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MRIs reveal Gulf War scars
"This is the first time we have proof of brain damage in
sick Gulf War veterans. There's hope, now that these guys
have a disease. They can be believed - they're not malingering."
Mexico bans some US meat imports
I was interested in this to see whether the rationale was
the same as Europe's: not wanting the rich hormone flavor.
However, "some US ... officials accused Mexico of unfairly
retaliating against the United States after U.S. inspectors found
violations during a recent tour of Mexican plants.
'It was a clear political message,' an executive at a major
US beef company said." Just after they'd recovered from the Oprah incident
by pushing the high-protein diet idea! You just can't win.
Chernobyl back online
"Chernobyl officials insist the reactor is safe."
And they've hired the famous American nuclear safety
expert, Homer Simpson.
Antidepressants unsatisfying
Says that two-thirds of ppl on antidepressants are not
satisfied with their treatment. Article concludes that
depressed patients need to work harder to find the right
doctor. Paradoxical, no? Asking depressed ppl to make
efforts to improve their life? If it was so easy...
MIT student's 96-foot chimney fall
"This latest accident is one of several serious occurrences involving
MIT students this academic year." The others are listed
at the end of the article. This woman was on the roof of
an MIT building and fell down an unused chimney. Some
strange voodoo has caught up with MIT.
Pope says women not servants of men
Talking about the interpretation of Genesis 2, where Eve
is created, Mr. Pope says, ""Just because woman is presented as `a help similar to him' does not
mean that woman is a servant of man.
The expression means that woman is able to collaborate with man
because she is his perfect counterpart... in perfect equality."
Except that women can't be priests.
Onion quote of the day
Should child murderers be tried as adults?
"Children should face the same consequences as adults for
committing murder: four years in a federal penitentiary."
More quantum-computing weirdness
I keep getting these sorts of hints that the world of computing is going to have a revolution and that the
only survivors will be the mathematicians. I mean,
you can read this article, understand every word,
but still have no idea what it means in practical
terms, or how as a programmer you could ever implement
such a thing. This is the same sort of thing I ran
into in trying to understand neural nets. I've picked
up a book on that subject, but I'll tell you about it
after I've read it.
Friday, November 26, 1999
Survivors of Waco are suing the government. They are
battling over evidence, over who gets to talk to
witnesses first, etc. The govt seems to be stalling,
as the judge pointed out: "The court is not unmindful
that the government waits not only until the last day,
but until the last minute, to respond to every order
this court has issued." And get this: apparently an
"infrared videotape shot from a plane in the last hours
of the standoff shows flashes of automatic weapon fire directed toward the compound from government positions."
To read any of the New York Times stories mentioned here,
you need to get a free account.
Friday, November 26, 1999
Banner ads and spam - old wine in new bottles. Hard to
believe that anyone believes these things are effective
at all, isn't it? "The web isn't like print, it isn't like direct mail, and it isn't like some sort of stilted TV. It's a completely different medium with its own challenges, and it's high time that we started looking at it that way. Of course, this isn't a new problem - it took about 20 years for the film industry to realize it could MOVE the camera as it was filming.
"I don't want to have to wait 20 years for everyone to understand how the web is different."
Wednesday, November 24, 1999
A beginner-level guitar-instruction manual features
superstar rocker Eddie Van Halen in the midst of a
raging guitar solo on the cover, and such traditional, public-domain
songs as "Go Tell Aunt Rhody," "Greensleeves" and "Little Brown Jug"
inside. "Get started on your way to playing awesome, brain-frying
guitar solos like the master shredders," the cover proclaims.
Hello? Aren't you Regis Philbin?
People wanting to qualify for Who Wants to be a Millionaire
have been misdialing and calling Stan Kemper. "He got
hundreds of calls from aspiring contestants....
'At the height of it, I was answering the phone twice
a minute.'"
Muslims build mosque in Nazareth
"The Vatican issued a sharply worded criticism of the Israeli
government's decision to authorize the mosque in the boyhood town of
Jesus." Catholics are pissed. Someone had to go and
remind them, rub their faces in the fact, that they don't
have the only game in town! I can't imagine that Jesus
would mind.
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