...and even then, not so much. The FBI doesn't seem to be on the stick here.

This article in the New York Times outlines some intriguing precursors to last Fall's anthrax letters.

The only possible positive spin on this is that, perhaps, whomever perpetrated these hoaxes was trying to draw attention to the lack of preparedness for biological terrorism. When related ~ but fake ~ substances failed to get the attention of the authorities, maybe he rode the coattails of September 11th by using the real thing. A hideous crime, I hasten to add, which killed five people and made many others very sick.

5:49:02 PM    please comment []

It sounds all nice and fuzzy: "Choice Theory." Treat people well yourself, and don't worry about controlling other people's behavior. It makes a lot of sense, really, and one town in upstate New York ~ Corning ~ has launched the Choice Community Project to propagate the meme with training for adults in a variety of settings, including jail, and for teachers in the school system. They also plan to introduce it into the school curriculum from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

The man who devised this program, Dr. William Glasser, has been at it for awhile.

When asked whether his prescription of the "caring habits" might be construed as naïve, Dr. Glasser said: "It doesn't go against human nature, but it goes against what everyone believes. I am naïve. I've made a good living being naïve, and people listen to me."

Most mental-health professionals say there is nothing particularly startling or even original about Dr. Glasser's views on personal responsibility and relationships. Rather, he has popularized and expounded on theories set out decades ago by thinkers like the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, the psychologist Abraham Maslow and the psychotherapist Carl Rogers.

"It's apple pie," said Dr. Frank J. Bourke, a psychologist who serves on the project's steering committee, of Dr. Glasser's theories. `It's mainstream clinical opinion.`

Still, I've got to wonder how much confidence to place in a person who believes that all mental illness is chosen, including manic/depression and schizophrenia.

Dr. Glasser explains the symptoms of schizophrenia as behaviors that an individual chooses when one or more of the four human needs is not being met, and he has amply identified those needs in his writing as freedom, power, fun and a sense of love and belonging. "Choice theory is about basic needs," he said, "and if you can't satisfy them you're going to be unhappy, so the creative parts of our brain create schizophrenia and manic depression."

Didn't we go through all this awhile back with R.D. Laing, and with the "refridgerator mother" theories and the like? What, we're returning to the Just Snap Out of It approach to therapy? If your not a happy Stepford citizen, that's just a choice you're making?

I see the potential for great abuse here.

5:41:47 PM    please comment []

I expect I'll be reading Garry Wills's Why I am a Catholic. I'm not a Catholic, but I respect Wills's intelligence and am curious to read how he defines his faith.

The relationship of a believer (self-defined) to a church (community) is the source both of strength and of stress for those who struggle to reconcile modernity and faith. Whether and/or how to participate in any form of institution, no matter how loosely defined, shapes the experience of worship in basic ways. How much agreement (never mind dogma) must a group share in order to think of themselves as a community?

I don't have answers to these questions, but I live with them and feel them to be important.

5:26:36 PM    please comment []

I learned to script in HyperCard in 1984, and every bit of programming that I now know stems from the rush I got when I realized that I could tell a computer what to do. I was making little stacks with hyperlinks from buttons and images and text before the World Wide Web was a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eye. In fact, it's only quite recently that the web has begun to catch up with the interactive possibilities that lurked beneath the simple exterior of HyperCard.

So I'm pleased to see that SuperCard soldiers on, and that an OS X version is due this summer (perhaps at MacWorld?). SuperTalk is an easy-to-learn language, and a great way for beginners to get a feel for writing applications without having to get down in the syntactical weeds.

5:16:04 PM    please comment []

My ex-boyfriend A- is a molecular biologist, so I've known for a long time that scientists with skillz can cook up a whole banquet of lethal dishes in the lab. Pandora's box is well and truly opened.

Now everyone else knows it too.

1:41:14 AM    please comment []

As I explained when I was fifteen, it's because they are all dedicated to the same one beautiful peaceful thing. (Yeah, right. I think I was cured of this idealism with further exposure.)

I was also full of good resolutions about how I'd behave in the new school year, and remorse for my lack of discipline.

Sound familiar?

1:35:37 AM    please comment []