Saturday, July 7, 2007

A president transformed 

"It is so moving to see how a willing executioner can soften into a man of compassion - for cronies..." — Terry Jones (Guardian.UK)

And: 

Lonely and lame, Bush agonises over legacy

"President George Bush turned 61 yesterday but he had little to celebrate at the end of a week in which his isolation has been exposed as never before." — Ewen McAskill (Guardian.UK)

7/07/2007 08:55:00 PM   •  

Thursday, July 5, 2007

'I Am Worm, Hear Me Roar' 

Birth Order and I.Q. - Nature or Nurture? "A study released a little over a week ago, which found that eldest children end up, on average, with slightly higher I.Q.’s than younger siblings, was a reminder that the fight for self-definition starts much earlier than freshman year. Families, whatever the relative intelligence of their members, often treat the firstborn as if he or she were the most academic, and the younger siblings fill in other niches: the wild one, the flirt.

These imposed caricatures, in combination with the other labels that accumulate from the sandbox through adolescence, can seem over time like a miserable entourage of identities that can be silenced only with hours of therapy.

But there’s another way to see these alternate identities: as challenges that can sharpen psychological skills. In a country where reinvention is considered a birthright, many people seem to treat old identities the way Houdini treated padlocked boxes: something to wriggle free from, before being dragged down. And psychological research suggests that this ability can be a sign of mental resilience, of taking control of your own story rather than being trapped by it." (New York Times )

7/05/2007 07:43:00 PM   •  

In the Classroom, a New Focus... 

...on Quieting the Mind: "Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept — as they did yoga five years ago — and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects." (New York Times )

7/05/2007 07:40:00 PM   •  

Report: ‘Wild-Eyed’ Bush Thumped Chest While Repeating ‘I Am The President!’ 

"Georgie Anne Geyer writes today in the Dallas Morning News about President Bush’s strange behavior during a recent meeting with “[f]riends of his from Texas.”

But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”

This is the second time in recent weeks that accounts have surfaced of Bush lashing out or “ranting” in private meetings when responding to criticism of his Iraq policy. Chris Nelson of the Nelson Report offered a similar account earlier this month:

'[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.' " (Think Progress )

7/05/2007 07:21:00 PM   •  

The madness 

Entertaining graphic depiction of the building craze in Dubai. "Dubai is said to currently have 15-25% of all the world's cranes." (DubaiIsNuts)

7/05/2007 12:37:00 PM   •  

Plague of bioweapons accidents afflicts the US 

"Deadly germs may be more likely to be spread due to a biodefence lab accident than a biological attack by terrorists. Plague, anthrax, Rocky Mountain spotted fever - these are among the bioweapons some experts fear could be used in a germ warfare attack against the US. But the public has had near-misses with those diseases and others over the past five years, ironically because of accidents in labs that were working to defend against bioterrorists. Even worse, they may be only the tip of an iceberg." (New Scientist)

7/05/2007 12:35:00 PM   •  

New antidotes may combat deadliest poisons 

"Ricin, cholera toxin and shiga toxin, produced by deadly strains of E. coli, are the stuff of every poisoner's handbook — because there is no antidote. Now Jose Saenz and colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, may have found one." (New Scientist)

7/05/2007 12:33:00 PM   •  

Housekeeping 

Yes, I was traveling for a few days in there but the real reason for the paucity of posts here was a publishing problem. Google's FTP process and my web host were not getting along. I finally had the time to track down the problem and resolve it last evening.

7/05/2007 10:35:00 AM   •  

Bush Wonders Why America Hates Him 

"President Bush is holding private meetings 'over sodas and sparkling water' in which he asks trusted advisers -- 'Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?'

This according to the Washington Post.

'Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration,' the Post's Peter Baker writes in the lead story for Monday's paper. 'These sessions, usually held in the Oval Office or the elegant living areas of the executive mansion, are never listed on the president's public schedule and remain largely unknown even to many on his staff.'" (AlterNet )

7/05/2007 12:59:00 AM   •  

Meet the neighbours 

Is the search for aliens such a good idea? (Independent.UK)

7/05/2007 12:54:00 AM   •  

Does self-help breed helplessness? 

Interview with Jennifer Neisslein, author of Practically Perfect in Every Way. (Salon)

Labels: iconoclasm

7/05/2007 12:45:00 AM   •  

Monday, July 2, 2007

Why Do Retirees Buy Such Big Houses? 

...and Other Riddles From The Economic Naturalist: "The Cornell economics professor Robert Frank begins a semester by asking his students to ask and answer a real-world economics question in 500 words or less. He has now compiled these essays in a book called The Economic Naturalist. It is a great deal of fun, and interesting. Below are some excerpts, including the illustrations by Mick Stevens..."

(Freakonomics via walker)

Labels: books, economics

7/02/2007 06:41:00 PM   •  

Luxury Then and Luxury Now 

"...[S]omewhere in the loving confluence between the European class system and North American mass media, the modern prestige brand came into its own. No French clerk in the nineteenth century would have dreamed of owning an Hermés saddle or Louis Vuitton luggage, if, indeed, he had ever even heard those names. Yet by the early twentieth century, thanks largely to an emerging breed of magazines like Harper’s Bazaar, Women’s Wear Daily, and Vogue, aspirational middle-class Americans had not only heard the names, they wanted them for themselves. In the absence of a bona fide US aristocracy, the paraphernalia of the Old World ruling classes would do just as well.

For the manufacturers of luxury, this presented a dilemma. On the one hand, they wanted to expand, to cash in on the burgeoning demand. On the other hand, the nature of their goods – hand-crafted, finite production – made it near-impossible to meet that demand without compromise. Then they had a collective realization. While artisans and fine materials are limited in supply, the one thing that can be replicated ad infinitum is the brand: the name, the monogram, the insignia." (Adbusters)

Labels: anticonsumerism

7/02/2007 06:35:00 PM   •  

French Activists Speak Out Against Invasive Ads 

The Dismantlers: "Formed a year ago in Paris, Le Collectif des Déboulonneurs are one of several French groups on a crusade against consumerism and aggressive advertising. Staging high-profile protests across the country, the group demands that advertisements in public spaces be restricted to dimensions of 50 x 70 cm (the maximum size for political posters). This March, the Déboulonneurs won a huge symbolic victory at a trial when they were found guilty of vandalizing billboards, but only fined €1 – vastly less than the €75,000 and five years in prison which they could have incurred. Alex Barret, one of the founding members who was involved with the trial, shared his thoughts with Adbusters."

7/02/2007 06:30:00 PM   •  

Armies Must Ready for Global Warming Role - Britain 

"Global warming is such a threat to security that military planners must build it into their calculations, the head of Britain's armed forces said on Monday.


Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, said risks that climate change could cause weakened states to disintegrate and produce major humanitarian disasters or exploitation by armed groups had to become a feature of military planning." (Planet Ark)

7/02/2007 06:14:00 PM   •  

Has a Tunguska Crater Been Found? 

"In the online journal Terra Nova, a team of Italian researchers led by marine geologist Luca Gasperini reports on what may be the missing Tunguska impact crater. Tunguska is a household name for meteorite enthusiasts. It's the best-known destructive impact to have occurred in the modern era, a blast that destroyed some 800 square miles of remote forest near the Tunguska River in eastern Siberia on the morning of June 30, 1908. Something — a small asteroid or comet — entered the atmosphere and exploded with a force equal to about 15 million tons of TNT. That's 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Experts think the blast occurred some 5 miles above the ground, and— here's the catch — no crater, not even the tiniest trace of the impactor, has ever been found. Gasperini's team suspects that Lake Cheko, located some 5 miles north-northwest of the blast's suspected epicenter was gouged out when the impactor struck and later filled with water. The region is remote, and it's unclear from old maps whether the lake existed before 1908. The team's investigation of the lake bottom's geology revealed a strange funnel-like shape that differs from those of neighboring lakes but is consistent with an impact origin. They go on to say that it might have formed from a fragment of the main-body explosion. " (Sky and Telescope via abby)

7/02/2007 03:02:00 PM   •