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Saturday, May 25, 2002

dnArt

"All of these productions, like so much contemporary art, reflect the way we view the power of genetics � for good or otherwise � to create new, extended and possibly transformed lives for us. Yet what underlies these fantasies and fears is a simple and unsurprising fact. As Lisa Vincler, a bioethicist and assistant attorney general in Washington State, put it bluntly, "Our culture just doesn't have an attitude that's very accepting of death." Billions of dollars in new genome-based drugs will be made on the principle that we are impatient with nature's judgments. And for all its wariness, this new gene art now finds itself pulled into the colossal force field that science and money have made."

rich man, porous managers

"But as we need some version of a Warren Commission to get to the bottom of what went wrong, so we need an inverted Manhattan Project (one that will stop a bomb rather than build one) to recruit America's best minds to set things right. Mr. Ridge, a decent politician with no expertise in intelligence or counterterrorism, is a frivolous choice for security czar. Mr. Ashcroft, an aspiring J. Edgar Hoover isolated from reality by a circle of cronies, lacks the intellect and leadership ability to take on an adversary as cunning as Osama bin Laden. What he cares about most is maximizing his own power, and not just over civil liberties. His Justice Department has joined in the effort to block Mr. Ridge from consolidating the four overlapping agencies in charge of watching American borders. Now we learn, with the news of his suppression of the F.B.I. Phoenix memo, that Mr. Ashcroft will even cut the president out of the loop of law-enforcement embarrassments occurring on his watch."

880 oncologists cant be wrong

"Medical marijuana can be a legitimate treatment for cancer patients who are nauseated by chemotherapy, AIDS patients who lose their appetites and other seriously ill people. In cases where a patient is considering stopping treatment because of the agony, or cannot keep food down, medical marijuana can be life-saving. The federal government's attempt to block its use flies in the face of mainstream medical opinion. One Harvard study of 2,000 oncologists found that 44 percent had recommended marijuana to patients undergoing chemotherapy."

two can play at that game

"An experimental remote-controlled fighter jet developed by the US military has performed its first test flight."

"LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- After watching the popularity of video gaming grow into a $9 billion business last year, the U.S. military is launching a video game with an eye toward recruiting."

having visions

"We went last week to a demonstration of television on the sixty-second floor of the R.C.A. Building, where some rather startling images were ending up after being tossed around the midtown district. We sat in a darkened room squarely in front of a receiving set and, as we understand the matter, the persons and objects which we saw were down on the third floor of the same building, where they were first photographed televisually by an iconoscope, thence sent by direct wire to the Empire State Building, and then came back on a megacycle to the sixty-second floor of R.C.A. The magical unlikelihood of this occasion was not lessened any by the fact that a stranger wearing a telephone around his neck was crawling about on all fours in the darkness at our feet. This didn't make television seem any too practical for the living room of one's own home, although of course homes are changing."

denver nuggets

"An advertising firm is handing out signs to panhandlers with a plug for the company � a stunt homeless advocates say trivializes the plight of those on the streets."

"Laminated signs with snappy messages such as, "At Least I'm Not Spamming Your E-Mail," and "Hell, It Beats a Cubicle," have begun replacing cardboard placards normally waved by panhandlers at motorists."

money honeys

"The average net worth of the individual members of the Bush cabinet, including the President and Vice President, was between $9.3 and $27.3 million. That�s nearly ten times the average net worth of the cabinet officials who were their immediate predecessors, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of executive branch personal financial disclosure forms."

tabula rasa

"BERLIN (Reuters) - An irreverent left-leaning German newspaper published a blank front page on Friday under the headline "Bush's historic speech" to mock the U.S. president's address in the Reichstag on Thursday."

Friday, May 24, 2002

the next time you see me coming youd better run

booknotes cruises down highway 61 on bobby zimmerman's 61st birthday.

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