she naively thought it would protect her anonymity more than emailing her friends. (Since the emails might eventually be tracked back to her.) And she says she came forward and identified herself to spare her co-workers from the harassment of the press. "I thought taking responsibility was the right thing to do."’ (10 Zen Monkeys article).
Yahoo’s New Social Network Puts You (And Your Friends) In Charge
‘Yahoo is preparing to launch Mash, a whimsical and quirky new social-networking service. The company claims it’s the first one to let you mess with your friends’ profiles.
‘The site, which is in invitation-only beta, gives you the option to leave your profile open to your friends, allowing them to make changes and add modules like widgets or games.
‘We played with the service at the Wired News office, and took turns jokingly adding pictures of unicorns and kittens to each other’s profiles. This setting is the default for all new profiles, and when you invite a friend to join, you’re encouraged to design a page for the prospective member by adding colors, text, RSS feeds and content modules. This can lead to some serious shenanigans. For example, it’s possible to load up friends’ pages with embarrassing background images, glittery text and garish color combinations before they even log in for the…
The Bizarre Case Of Ninel Kulagina
‘Psychokinesis, or the ability to manipulate objects with the mind, is a notoriously difficult to prove ability. Most famously Uri Geller achieved fame in the 1970’s with his seemingly amazing ability to bend spoons with nothing other than the power of his mind. Early on in his career, a number of scientists concluded that Geller does indeed posses psychic and psychokinetic abilities, however controversy over Geller’s power developed after a number of stage magician’s, most recently Criss Angel, claimed that Geller’s abilities are simple stage magic tricks. Whichever is the case, Geller remains the most public individual claiming to have these powers.
‘More obscurely, and more defiant against attempts to debunk, is the case of Ninel Kulagina. A female soldier in the Soviet Red Army, Kulagina found that whenever she became angry poltergeist activity would manifest in the room around her. After some time, she began to sense that the force…
College For Christ’s Sake
‘A new book chronicles how one school seeks to "prepare Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values."’ (MotherJones article).
Labour Tries To Block New BAE Inquiry
‘British ministers are refusing to cooperate with the US criminal investigation into allegations of corruption against BAE, Britain’s biggest arms company, the Guardian can disclose.
‘More than two months after an official request for mutual legal assistance (MLA) was received from Washington, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, has not yet allowed it to be acted upon. The US investigators believe the British are being obstructive.
‘But legal sources said yesterday that the inquiry team had not been deterred by the UK government’s hostile attitude. Some have already begun taking statements from key British witnesses.’ (Guardian article).
Bleeding Into The Mainstream
‘Last December at Ultimate Fighting Championship 66, in the first round of a many-holds-barred, mixed martial arts grudge match between the evenly weighted gladiators Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz, the former floored the latter with a gloved right hook that had been fully sanctioned by the Nevada Athletic Commission. Bleeding from a gash over his eye, his back pressed into the ring
When Free Radicals Become Free Agents
‘Two decades and 17 Sonic Youth records later, Moore is only now releasing his second solo album of proper songs, Trees Outside the Academy. (He released the ragtag punk-rock masterpiece Psychic Hearts in 1995, and has dabbled in various free-jazz side projects along the way.) The big surprise? It’s folky. And it kind of sounds like a Fahey record. Tracks like "Frozen Gtr" and "The Shape Is in a Trance" feature delicately strummed, alternately tuned acoustic guitars and beautiful, swirling violin arrangements. So what gives? Why abandon the full-throttle, no-wave guitar suicide that Moore pioneered for a roots-rock style perfected decades ago? "Because coming out of the New York punk-rock scene, it’s the last thing people would expect you to do," says Moore. In other words, folk is the new punk.
‘A lot has changed for the 49-year-old. For one thing, he and his wife, Sonic Youth bassist and singer Kim Gordon,…
The Death Of Africa
‘After watching the first minutes of Butterflies of Uganda, I realized that its story of African child soldiers wasn’t set in Darfur or Rwanda
MoveOn Unmoved By Furor Over Ad Targeting Petraeus
‘A few weeks before Army Gen. David H. Petraeus’s much-anticipated testimony on Iraq, the leadership of MoveOn.org, the Internet-based liberal group that has rallied its 3 million members around the country to oppose the war, decided on a change in strategy.
‘Rather than making another appeal to moderate Republicans to join Senate Democrats in passing an antiwar resolution, they would take on the credibility of Petraeus himself. Their weapon, they decided in conjunction with Fenton Communications, its Washington-based public relations firm, would be an ad in the New York Times that provocatively played off his name with this question in large letters: "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"’ (Washington Post article).
The Futurist
‘Spotted earlier in the week, lying on the desk of a lead designer at a prestigious advertising design firm: An issue of equally prestigious I.D. (International Design) Magazine, with a cover blurb announcing it as the "3rd Annual Design and Business Issue". On the cover are three sleek rectangular cellular phones in muted shades of slick plastic
