lundi 9 février 2004

Late. And better than never "Worried, we called Kurt Vonnegut. What did he know?! He said he would tell us when he had more complete information. The next morning we received another fax, a transcript of a conversation he had, he said, with the out-of-print science fiction writer Kilgore Trout." To be found at State of the Asylum (In These Times) Thanks to Norm at One Good Move. zzz "I think it would be best for everyone if we request that the Grammy awards never, ever do a 'tribute' to any legendary bands again," sanely and briefly argues Tom Johnson (Unproductivity). zzz "All of these things -- prefering a lover's lie to the truth, putting your shoes on the conveyer belt, banning a book -- are really the same. Ultimately, each of these things serves to protect an illusion. As human beings, we continually re-invent the world around us. To some extent, this is necessary; our perception of the world is limited by our senses and by our past experience. Filtering is a necessary way to make sense of the world. But the person who bans The Prince, the person who prefers a lover's lie, and the person who puts his shoes on the converer belt are all engaged in something more. They are actively seeking to protect and preserve an illusion -- a deliberately constructed, carefully maintained falsehood." Machiavelli inspired Tacit on "illusion" and 'The Nature of Things'. zzz "'I'm bored. Let's shave my pussy!' No. 3 of 25 attributes of 'The Perfect Woman'." For once, Joe and his book can keep the dubious picture. And take the flak... zzz TDavid has caught up with some of the latest on the Music Biz vs. Filesharing. And found a list of legal online music stores (Make you Go Hmm). zzz "Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS) is a nationwide student group. Although SOS has always been a nationwide student group, there is evidence to suggest that it first appeared at Columbia University. The mission of SOS is to promote the vision of a society based upon the principles of Ingsoc, first articulated by George Orwell in his prophetic novel, 1984." Students for Orwell (thanks. Via 0xDECAFBAD) zzz Ouch! "The old canard that women handle pain better than men is false, but women do have to work harder to inflict pain," Sydney the Medpundit reports. And this I can believe. 10:31:50 PM  link   your views? [] What kind of people write viruses? What's most useful about Cory Doctorow's piece on 'Virus writers profiled' (Boing Boing) is that it will still be there when I imagine the 10-page investigation by Clive Thompson into 'The Virus Underground' (NYT) has disappeared into an expensive, paying archive. Thompson's article, while still easily available, taught me a thing or two. "The virus community attracts a lot of smart but alienated young men, libertarian types who are often flummoxed by the social nuances of life." That much is well-known, and for "young men" you can sometimes read 16-year-olds who describe even younger crackers as "kids". A little more rare is a portrait or two of those out to wreak some strange notion of vengeance. 7:59:05 PM  link   your views? [] Putting the chilling warming bits together Australian journalists have compiled an excellent online dossier on climate change. 'How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age' (Melbourne Indymedia) links items you only too rarely see united on one page. One of the links I find particularly interesting is a "hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to change the Earth's climate" -- very long, but easily navigated at a page on the 'Discovery of Global Warming' (AIP - American Institute of Physics). 6:58:27 PM  link   your views? [] Mbeki: how can a man be so wilfully blind? Updated on seeing Lawrence Lessig's "pills as political prisoners" article, linked at end. Thabo Mbeki should be deeply ashamed of himself, looking set for re-election as South Africa's president now that he has set a date: April 14 (AFP - Yahoo). The man might be justified in bragging a little about the achievements of the African National Congress (ANC) since democracy finally won out in that country almost 10 years ago. But, as he does on developments in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe's regime yet again found an excuse to pull the plug on the independent Daily News (AP - Yahoo) last week, Mbeki finds every bad reason in the world to avoid doing anything much about the country's murderous AIDS epidemic. "He claims: "I don't know anyone who has died of Aids." So why does it continue to dominate the problems facing the South African people? This is still a surreal and confusing place. One minute you are in a vast modern shopping centre, with marble floors, a glass roof, a multiplex cinema, numerous cafés and restaurants, and smart cars parked outside. Five minutes drive away there is a shanty town of shacks and houses constructed with mud and bamboo canes, with public water taps, public pit latrines and no electricity." For the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent, Hugh Sykes has written a quietly devastating account of the scale of the problem. Those initial points are among the first things that strike a visitor, but the rest of his story is one of quite unnecessary tragedy. I love South Africa, mostly had a great time working there, found the country fascinating and too many of its people too ready to denigrate themselves on the strength of the past rather than taking pride in what had been achieved since 1994. On HIV/AIDS, though, the Sykes story posted at the weekend resembles one I could have written myself, virtually word for word, two years ago! That is a scandal. I was naïf about it at the time. During the few short months I was in South Africa, I'd felt that little signs of progress on the AIDS front I'd witnessed or been told were happening even as I was there meant that the epidemic couldn't possibly be as hidden or quite as bad in two or three years. Even the big pharmaceuticals had expressed a genuine readiness to help at an affordable price. And very slowly, the government seemed to be giving ground over a series of "yes, buts..." Some of these were comprehensible to an outsider. I spent little time in KwaZulu-Natal, the most impoverished of provinces, but just enough to understand why the health ministry at national level had reservations about attaining the level of even basic infrastructure necessary to bring relief to hundreds of thousands of people and follow up in the health care -- even if the drugs were made available for free or next to nothing. Numerous doctors, however, were speaking out in favour of treatment they were not officially allowed to provide. Some were already providing it. Nelson Mandela was saying as much as he dared without showing open disloyalty or opposition to the programmes of an ANC he had played such a paramount part in bringing to power. But the fact that, even today, the man who took his place at the helm of the state is still in denial about something as evident as the AIDS crisis in South Africa, a country in a position to do something about it more than most, is appalling. Let's hope that this is a side of the story that will be told properly and often enough during the election campaign finally to make a difference. Tucked away in February's 'Wired' is an article by Lawrence Lessig, who also thinks politicians should sometimes be shamed. As Lessig observes in 'Stop Making Pills Political Prisoners' (Wired), it's easy to blame pharmaceutical firms over patents and costs instead of those who should really carry than can. The man argues that "with price discrimination, it would make economic sense to charge Africans practically nothing for drugs sold in Africa, as long as the same product could be sold in the US for lots more. So why isn't there more lifesaving price discrimination for drugs?" And briefly sets out the cons and pros of a "brilliantly humane idea". 6:38:46 PM  link   your views? [] Spring cleaning for unlit and congested passages Foolhardy friends are claiming to sense spring in the air, but I doubt that some fine days we've been having really means winter's done all it's worst this early. I rely for signs of true seasonal change from a magical nearby street, which goes almost unnoticed. It suffices to turn into the rue des Thermopyles to find yourself in part of a village within a village, with well-kept pretty houses and artist lofts luxuriant with greenery and flowers when the time comes. It must cost a fortune to be able to afford to live there, but the place is for the rest of us a quiet delight of the district, one of Paris's many little "secrets". There's no sign of any early buds there, but it's good to be able to open the windows wide again. Today has been ideal for cleaning up corners you can scarcely see properly most of the time between November and April. Until last week, I hadn't thought of an aerosol as much other than a banal spraycan. But since we've dealt with the guts and are pursuing work on the head, the time came to do something about clogged sinuses that have been part of my life almost forever, especially in winter. The ultrasonic aerosol I fetched from the chemist after consulting an ear, nose and throat man proves to be a hefty electrically powered device on loan for a week, along with a complicated mixture of medicines to put in receptacles and a series of tubes, one of which can be fitted with prongs to shove right up my nose for 20 or more minutes a day while it vibrates a very fine spray deep into my skull. Apparently, some consider such machines as "alternative medicine" (breathing page), but this is simply an alternative to the British-made nasal spray I've been addicted to for years, but have managed to do completely without for three days, fine weather or damp. Even the habitual morning headaches have begun to ease. I've no idea what a few more days' treatment may achieve, but this is impressive. It's a mystery why it's new to me and why previous doctors invariably said I'll need surgery one day. The man I saw laughed off this notion and told me that the only people in the world who don't have at least slightly "bent sinuses" are aboriginal Australians. Mine happen to be just a little more deviated than most, but are not uncommon and a nuisance to everybody with the same little problem. A Yugoslav firm has since 1998 been marketing an ultrasonic nebulizer (Prizma) which looks far less unwieldy than the device the French state has lent me. I shall show this to the specialist next time I see him and ask what he thinks of it. So far so good with the internal spring cleaning, which I can only commend as an option to others who spend too much time all stuffed up. It'll be more than a month before I've finished the treatment that follows the aerosol, but if it works as planned; it's good news. 4:17:14 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.