Politics and Futures

Wednesday June 30, 2004. To Pillsbury House, where I did data entry for the Community Barter Network and Pillsbury House's volunteer program.

The #23 bus now runs three times an hour during the day -- up from twice an hour. Which makes it more convenient for me. This is a side-effect of Light Rail Transit; the 23 connects with the 38th Street Station, and all crosstown buses which connect with the Hiawatha Line now run more frequently.

From there to Uncle Hugo's sf bookstore on the #5 bus. Bought the Hartwell-Cramer fantasy year's best collection. I like their picks -- in both fantasy and sf -- better than the other year's bests.

#21 to the Uptown Lunds supermarket. Extra large eggs were cheaper than large eggs; I don't know why, and I don't know how long this will last. (Lunds is upscale enough that it doesn't carry medium eggs. Logically, this means there ought to be downscale groceries which sell small eggs; reality refuses to be logical in this matter.)

#23 line back home. The route change in Uptown makes it as convenient as it would be if I'd designed it myself.

Writing: Daily exercise -- Done, posted to this journal.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Some rewording in the first draft portions.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --
_________________
Got this link from Crooked Timber http://crookedtimber.org. If you have any interest in economics, it's worth reading:

Economica 1945, pp. 189-201.
The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp
By R.A. Radford
http://faculty.econ.nwu.edu/faculty/witte/B01/handouts/radford.html
_____________
Come on, with a title like this - Nader, Dean to Debate if Ralph Should Run - the answer's bloody obvious, isn't it? Nader says yes, Dean says no, Nader says yes and sneers, Dean says no and gets a little flushed, Nader screams Yes, Dean shouts No, Nader starts shoving metal spikes through a rag doll ritually prepared to represent the Democratic Party, Dean pulls out the holy water, silver nitrate and a long wooden stake, they both assume their Crinos form, the Classic Star Trek fight music starts up and we end up with a trashed sound set and a bunch of gibbering radio engineers.

(pause)

Actually, on second thought all of that sounds kind of interesting. July 9th, is it?
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2004/06/short_debate_re.htm

Sanity

What would a fully sane human being be like? That is, one with a genuinely healthy mind (or as close to it as possible for our species)?

Assume this person is an adult male, American by birth, citizenship, and residence. Some of his behavior might seem very, very odd to most Americans: He would drive at or below the speed limit, except when it's genuinely safer to drive above the speed limit. He would eat differently from most Americans -- without being on any diet, he would eat less and eat more nutritiously.

He wouldn't smoke -- anything. He might drink some wine or beer, but he wouldn't get drunk.

He would probably be registered in one of the two major parties. But he would not vote along party lines. He would not get angry at politicians; he would work to defeat the ones he considered bad.

For that matter, he would be far less prone to anger than most Americans.

Now, some people think he would be dull, uncreative, and boring. I don't.

To some extent, this might be a matter of taste. I find insanity boring, and most insane people rather dull.

Uncreative? There may be links between creativity and certain forms of insanity. But for every William Blake or Ezra Pound, there are thousands of the insane turning out bad poetry.

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 30-Jun-2004
European Society of Human Reproduction & Embryology 20th Annual Meeting
EU enlargement could lead to fertility tourism from West to East
Fertility tourists could be heading for eastern European countries in the wake of EU enlargement as data revealed today show that parts of the East match the West in terms of the availability and efficacy of assisted reproduction techniques, but cost less.

Public Release: 30-Jun-2004
Science
Gene alteration points to longevity, thinness
Imagine that by altering the function of a single gene, you could live longer, be thinner and have lower cholesterol and fat levels in your blood.
_________________
Change of mind
A brain haemorrhage turned an ex-convict into an obsessive artist. In this free feature, Jim Giles meets him and the scientists studying his case.
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePZs0BfwT60Ch0OrZ0Ap
___________________
How the South changed
40 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a new role as a beacon for the rest of the US. By Gail Russell Chaddock
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0701/p01s02-ussc.html?s=hns

North Carolina's gambit to bring Internet Age to rural areas
Like other states, it's wiring isolated towns with high-speed lines to boost local economies. By Patrik Jonsson
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0701/p02s01-usec.html?s=hns

Michael Moore's showing in Show Me State
His movie is a big draw, but it reinforces audiences' views rather than changing them. By Staci D. Kramer
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0701/p03s01-ussc.html?s=hns

Oddly enough, I don't find this surprising.

Beware Russia's pocket empire
Enclaves of military might in little-known but strategic regions threaten Western values. By Daniel C. Twining
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0701/p09s02-coop.html?s=hns

Tuesday June 29, 2004 -- Continued. Things I forgot to include yesterday:

The Ancient Traders shopping center on Franklin Avenue will be getting an Aldi's. Aldi is a grocery chain with a reputation for low prices.

Till now, the lowest-cost Twin Cities 31-day bus card has been the $42 one for the non-rush-hour fare. However, there's now the rail pass, which costs $40. And: the LRT doesn't have the rush-hour fare increases.

The Cub Foods on Lake Street near Minnehaha Avenue has a dollar section with stuff actually worth buying. For example, 100 teabags for a dollar.

***Mail: July Einblatt -- Mnstf's monthly newsletter, which includes non-Mnstf sf-related events in the Twin Cities.

July De Profundis -- LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society) newsletter. Schedule of events at the clubhouse; minutes of club meetings and Board of Directors meetings.

Tuesday June 29, 2004. To Steeple People thrift store, where I bought more containers.

And started putting stuff in them, as soon as I got home. Which has not been my usual pattern, to put it mildly.

***Later, I took the #4 bus back north to the Wedge Co-op. Then the #2 down Franklin Avenue to the Franklin Avenue LRT station, and the #55 train south to Lake and Hiawatha.
The train had a reasonable number of people on it for that time in the evening.

Shopped at the Cub Foods store there. And then I took the train to the 38th Street Station.

This train was crowded; standing room only. I couldn't figure out why, till I noticed some of the men wore baseball clothing. These were people leaving a game at the Metrodome.

The bus stop on 38th Street was next to the Cardinal Bar, which proclaims that they patty their beef fresh every morning.

#23 bus home.
______________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- For today's exercise, I decided to write an excerpt from a future equivalent of Diana Wynne Jones's _The Tough Guide to Fantasyland_. That is, from a compendium of cliches found in fiction set in the gentler, simpler (and simultaneously more adventurous) time of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries:

Transportation: In the countryside, all travel is either by steam-powered trains or by gasoline-powered flying cars.

In cities, most travel is by ground cars hired at hourly rates, and driven by wise old men. (Sometimes these "cabbies" turn out to be beautiful young women in disguise.)

The adventurous might take the underground subway trains, which are powered by fission reactors. Your fellow passengers will include land pirates, alligators, and "goths" (more properly called suggoths). Be prepared to defend yourself, your possessions, and your companions.

Food: In the countryside, be certain to bring a tin-opener (aka "churchkey"), and sufficient cans of stew. In much of North America, you will be able to hunt local animals -- rabbits, llamas, wallabies, etc. -- and add them to the stew.

In cities, you will eat either in diners or in ristorantes. In a diner, the waitron will heat a can of stew and open it for you. In a ristorante, you will eat more varied fare such as fish served complete with heads and all, meatloaf made from tofu plants, and German tacos.

***"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- More added to zero draft of the new scene.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

I got this from Resourceshelf (http://www.resourceshelf.com/):
By Kevin Bogardus

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2004 — Justice Department officials say a huge database that serves as the public's lone window on lobbying activities by foreign governments has been allowed to decay to a point they cannot even make a copy of its contents.

Responding to a recent Freedom of Information request from the Center for Public Integrity, the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit said it was unable to copy its records electronically because their computer system was "so fragile." In a letter, the head of the unit's Freedom of Information office said that simply attempting to make an electronic copy of the database "could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating."

The database details millions of dollars spent on lobbying activities by foreign governments, companies, and foundations.

Those activities include everything from wining and dining lawmakers to broadcasting issue ads on American television and radio stations.

Unlike foreign governments and political parties, foreign companies can file their lobby forms with the Senate Office of Public Records on Capitol Hill. Under the 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act, private companies based outside the United States need only to fill out much shorter forms for Congress instead of the substantial information required by FARA.

As the primary collecting point of information on foreign lobbying, the database is vital to tracking the actions of foreign governments in Washington. Yet the system remains susceptible to "a crash that cannot be fixed" if its files were to be copied, according to Justice's Criminal Division Freedom of Information/Privacy Act office.

"The information itself still is very accessible," said Bryan Sierra at the Department of Justice's Office of Public Affairs. "The basic mandate of the office is to provide information to the public."

Sierra and other officials at the Justice Department public affairs office refused to answer follow-up questions on the state of the FARA database. Sierra, through his receptionist, said he would not discuss the subject any further.

It's true that the information contained in the database can be obtained, as long as those seeking it know the precise files they want and have a substantial copying budget.

The Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit, which is responsible for the records, has a public documents room located in a windowless office on New York Avenue in downtown Washington.

Congress's investigative branch, the General Accounting Office, has looked into the FARA office over several decades, culminating in their last report in 1998. More than once, the GAO has found that FARA lacks the resources to fulfill its responsibilities. As a result, several former high-level federal officials lobbying for foreign interests have not adequately disclosed their activities.

The ancient computers the public and staff use often break down, however, and the printers malfunction. The system's document handling software, itself an antique, operates on Microsoft Windows 95.

Copying charges are also incomprehensibly high—50 cents a page for documents that can easily include hundreds of pages each.

Further, none of the actual filings are available online, although a bare-bones index of registrants does appear on the office's website. However, the most current index posted on the site is 18 months old.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=332&sid=100

I've posted New Scientist article summaries and links to the full articles on the LiveJournal Infojunkies community:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/infojunkies/

Monday June 28, 2004. Steeple People thift store was continuing its "Dandelion Sale." I bought a few things, one of which I needed. Donated the old one back to the store.

***Mail: Mix, July-August. Article on how the Federal "natural" food designation got watered down. News that regional food co-op associations are setting up a national association. Restaurant review by Bruce Schneir and Karen Cooper. Articles on food. News of Twin Cities Natural Foods Co-ops members. Ads for the organically correct.

My co-op, the Wedge, is a member of TCNFC and now a member of the national group. More purist co-ops in the Twin Cities -- ones which rely on volunteer labor -- aren't members.

An invitation to apply for an American Express card. Are they reaching out to people with lower incomes than their current customers? Did they buy a bad mailing list? I suspect both. That is, they're reaching down but don't intend to reach down as far as my current income level.
_______________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done, posted to rec.arts.sf.written. Summary: at least two
sf print magazines are being stupid about mail ads. Fantasy & Science Fiction's renewal notice has an illustration designed for appeal to people who grew up on 1950s sf movies. Not a good move for a mostly-literary prozine. Realms of Fantasy offers the opportunity to start with the charter issue of this new zine -- almost ten years after that issue was published.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" --

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --
____________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 28-Jun-2004
NeuroImage
Carnegie Mellon U. imaging study reveals sex-based differences that persist as mice enter adulthood
Using advanced imaging technology, Carnegie Mellon University scientists have conducted the first systematic examination of developmental and sex-associated changes in adolescent and adult mouse brains to reveal fundamental, persistent differences in key brain structures, such as those important for emotions, learning, and memory. This information, in press with NeuroImage, may be critical for modeling human neurologic and neuropsychiatric diseases, as well as for understanding how structural, sex-associated brain differences influence behavior and cognition.
National Multiple Sclerosis Society, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 28-Jun-2004
Journal of Biological Chemistry
Mice with hyperactive Wnt10b gene eat all they want, but have half the body fat of normal mice
Genetically engineered mice, created at the University of Michigan Medical School, are living every dieter's dream. They eat unlimited amounts of high-fat mouse chow, but have about 50 percent less body fat than normal mice on a low-fat diet. And they show no signs of diabetes or other metabolic disorders.
National Institutes of Health, University of Michigan Medical School, American Diabetes Association

From the UK edition of Google News:
Mobiles Phones May Damage Sperm, Study Says
Reuters - 4 hours ago
LONDON (Reuters) - Mobile phones may damage men's sperm, Hungarian scientists say, in a study that fertility experts dismissed Monday as inconclusive.
Mobile phones could hurt sperm count Mobile Tracker
Mobile phones rot your balls The Register
Guardian - The Inquirer - Independent - CommsDesign - and 41 related
_______________
From the Twin Cities Freecycle mailing list:
Wooden crate, used once, broken down, shipped a scooter from UK.

Perfect for shipping tigers, storing unruly children,and so forth.
__________
I posted this to soc.history.what-if:
> And i promise never again to use mobile fusion reactors.
>
From the 1940s to the 1980s, they did have severe quality control problems. However, they're more reliable these days. And much smaller -- they no longer require a separate room in your house.

However, it's best not to let your cats play with them.

Slight digression: The notion that physical laws changed in 1939 keeps turning up in this forum. I would say that Von Daniken and other skeptics have pretty well demolished it.

More on this next week; I have to catch an airship to Venus.

Sunday June 27, 2004. Thoughts on reading Charles De Lint's _Spirits in the Wires_ while doing laundry:

1) I'm a sucker for fantasy set in borderlands, or largely in borderlands. Places where, for example, our magical world and the non-magical world of Elfland meet.

A fantasy which begins in a borderland and then moves entirely into one world will lose me. So will a borderland which becomes too much its own world (as in most of the Bordertown stories, for example).

And in real life, I find a city more interesting if it's a cultural borderland: Montreal, Strasbourg, Brussels, San Diego.

2) The idea that we each have a shadow-self, made up of those parts of our minds/souls which we refuse to acknowledge, doesn't seem true to me.

It could be that I have several shadows rather than just the one. Or I might have managed to kill my shadow.

Or perhaps Single Personality Disorder more than a joke, and I have it.

3) Something about reading Del Lint's fantasy makes me think more sharply and observe in more detail.
_________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done; see above.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" --

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

From the UK edition of Google News:
Poor most generous charity-givers
BBC News - 4 hours ago
People living in poorer areas give more to charity than those from affluent households, according to a new study.
Motherwell tops charitable towns study scottish tv
Official: richest towns are also the meanest Independent
ic SouthLondon.co.uk - Sunday Herald - and 33 related

BBC opens up 70 years of archive footage to the digital age
Sunday Herald - 16 hours ago
Film producers, advertisers, creative directors and picture researchers engaged in the perennial search for archive footage, have been given a new source of material with the launch of BBC's internet archive, the Motion Gallery.
BBC raids archive to sell video footage PC Pro
Historical BBC archives go online BBC News
DMeurope.com - Computer Graphics World - Mac Animation Pro

Doctors in the UK don't report mistakes, they don't trust the NHS to manage a blame free system
Medical News Today - 45 minutes ago
According to a survey carried out by Doctors Net UK, only 15% of medical errors which could have led to death or serious disability are being reported. Amazingly, they found that more than 80% of doctors have actually seen other doctors make mistakes, ...
Doctors 'not reporting errors' BBC News
Doctors fail to report errors of colleagues Scotland on Sunday
Sunday Herald - and 6 related

Change in UK diets 'could trigger mental health crisis'
Independent - 16 hours ago
Changes in British diets are going to lead to an explosion in mental health problems, medical experts said yesterday. They warned of a crisis even bigger than the epidemic of obesity afflicting the UK.
'Fish' test for heart attack risk BBC News
Agency sets out safety levels for oily fish Financial Times
Medical News Today - The Times, UK (subscription) - Guardian - Reuters - and 28 related

Saturday June 26, 2004. Writing -- Daily exercise -- Done. Posted to this journal.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Added one scene to the zero draft portion. The scene includes a new bit of throwaway background: several of the people in it are Canadian Civil War reenactors.

Changed the name of one important gadget.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --
________________
Mr. Cheney assured Fox's anxious viewers that he would stay on the ticket and in the White House until January '09. (No four letter words, dear Democrats.) Vice said of W., "he knows I'm there to serve him."

Mr. Bush must have missed that classic "Twilight Zone" episode where the aliens arrive with a book entitled, "To Serve Man." It turns out to be a cookbook.
Maureen Dowd http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/opinion/27DOWD.html
_______________
Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who as a legislator opposed the rail line, said that the opposition is water over the bridge and that the goal now is to make it successful.
http://startribune.com/stories/462/4848766.htm

I don't yet know whether the governor actually said that, a reporter got it wrong, or a copy editor "corrected" water under the bridge.
________________
Cool Magnet: A little bit of iron gives magnetic refrigeration a boost
An improved material moves magnetic refrigeration one step closer to commercial reality.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040626/fob6.asp

Beg Your Indulgence: The Japanese social concept of amae goes global
The Japanese concept of amae, in which one person presumes that another will indulgently grant a special request, may apply to different forms of behavior at different ages, even in Western countries.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040626/bob10.asp

Dogs Catching Frisbees
When navigating to intercept a thrown Frisbee, dogs appear to use the same geometric strategy that a baseball fielder employs to snag a fly ball hit into the outfield.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040626/mathtrek.asp

Public Release: 25-Jun-2004
Natural selection at work in genetic variation to taste
A genetic variation seen worldwide in which people either taste or do not taste a bitter, synthetic compound called PTC has been preserved by natural selection, University of Utah and National Institutes of Health researchers have reported.

Saturday June 26, 2004. Light Rail Grand Opening, continued.

On to the 46th Street Station. A zydeco band, which performed that zydeco classic "Kingston Town". (My heart is down/My head is turning around/Had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.)

On to the 50th Street/Minnehaha Park Station. High point: a tour of Minnehaha Park in an antique bus.

The bus dated from 1953; it's a bit disconcerting for an antique anything to be ten years younger than I am. There were the usual ads; it took me a bit of time to realize that they were all from past decades.

We got off at the Princess Depot Museum.

After seeing that museum, we walked around the park. Saw Minnehaha Falls from several angles.

By the park pavilion, the Middle Spunk Creek Boys were playing bluegrass. Including:

Hang down your head, Tom Dooley
Your tie is caught in your fly.

They also did "Charlie on the MTA" with "MTA" replaced by "LRT". Unfortunately, that was the only change they made.

Our original plan had been to take in the stations we'd missed on the return trip. However, we were both tired enough that we decided to go to the Fort Snelling Station and call it a day. (The line currently ends at Fort Snelling. When completed, it will go on to the airport and to the Mall of America. Till then, the #155 bus will fill cover that part of the route.)

At the Fort Snelling Station, we got our passports stamped for the sixth time -- which entitled us to enter the drawing for prizes.

And then we took a #55 bus, rather than waiting for room on the #55 train.

The #55 buses were intended to take over when the trains weren't running. The trains were running fine; but the buses were needed to handle the overflow.

A bit after the bus passed the VA Medical Center, another passenger remarked that the bus seemed to be going in circles. Which led to a group of people singing "Will The Circle Be Unbroken?" After which they moved on to 1960s rock. (Some of the Beatles songs might have been more recent.)

We got off at the Downtown East/Metrodome Station. We walked to where Pat's car was parked, and she drove me home.

Saturday June 26, 2004. To Southwest Senior Center, to pick up this month's Fare For All food. A good haul; with one exception, it was all stuff I could and would use.

The exception was Old El Paso Cheesy Taco Pizza Dinner Kit -- just add ground beef, milk, and cheese. But this was something thrown in for free.

I was also offered a free watermelon. I turned it down, because I couldn't see myself finishing it off while it was still edible.

***Today was the Grand Opening of the first Light Rail line in the Twin Cities, the Hiawatha Line. Free rides on the trains, and also on Metro Transit's buses. Various promotional stuff at each of the twelve stops.

On the way to the LRT, Pat called my attention to some particularly silly statues in front of the new Federal Courthouse.

We got our first music -- the City Hall/Courthouse carillon.

We started at the Government Plaza Station, heading South, after getting our passports stamped.

The ride was smoother than in any car or bus I've ridden in lately, and smoother than I could recall any train ride being.

The only downside: it was crowded, and each time we got back on the train we had a long wait for spaces to open up. There were a lot of people who wanted to ride on the first day; I suspect it exceeded Metro Transit's most optimistic predictions.

We got off at the Cedar-Riverside Station. Food available: Chinese, vegetarian from the Hard Times Cafe, and Korean.

On to the station at Lake and Minnehaha. There was a preview of the Midtown Public Market, which will officially open next month.

I was tempted to buy a cabbage. Remembered that I already had cabbage at home. However -- this looked fresher than the cabbage I already possessed had looked in the grocery.
So, I bought it.

Bought a bottle of cold designer tea from the Seward Coop's booth -- for fifty cents, rather less than the usual price. And then there was the booth giving samples of Peace Coffee. (It does seem to be of high quality. Whether that and its Fair Trade status make it worth the price, I'll leave to those who buy coffee more often than I do.)

Manny's Tortas had a sign which was partly in the Cyrillic alphabet -- that is, words with a mixture of Cyrillic and Latin letters. If there's an alternate world in which this is authentically Mexican, I can't figure out what the Point of Divergence might be.

Tshirt seen: Welcome to Detroit. Sorry we missed you this time. Picture of a handgun, nervous-making end pointed at the viewer.

(To be continued)

Stages of Old Age

1. Things from your childhood are showing up in antique stores, though so far only as collectables.

2. Things from your childhood are full-fledged antiques.

3. Things from your childhood don't show up in antique stores because history museums
have them all.

4. Things from your childhood aren't in museums because archeologists are still studying them.

5. Things from your childhood aren't in museums because paleontologists are still studying them.

6. Things from your childhood aren't in museums because cosmologists are still studying them.

Friday June 25, 2004. I went to Steeple People thrift store, and bought storage containers. Next step: get rid of enough things that I'll have space for them.
__________
Writing: Daily Exercise -- Done. An explanation of why a planet which needs no more than three spaceports has a fourth one.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Added one more line to a conversation.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --
__________________________
The Tam Lin "Nigerian Letter" is now up on the Tam Lin Pages at
http://www.tam-lin.org/oddities1.html -- along with several filked versions of the song.
______________
Old Airfields never die, they just cultivate lots and lots of crabgrass. And amazingly there are over 1100 of them all over the US gathered into the Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields site by Paul Freeman ( http://www.airfields-freeman.com/ )
http://www.researchbuzz.org/archives/001791.shtm
________
From Google News, UK edition:
Millionaire loses 'Indecent Proposal' case
Independent - 3 hours ago
The longest slander action in English legal history came to a close yesterday as the multi-millionaire Brian Maccaba lost his High Court action against a leading rabbi. In a case that had infamously been dubbed the "Indecent Proposal" ...
A rich man's revenge that cost more than money Telegraph.co.uk
Rabbi cleared in "Indecent Proposal" case Reuters
Irish Times (subscription) - Scotland on Sunday - Barnet Times - BBC News - and 28 related

From Google News, India edition:
India to get space camera from Israel
Daily Times - 3 hours ago
NEW DELHI: India will get a sophisticated space camera from Israel for use in astronomical research as part of the agreement signed in 2003 between the space agencies of two countries for scientific cooperation in astronomy and galactic ...
Israel to launch space camera on Indian satellite The Hindu
Business News, India: Israel to supply India with sophisticated space camera Keralanext
Jerusalem Post - New Kerala - and 7 related

Net on some trains from June 30
Rediff - Jun 24, 2004
Indian Railways will offer Internet access to passengers travelling aboard luxury coaches from June 30, The Times of India said Thursday.
RailTel to launch in-train WiFi, Internet kiosks Telecom Paper (subscription)
Internet offered to Indian rail passengers Al-Jazeera
Times of India - BBC News - Sify - Asia Pacific Media Network - and 10 related

Thursday June 24, 2004. Annual allergy check-up. (Summary: I'm allergic to indoor air and outdoor air.) Everything is working okay, so my prescriptions were renewed for another year.

On to the temporary Minneapolis central library. Got: A collection of essays by Isaiah Berlin. SF/fantasy collections by Theodore Sturgeon, Cordwainer Smith, and Fritz Leiber. Ursula K. Le Guin's Changing Planes.

On to Steeple People thrift shop, which is having a sale: clothing fifty percent off, everything else twentyfive percent off. I got a large basket for carrying cooking stuff, a frying pan, and a pot. 38 cents each, plus tax.

Across Lyndale Avenue to the Wedge co-op grocery. And then home.

***On rec.music.filk, Kip Williams responded to "Fair Eleanor and the Cyclops" with this:

"Here's to the charmer whose dimples we prize,
Now to the maid who has none, sir;
Here's to the maiden with three pretty eyes,
And here's to the nymph with but one, sir.
Let the toast pass,
Drink to the lass,
I'll warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass."

***On rec.arts.sf.fandom, Matthew Tepper reported the death of Allen Rothstein. Damn!
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- done.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- One small bit of conversation added.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

WI-FI FINDS THE WAY
Deep in the concrete canyons of city centres, GPS often fails because high buildings block the signals they rely on. But an unlikely back-up for GPS is emerging that works best in cities and inside cavernous complexes like shopping malls: Wi-Fi. New software uses the signals from Wi-Fi base stations to calculate a user's position. Its developers predict that Wi-Fi could become central to new location-based applications, and that the emergency services in particular could find the system an essential back-up...MORE
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996058

TOP STORIES:
Tooth growing experiments bring smiles
Remarkable progress is being made towards growing replacement teeth from stem cells, but major obstacles remain
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996061

Noisy secret of Mona Lisa's smile
A new study suggests that the power of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece comes in part from random noise in our visual systems
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996056

Fundamental physics constants stay put
A new study casts doubt on an earlier claim that the fine-structure constant varied as the Universe evolved
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996057

Horn damage hints at Triceratops battles
The three-horned dinosaur could apparently wrestle head-to-head with other members of its own species
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996059

From http://politicalwire.com:
Presidential Candidate Ringtones
From Engadget: "Show your support for the candidate you love (or hate) by having them endorse your incoming phone call with these ringtones. Each ringtone is the candidate saying their name and that they approve this message."

Pole Workers Supporting Poll Workers
Following the lead set by their Wisconsin colleagues, Ohio gentleman club owners have begun registering voters for the November election. "Angelina Spencer is co-owner of the Circus and executive director of the Association of Club Executives, which represents about 800 exotic establishments. She thinks pole workers should drum up business for poll workers," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

"Spencer says she has signed up perhaps 225 workers and customers. The association's Ohio chapter claims another 5,000 registrants."

Thursday June 23, 2004. I got a Swiss version of the Nigerian Letter.

And then this turned up on Live Avatar's LiveJournal, taken from the Morris Dancing mailing list:

Let me
introduce myself to you. I am Mrs Janet Lin, a director at the First Bank
of Carterhaugh. I came to you in confidence because of some money, namely
TWENTY-EIGHT MILLION GOLD COINS (28,000,000.000 gold coins) belonging to my
missing husband, Thomas (Tam) Lin, who was abducted by the faeries in a
ghastly incident many years ago. The money has been buried under a thorn
hedge for seven hundred years. I have given up hope that my beloved THOMAS
LIN will return and so have decided to retrieve his money and move to Tir Na
Nog. I want you to help claim the buried money as you are a source for good
investment. For this we are prepared to give you a reasonable percentage
of the money. Meanwhile 15% (FOUR MILLION TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND GOLD COINS)
has been set aside for you and the rest will be for me and my milk cow
called Derek. For the intrest of doing business please do not hesitate to
contact MR DEREK GUERNSEY on 27-731-450-735 Fax 27-843-232-611 IMMEDIATELY.
I thank you for your cooperation and warn of DIRE CONSEQUENCES if you fail
to solicit my confidences.

Mrs. Janet Lin
Director
First Bank of Carterhaugh
___________
Usenet: Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.composition
Subject: Re: Digital Knight (Backlash against the series?)
From: "Brian M. Scott"
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2004 00:02:36 -0400

On 24 Jun 2004 00:10:41 GMT Dan Goodman wrote

"Digression: I wish I'd saved the message about an online map which shows European borders from 1000 AD on -- month by month."

Sounds like Centennia, the full version of which is available for $89 . There's an online version that includes maps for 26 representative dates from 1025 to 1997.
__________
Via soc.genealogy.jewish: A family reunited by home movies -- found in a garage owned by unrelated people
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl-lihistoryjun24,0,6862249.story
_________________________
From the India edition of Google News:
Spider-Man in a loincloth is all-Indian hero
Telegraph.co.uk - 3 hours ago
Spider-man is to go global with the release of an Indian version of the comic book superhero, complete with loincloth, Hindu demons and battle scenes over the Taj Mahal.
Here comes the Spider-Man India National Post (subscription)
Eastern Swing: Sharad Devarajan Talks Indian Spider-Man comic Book Resources
Asia Times Online - Rediff - NEWS.com.au - India Express - and 11 related
__________________
[June 23] in 1969, Coleman Young is sworn in as Chief Advocate of the Supreme People’s Court. The lifelong Communist Party member and activist for local soviets had risen to distinction by chairing the investigation into the assassination of Comrade President Rosenberg. Many claimed that the investigation was a thinly-disguised party whitewash of the truth, but most of the public accepted its finding that the counter-revolutionary, Oswald, had acted on his own.
http://althistory.blogspot.com/2004/06/workers-revolt-in-paris-chdo-land-on.html

Posted by: Daniel S. / 6:25 PM

Wednesday June 23, 2004. Today began as Silly Folksong Day. Beginning with "And the name they called that ship was the Golden Monotreme." Continuing with:

Fair Eleanor she has lands and gold,
The cyclops girl has none.
Fair Eleanor she has three blue eyes,
The Cyclops has but one.

***To Pillsbury House, where I did data entry for the Community Barter Network and Pillsbury House's volunteer program.

***Seen: Galactic Pizza, 2917 Lyndale Avenue South. It doesn't seen to be open yet.

***I'd been in the habit of reading the New York Times on the web for national and international news. Today, I decided to switch to the Washington Post.

I don't consider the Times nearly as good a news source as I used to. (Even without the recent well-publicized problems.)

Will I read it for New York City news? Probably not; Newsday is better for that. Which is sad; Newsday is primarily a suburban paper, and I believe it no longer has a NYC edition.

I grew up reading the Times, up in Ulster County NY. When I lived in NYC, it was the paper I read regularly. (I sometimes also read the Post, which was then farthest left of NYC's papers; I gather it's now the farthest right.) I feel that I'm leaving part of my life behind.
______________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done. A sketch of what I expect if John Kerry wins the US Presidential election.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- A conversation added which tells a bit more about the setting and (I hope) makes certain things about the two main characters more explicit.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

Physiology: Hibernation in a tropical primate

KATHRIN H. DAUSMANN*, JULIAN GLOS†, JÖRG U. GANZHORN‡ & GERHARD HELDMAIER*

* Department of Animal Physiology, Phillips University, 35043 Marburg, Germany
† Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Julius–Maximilians–University, 97074 Würzburg, Germany
‡ Department of Animal Ecology and Conservation, University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

e-mail: dausmann@staff.uni-marburg.de

The Madagascan fat-tailed dwarf lemur, Cheirogaleus medius, hibernates in tree holes for seven months of the year, even though winter temperatures rise to over 30 °C. Here we show that this tropical primate relies on a flexible thermal response that depends on the properties of its tree hole: if the hole is poorly insulated, body temperature fluctuates widely, passively following the ambient temperature; if well insulated, body temperature stays fairly constant and the animal undergoes regular spells of arousal. Our findings indicate that arousals are determined by maximum body temperatures and that hypometabolism in hibernating animals is not necessarily coupled to a low body temperature.
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/Dynapage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v429/n6994/abs/429825a_fs.htm
___________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 23-Jun-2004
'Shhh'- A flip of a switch may one day quiet jet engines
Jet engines may run quieter in the future, with technology developed at Ohio State. Researchers have developed a silencer technology that creates electrical arcs to control turbulence in engine exhaust airflow -- the chief cause of engine noise. The university has applied for a patent on the design. With the flip of a switch, pilots could turn the silencers -- called plasma actuators -- on and off, reducing noise around commercial airports or military airstrips.

Public Release: 23-Jun-2004
Nature
NASA scientists get global fix on food, wood & fiber use
NASA scientists working with the World Wildlife Fund and others have measured how much of Earth's plant life humans need for food, fiber, wood and fuel. The study identifies human impact on ecosystems.
NASA Earth Science Enterprise

Public Release: 23-Jun-2004
International Housing Research Conference
People cocooning more, says study
"As a result of social and demographic changes, the private dwelling is less of a context for social company," says Glenn Stalker, a PhD student in sociology and author of the study, Change.

Public Release: 23-Jun-2004
Remote-controlled throwable robot developed by Carnegie Mellon with marines sent to Iraq for testing
Carnegie Mellon University robotics researchers, in conjunction with the U.S. Marine Corps' Warfighting Laboratory, have developed a small, throwable, remote-controlled prototype robot designed for surveillance in urban settings. Several are on the way to Iraq for testing. Known as Dragon Runner, the robot can see around corners and deliver information to Marines while keeping them out of danger in urban settings where human access is impractical, dangerous or unsustainable.
US Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
Journal of the American Planning Association, The Geographical Review
Study: Cities may need to regulate yard signs as they become more common, potentially troublesome
While many communities regulate the signs that businesses use, few have laws controlling signs people place in their own yards. But that may have to change, according to researchers at Ohio State University. Two professors studied a fad in Amarillo, Texas of placing odd artistic signs in residential yards and found that they sparked conflict between those who had the signs and those who didn't have the signs and wanted them gone.

Public Release: 23-Jun-2004
Journal of Air Transport Management
Plane ticket taxes lower than airlines claim, study says
In work that is aiding Congress' understanding of airlines' financial health, researchers from MIT and Daniel Webster College report a wealth of new information on the taxes and fees added to each domestic airline ticket and how they vary depending on carrier, distance traveled and other variables.
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

[Eugene Volokh, June 22, 2004 at 1:36pm]
Dan Gifford passes this along; it was apparently transcribed by a listener, purportedly from the June 18, 2004 Late Show with David Letterman. Don't know if it's true, and I won't assume that it is. But it's at least a good joke:

David Letterman: How do we know what's in your film [Fahrenheit 9/11] is true?

Michael Moore: Because I got most of my information from The New York Times.

Audience: Wild laughter.

Letterman: Strains to repress laughing

Moore: What's so funny?

(I should mention that Moore was indeed on the June 18 show, but the excerpt available on the highlights site is only of Moore's memories of his Oscar night).
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_21.shtml#1087925781

A whole bunch of science news:

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
Nature
A wireless nanodevice that functions like a fluorescent light - but potentially far more efficiently - has been developed in a joint project between the National Nuclear Security Administration's Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories.

Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Researchers at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins and the Institute of Bioinformatics in India have discovered a gene-expression "signature" common to distinct types of cancer, renewing hope that a universal treatment for the nation's second leading killer might be found.

Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
New version of premier global climate model released
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., is unveiling a powerful new version of a supercomputer-based system to model Earth's climate and to project global temperature rise in coming decades.

Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Researchers induce temporary blindness to learn more about vision
By using transcranial magnetic stimulation to rapidly induce temporary blindness, researchers at Rice University found evidence that an older, primitive part of the brain helps process visual information unconsciously.

Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Rapid urbanization in southeastern China in the past 25 years is responsible for an estimated warming rate much larger than previous estimates for other periods and locations, according to a new study funded by NASA. Researchers led by the Georgia Institute of Technology report that the mean surface temperature in the region has risen 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit (0.05 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1979.
NASA

Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
Nature
Origin of West Indian insect eater much older than previously thought
Researcher Mark Springer, a professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside, is part of a team that has traced the origins of the shrew-like Caribbean creatures, known as solenodons, to the Mesozoic era, making them contemporaries with the dinosaurs.

From Scientific American's e-newsletter:
Athletes will be going to Athens this summer to take part in a tradition begun in Greece more than 2,000 years ago. As the world's finest specimens of fitness test the extreme limits of human strength, speed and agility, some of them will probably also engage in a more recent, less inspiring Olympic tradition: using performance-enhancing drugs. Sports authorities fear that a new form of doping will be undetectable and thus much less preventable. Treatments that regenerate muscle, increase its strength, and protect it from degradation will soon be entering human clinical trials for muscle-wasting disorders. Among these are therapies that give patients a synthetic gene, which can last for years, producing high amounts of naturally occurring muscle-building chemicals.
www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000E7ACE-5686-10CF-94EB83414B7F0000

Tuesday June 22, 2004. DreamHaven Books had Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History among the used books -- four thick volumes. I decided I needed it, so I could work out what the author had done and how she'd done it.

Since we're both on rec.arts.sf.composition, I could ask her directly. But that wouldn't give me the same information I expect to get from analyzing it.

***On to the Wedge co-op. For the first time, I noticed that they have lemon pepper -- which is roughly the same thing as Penzeys's Florida Seasoned Pepper. (The Florida Seasoned Pepper has garlic in it, and seems to have a bit more sour salt.) I've been using the Florida Seasoned Pepper as my main salt substitute.

After getting home, I worked out that it's cheaper than Penzeys for amounts below four ounces; more expensive from four ounces up. I've been using enough of it that buying four ounces at a time makes sense.
_______________________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done, posted to http://www.livejournal.com/community/synaesthesis/
and to the Synesthesia mailing list.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- A bit more information added; part of a conversation (the part containing that information) gone from zero draft to first draft.

The two major characters both have one of my major weaknesses; this makes writing certain parts both more difficult and easier.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
American Phytopathological Society Annual Meeting
Plant pathologists to discuss the future of organic farming
Organic farming is one of the fastest-growing segments of U.S. agriculture, with organic food sales reaching $9.3 billion in 2002. To ensure continued prosperity of this rapidly expanding industry, plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS) are calling for additional organic farming research and adherence to established growing procedures.

Public Release: 22-Jun-2004
Frogs muscle-in on 'wasting' process
Scientific studies of a unique Australian frog could lead to the development of new ways to improve livestock production levels and boost the prospects of maintaining human muscle strength into old age.

Contact: Dr Nick Hudson, CSIRO Livestock Industries
nick.hudson@csiro.au
61-073-214-2538
CSIRO Australia

From the UK edition of Google News:
British Library to archive Web
NetImperative - 8 hours ago
The project stems from the idea that the average lifespan of a website only stretches to about 44 days. So the Library has put together the UK Web Archiving Consortium (UKWAC) to include the national libraries of Wales and Scotland, the ...
Effort to save UK's web heritage BBC News
Preserving Web sites Network World Fusion
ComputerWorld - and 5 related
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/

Tuning Up Young Minds: Music lessons give kids a small IQ advantage
Regular music lessons, focused either on learning to play an instrument or to sing, result in small but statistically significant IQ gains for first graders by the end of the school year, a new study finds.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040619/fob6.asp

Tuesday June 22, 2004. Interesting If True:

The Nigerian Letter (formerly The Spanish Prisoner) is being dumbed down, down, down. From my email:

DEAREST FRIEND,

HOW ARE YOU TODAY?. I INHERITED US$31.5M, I WANT YOU TO ASSIST ME INVEST THIS AMOUNT IN YOUR COUNTRY.
I AM WAITING FOR YOUR URGENT REPLY SO THAT I CAN TELL YOU MORE DETAILS.

NERO KINGS

[June 20] in 1837, Pope William IV of the Holy British Empire dies, and is succeeded by his daughter, Pope Victoria I. Victoria takes the stagnant Catholic empire and extends its rule from Europe onto every continent in a papacy that lasts for 70 years. Many during her reign believed that she was Arthur finally reborn, but this was squashed as heresy.
http://althistory.blogspot.com/2004/06/best-ltd-formed-interstellar-peace.html

Political Stuff

Tuesday June 22, 2004.

The July-August issue of Foreign Affairs is mostly about Iraq. From the preview, it doesn't exactly praise the current US Administration's policies and actions. I've put the preview in the Infojunkies LiveJournal Community: http://www.livejournal.com/community/infojunkies/1416409.htm

Illinois Senate candidate Jack Ryan's (R) ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, "accused him of taking her to sex clubs in New York and Paris, where he tried to coerce her into having sex with him in front of strangers," the Chicago Tribune reports.

The accusation comes from the couple's divorce file which "the Ryans had fought disclosure because they said it could harm their son."

"The political impact of the revelations on Jack Ryan's candidacy will play out over the next several days."

According to the Chicago Sun Times Ryan said he has no plans to step down, saying "I think we'll be victorious in November."
http://politicalwire.com/

It is a truth not quite universally acknowledged that British politicians tend to direct their most venomous personal remarks towards their colleagues rather than members of the other parties.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/economicdispatch/story/0,12498,1244874,00.html

Monday June 21, 2004. Woke up feeling healthy, for the first time in several days.

***"With this garment, I can travel to any world which might have been."

"You mean--"

"Yes, this is the vest of all possible worlds."

My brain is definitely working well again.

***To the temporary Minneapolis central library. Got (among others) a biography of Samuel Pepys. I've been reading his journal on the net, where it's consistently four hundred years and ten days late. (In his time, England had not yet succumbed to the Papist Gregorian calendar.) The journal is full of offhand references I don't understand. (There are some footnotes, but not everything is explained.)

First impression: By today's standards, Pepys was a lousy husband.

***On to Office Depot in City Center, where I hadn't been for a while. Among changes: Office Depot has closed one of its two entrances. City Center has a lot fewer first-floor businesses, and seems to no longer have first-floor restrooms.

Office Depot was cheaper for some things I needed than Office Max (which has a store within longish walking distance from me.)

On to Steeple People thrift shop and the Wedge Co-op.

***Mail: A marketing blunder from Fantasy & Science Fiction. The please-renew notice itself is okay; the envelope isn't. There's a picture intended to please fans of mediocre 1950s sf movies. This is not the taste F&SF caters to.
________________
From Google News:
Dogs predict seizures with a sloppy kiss
ABC Science Online - 15 minutes ago
Dogs can predict when a child will have an epileptic seizure up to several hours in advance, according to new Canadian research.
Behavior: An Epileptic Child's Best Friend New York Times
Dogs Can Detect Seizures up to Five Hours Ahead of Time ABC News
CTV - Health Talk - Reuters - New Scientist - and 19 related

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 21-Jun-2004
Angewandte Chemie
How left-handed amino acids got ahead
A chemical reaction that demonstrates how key molecules in the biological world might have come to be predominately left or right handed has been reported by scientists at Imperial College London.

Public Release: 21-Jun-2004
Science
Without disturbances in nature the world's forests will be impoverished
The forests of the world are not the stable and unchanging ecosystems they have been assumed to be. Without the occurrence of wide-spread disturbances in nature, such as forest fires, icing, or volcanic activity, forests will eventually be impoverished, owing to a lack of phosphorous.
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Relevant sf/fantasy: Isaac Asimov, The End of Eternity. John Crowley, "Great Work of Time."

Here I quote the full press release, rather than the summary:
Public release date: 21-Jun-2004
Contact: Richard McNally
rjm@wjh.harvard.edu
American Psychological Society
Probing the world of alien abduction stories
Even the unlikeliest of memories can get a big reaction

When people remember traumatic events, they'll show signs of their distress, like increased heart rate, sweating and muscle tension. These reactions are often seen as a testament to the authenticity of the memory - some have gone so far as to use physical reactions to memories to prove their validity, even when the memory is as far-fetched as ritual abuse by satanic cults. Recently, though, a team from Harvard has challenged the significance of these reactions by looking into one of the most widely reported and least likely memories people claim: alien abductions.

The study, conducted by Richard McNally, Natasha Lasko, Susan Clancy, Michael Macklin, Roger Pitman and Scott Orr at Harvard University, will be published in the July issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.

The researchers recruited people who reported being abducted and had them describe the alien encounters as well as other stressful, happy, and neutral memories. The researchers converted these stories into 30-second audiotaped narratives and played them for the "abductees" while recording heart rate, sweat production, and facial muscle tension, three strong indicators of stress. The researchers also played the tapes for a control group of people who had no memories of alien encounters.

The researchers found that those who claimed to have been abducted had similarly strong reactions to the stressful narrative and the alien abduction, and weaker reactions to the happy and neutral narratives. The control group barely reacted to any of the stories.

When people believe they've been abducted by aliens, recalling their abduction can evoke reactions not unlike those evoked by a genuine memory that is stressful. This suggests that a person's reaction to a memory doesn't indicate whether the event happened, but only whether the memory, real or not, is traumatic.

Public Release: 21-Jun-2004
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Stanford researchers eye new chip's potential as an artificial retina
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a prototype for a new kind of implantable chip they believe could be adapted to serve as both a prosthetic retina for people who suffer from a common form of age-related blindness [age-related macular degeneration] and as a drug-delivery system that could treat conditions such as Parkinson's disease.

Public Release: 21-Jun-2004
Organogenesis
Newly grown kidneys can sustain life in rats
Growing new organs to take the place of damaged or diseased ones is moving from science fiction to reality, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
National Institutes of Health

Monday June 21, 2004. Incompetent spammers: "***Dies ist die letzte Chance sich für die US GreenCard 2004 online zu bewerben***" [My guess-translation: This is your last chance to get a US Green Card online.]


"Dear Friend,

"As you read this, I don‘t want you to feel sorry for
me, because, I believe everyone will die someday.

"My name is Sanni Sammi Jnr a merchant in Dubai, in
theU.A.E.I have been diagnosed with Esoph

"Buy gifts for all occasions online from http://shop.di-ve.com"
_________________
From the UK edition of Google News:
School says girls must wear trousers
Guardian - 2 hours ago
A secondary school in Suffolk has become the first in Britain to ban girls from wearing skirts and order them to switch to uniforms with long trousers.
School bans skirts Telegraph.co.uk
Mini-skirt row sparks school ban BBC News
East Anglian Daily Times - Scotland on Sunday - CBBC - The Australian - and 15 related

How long ago was it that schools barred girls from wearing trousers and required them to wear skirts?

Top Irish Lawyers Condemn Bush's 'Electioneering' Visit
The Scotsman - 4 hours ago
Some of Ireland's top lawyers today accused President George Bush of using a planned visit to the country as an electioneering stunt.
Top lawyers hit out at Bush visit UTV
Irish Lawyers Call for Protests Against Bush Visit Reuters
Ireland Online - EUbusiness - Online.ie - and 10 related

A head of government using a foreign visit for domestic political purposes? What a shocking innovation!
_________________
From The Hill newsletter www.TheHill.com
The feud between Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) and House Small Business Committee Chairman Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) showed no signs of abating Thursday as both debated the corporate tax bill on the House floor. Manzullo rose to argue that the bill, sponsored by Thomas, did not include enough tax breaks for small manufacturers. When he was done, Thomas countered by claiming that Manzullo's alternative bill also did not contain those tax breaks. When Manzullo rose to defend his bill, Thomas yielded his time to the Democrats, depriving Manzullo of a chance to speak. Manzullo threw up his arms as if to say, "What gives?" Moments later, John Buckley, chief tax counsel to Ways and Means Ranking Member Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), hurried over to where Manzullo was sitting with his chief tax counsel Jim Clark. (Clark had once been a top tax aide to Thomas until a falling out several years ago, according to House aides.) Buckley indicated that the Democrats would give Manzullo time to respond, which he accepted. Thomas's bill passed handily later yesterday afternoon.

Sunday June 20, 2004. Food catching-up: Yesterday I souped chicken backs with carrots and onion.

The most exciting thing I did today was going to the coin laundry.
___________________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done, posted to this journal.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" --

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --
________________
Religious Faith and Economic Growth: What Matters Most—Belief or Belonging?
by Robert Barro, Ph.D., and Joshua Mitchell, Ph.D.
Heritage Lecture #841
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Religion/hl841.cfm
______________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 20-Jun-2004
BMC Public Health
Denial of AIDS puts sailors and partners at risk
"AIDS is now the leading cause of death in military and police forces in some African countries, accounting for more than half of in-service mortality," write Ugboga Nwokoji and Ademola Ajuwon in the Open Access journal BMC Public Health today. They believe that secrecy about AIDS-related deaths, and multiple sex partnering in the Nigerian navy could be helping to fuel the HIV epidemic in Nigeria, Africa's most populated country.

Suppose there were term limits on governments. For example, after fifty years, the United States government would no longer be eligible to rule over the territory of the United States. If the timing was right, it could take over the area now ruled by the Canadian government; but while the current members of the government would be grandfathered in, future office-holders would have to have been citizens of Canada for the required amount of time. (Or, for the Presidency, would have to have been born there.) The Canadian government might take over the United States; or it might prefer to try its luck in Argentina or Japan.

...
Another possible interesting application would be to manage affinity groups. Imagine a traveller who is cruising down a road trying to decide which night club to try out. If people registered with an affinity tracking service then a traveller could choose a club or restaurant whose currently present patrons fit some desired demographic profile. One obvious problem with such a service is that just because one person likes a particular type of person doesn't mean that most who fit a desired profile will like that person in return. Look at celebrities for example. They are loved by all sorts of people who the celebrities would very much like to avoid. So a service would need to develop eligibility criteria that require matching of preferences in both directions before that person driving down the street would get a flashing light on their car LCD pointing them to a particular bar or night club.

Now I'm actually expecting to see this sort of thing to really be implemented and to become widely used. For bar scenes one of the difficult challenges will be the development of image processing software that can analyse the image of a person you haven't even seen yet to decide whether you might find that person attractive. You could just drive through downtown and be told where to stop. In a bar situation the algorithm would have to be fairly sophisticated and use not just images of a person and background info but also your degree of inebriation (higher levels mean lower standards - imagine an embedded nanotech sensor reporting blood alcohol to your cell phone), the time of night (later means lower standards), how long it has been since you last hooked up, and perhaps similar information from the other person to factor in whether you both ought to be told by your avatars to seek each other out.

Heck, the avatar might even tell you how many drinks you'll have to drink to be able to feel that your realistic choices are acceptable. In the longer term as neurobiology and neurochemistry become more advanced you will be able to have embedded implants installed that will release compounds to make you find many more people attractive than you would naturally. Of course in the longer term gene therapies, stem cell therapies, and other therapies will raise average attractiveness that this will be far less of a problem anyhow. As I've argued previously, the female desire for high status males is going to be harder to solve than the male desire for more attractive females.

Of course, some statistical outliers will actually use this technology to meet more interesting people. I'm not trying to argue that the only application for this technology is meeting people for sexual hook-ups. But my guess is it will find wider use for sexual purposes than for intellectual ones.
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002178.html#002178

Saturday June 19, 2004. "Don't Miss the RUMBLE, TUMBLE World of Amateur HAMSTER RACING."
From an ad announcing the grand opening of the Lakeville branch of Chuck & Don's Pet Food Outlet. This led me to wonder how different amateur and professional hamster racing are.

To Rainbow Foods. They had turkey giblets -- livers and gizzards. I really like turkey liver, and it's hard to find. The gizzards I don't care for, but they could go into soup.

To DreamHaven Books. I bought Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw, a Trollope-oid novel made more realistic by populating it with dragons rather than humans. Her previous novels were in the "Very good, but I don't like it" category.
________________
Mail: Clutterers Anonymous meeting directories.

A letter from my Congressman, Martin Olav Sabo. Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to H.J. Res. 56, legislation that proposes a constitutional amendment intended to prohibit same-sex marriages. I oppose this amendment.
....
"You may also be interested to know that I am a cosponsor of H.R. 2677, the State Regulation of Marriage is Appropriate Act. H.R. 2677 would repeal the federal statutory definition of 'marriage' and spouse.'"

In Minnesota's Fifth District, this isn't likely to lose Sabo his seat. A conservative Republican would get more votes than, say, an English-only candidate in Quebec City; but perhaps fewer than an English-only candidate in Montreal.

Writing: Daily exercise -- Done, posted to this journal.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- One blank part of the zero draft portion filled in. One conversation in the first draft portion tweaked.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

A Shortage of Quality Dictatorships

For most of the 20th Century, Americans had foreign dictatorships to admire. For the left, there was the Soviet Union; when it became less Stalinist, there were China, Cuba and Nicaragua. For the right, after it became unfashionable to admire Nazi Germany there were Spain, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Chile.

But I haven't read or heard such admiration recently, from left or right. Apologies for foreign dictatorships, yes -- for example, the claim that Cuba's economic problems are entirely due to US policies. But not admiration. What changed?

My guess: there aren't any dictatorships which are perceived as being strong. Military strength? They look too vulnerable to the US on one side and unregistered terrorists on the other. Economic strength? Except for Singapore (which shows disturbing signs of succumbing to democracy), none seem to be doing well. [I think this is partly because of a shift in fashionable economic indicators; ability to run steel mills doesn't count for much when what people are looking at is computer technology. Improved economic information may also be a factor.]

[On June 15] in 1956, John Lennon asked Paul McCartney to join his band, The Quarrymen. They would have been another unremarkable teenage rock band, except that 4 years later, their drummer was international superstar, Pete Best.
http://althistory.blogspot.com/2004/06/magna-carta-signed-in-holy-british_15.html#comments
_________________
From Terry "Squeaks" Pulliam Burd on rec.food.cooking: Uncle Phaedrus: Finder of Lost Recipes.
http://www.hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m020301.htm
_________
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2004 10:56:07 EDT
From: Marty Helgesen
Subject: Re: hamburgers and theology
To: Dan Goodman

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 20:02:19 -0500 you said:
>This is from 2000; apologies if you already knew about it.

"McDonald's reacts with disbelief over claims that hamburgers are not Catholic

"Is there a moral dimension to selling hamburgers? Apparently there is in Italy.

"The theologian Massimo Salani has condemned burgers in the Italian bishops' daily Avvenire, saying they were 'not Catholic'.

"Eating burgers and fries reflected an 'individualistic relationship between man and God which goes back to Martin Luther', the Protestant leader who started the German Reformation, Mister Salani argued."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/highlights/001110_mcdonalds.shtm

Thank you. I had not seen it. However, the bbc link you gave me is not active. I googled on Massimo Salani burgers and got several hits. One of the ones I looked at
http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive_2002/0802.shtml
includes this statement: "Fr. Salani's criticism is rooted in his belief that fast food restaurants work against community. Fast food dining focuses on the individual consumer, rushing to buy and eat, and then hurrying off to do something else. The fast food consumer has no time, or takes no time, to stop and break bread with a neighbor."

Posted by: Daniel S. / 12:50 PM

Friday June 18, 2004. It began with vampires. Someone in rec.arts.sf.composition was writing a vampire story. Norse vampires were brought up; it seems they had the habit of drumming on roofs, which brought up a comparison with squirrels. I then mentioned vampire squirrels. (Vampire cows came later.)

*Another branch of the discussion: what would you do if you realized there was a vampire in your city? One poster said: Tell the police there's a serial killer who thinks he's a vampire. After a few cops got killed, they would find a way to take care of the vampire.

One response was an objection to sending police to certain death. I suggested having an immortal police force whose members didn't believe in magic.

*A third branch of the discussion led to me googling this:

McDonald's reacts with disbelief over claims that hamburgers are not Catholic

Is there a moral dimension to selling hamburgers? Apparently there is in Italy.

The theologian Massimo Salani has condemned burgers in the Italian bishops' daily Avvenire, saying they were "not Catholic".

Eating burgers and fries reflected an "individualistic relationship between man and God which goes back to Martin Luther", the Protestant leader who started the German Reformation, Mister Salani argued.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/highlights/001110_mcdonalds.shtm

(The story did not explain the theological reasoning involved.)

***The St. Paul Pioneer Press had an immigration story which said that Minnesota gets immigrants from every continent except Antarctica. Which led me to wonder which parts of the US do get Antarctic immigrants.

***To HealthPartners Uptown, to pick up allergy pills.

Then to Steeple People thrift store, where some volunteer had seriously underpriced nice-looking (and functional) pots and pans. I decided to buy some of them, and throw out some of my older ones.

Across the street to the Wedge co-op. They had frozen chicken backs at 69¢ a pound.
________________________
Writing: Daily exercise --

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- A bit farther ahead. It's a bit disconcerting to have a female character who shares some of my weaknesses.

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

Thursday June 17, 2004. I think I've slept my way out of whatever I'd been sick with.
________________________
From soc.history.what-if, a newsgroup devoted to alternate history:

"My history teacher assigned me to write a term paper about an obscure revolutionary named Karl Marx. Can anybody give me some references about him?"

My favorite answer so far: first Secretary of the Treasury of the Confederate States of America.
________________________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done. See below:

The simplest books on any subject are written for people who have to learn in a hurry. "I know we hired you to teach English, but you're also going to teach math this year." "Welcome to the United States Navy! The people we're fighting are called Japanese. All that water is called the Pacific Ocean -- this book will explain what an ocean is. The thing you're on is a type of ship called an aircraft carrier."

If you've never cooked for yourself before, get a cookbook intended for college students.
They're simpler and more basic than the ones for children, though the pictures aren't as good.

***"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I think I've gotten started on the part which was giving me the most trouble.

***"They Might Be Windmills" --

***"History Line" -- A bit more added to the zero draft.

I'm kind of worried that biotechnology and nanotechnology may go the way
of klaftnoglastics, a technology whose potential for evil was so feared
that, despite its almost unlimited potential for good, it was totally
banned. All research, use, and even mention of it was suppressed, until
today practically no one even remembers its name, let alone its nature.
Tom Digby, Silicon Soapware #116 http://www.well.com/~bubbles/SS0116.txt
____________________
A morals campaign in China
Wary of individualism, Beijing cracks down on discos, the Internet, and
hair dye. By Robert Marquand
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0618/p01s04-woap.html
______________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 17-Jun-2004
Rock 'face' mystery baffles experts
Archaeologists from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne have found a trio of extraordinary stone carvings while charting the phenomenon of prehistoric rock markings in Northumberland, close to the Scottish border in the United Kingdom and are appealing for experts to help interpret them. With pictures.
Arts and Humanities Research Board

Public Release: 17-Jun-2004
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Improved nutrition could prevent more than half of the world's child deaths annually
Fifty-three percent of all child deaths that occur annually are caused by undernutrition, according to new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Human Nutrition.
WHO Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development, others

Public Release: 17-Jun-2004
Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture
New tests for nut allergens
Scientists in Florida have developed sensitive new tests to detect potentially fatal nut traces in food. Their study is published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

Public Release: 17-Jun-2004
Surprise: Fermilab's SELEX experiment finds puzzling new particle
Scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will announce on Friday, June 18 the observation of an unexpected new member of a family of subatomic particles called "heavy-light" mesons.

Wednesday June 16, 2004. Most Wednesdays, I do volunteer work at Pillsbury House: data entry for the Community Barter Network and Pillsbury House's volunteer program. Today, it took a while before I could get started. Apparently, the computer experts at Pillsbury United Communities (the umbrella organization which includes Pillsbury House) had done something over the weekend which meant I couldn't get to the needed data base.

On to Uncle Hugo's, and then to the Wedge.
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"Speaking of Italian pragmatism: my uncle has an ‘emergency pendant’ which dates back to his youth in Sardinia. On one side, it has a St Christopher and details of the local priest; on the other, there’s the details of the local Communist Party boss." nick, commenting in Crooked Timber http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002032.htm
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[Tyler Cowen, June 16, 2004 at 1:43pm]
Movies grouped by philosophical category:

Do you like both philosophy and movies? This web site lists the top philosophical movies of all time. The list is well thought out, though excessively American (where is Bergman's Persona, for instance?).

Even better, Jason Brennan groups movies by philosophical theme. His categories include skepticism/external deception, determinism, time travel, personal identity, philosophy of religion, contractarianism, epistemology, and relativism. Only a philosopher could come up with "Prudent Predator/Immoralism/Ring of Gyges" as a category; I applaud his ability to find three films (try guessing before looking) that fit the bill.
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_14.shtml#10874077
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Writing: Daily exercise -- done, posted in this journal.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" --

"They Might Be Windmills" --

"History Line" --

Daily Exercise Getting Inside the Protagonist

Explaining better (or at least in more detail) something about writing I realized on 6/15/04:

It's not enough for me to understand the viewpoint character intellectually. I need to get inside that character's way of thinking.

Example of success: He's grown up in a society where people grow their own vegetables Just In Case. Intellectually, he knows that 1) the food shortages never got really bad in North America, 2) there's no longer much danger of shortages, and 3) most people don't have enough land to grow all the food they might need. But he's still horrified at the idea of planting a yard in grass or other inedible vegetation.

I've become able to look at yards and feel the same reaction he would.

Non-success: For him, "They had themselves brainwashed into being in love, and lived happily ever after" is a happy ending. He has difficulty understanding why someone raised in a different society might be squicked out by this. If people freely choose to have their minds rewritten, what's the problem?

I've been looking at that mindset from the outside; I haven't gotten inside it. And that's been stalling the story.

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 16-Jun-2004
Just add a chromosome
Genetic diseases might one day be treated by adding an entirely new chromosome to people's cells. Vast chunks of DNA can be added in the form of an artificial chromosome, rather than being limited to inserting just one or two genes, which could end up in the wrong place. A Canadian company has already shown the technique could be a feasible method of gene therapy.

Public Release: 15-Jun-2004
Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism
Asian Indians at greater risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, researchers find
Asian Indian men are at an increased risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, whether overweight or not, because their bodies metabolize fat like people who are obese, according to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
National Institutes of Health

Deterministic quantum teleportation with atoms
M. RIEBE et al.
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePPz0BfwT60Ch0OCb0A8

Deterministic quantum teleportation of atomic qubits
M. D. BARRETT et al.
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePPz0BfwT60Ch0OCc0AA

Radiocarbon evidence of mid-Holocene mammoths stranded on an Alaskan
Bering Sea island
R. DALE GUTHRIE
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePPz0BfwT60Ch0OCf0AD

Enhanced partner preference in a promiscuous species by manipulating
the expression of a single gene
MIRANDA M. LIM et al.
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePPz0BfwT60Ch0OCh0AF

Tuesday June 15, 2004. Speculation (a rerun): six-limbed bird-equivalents with one pair each of wings, legs, and hands. Birds have more intelligence for their size than mammals do. So, perhaps flying creatures with human-level intelligence and tool-using ability?

***As an alternative to sitting around at home, I went to Lyndale-Farmstead park for a while.
_______________
Writing: Daily exercise, shorter than usual --
There were nine cats this morning, dressed in tuxedos and cranky about that. If I ever find out who's been leaving them here, I'll turn him into catfood.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- A bit more changed from zero draft to first draft; a bit which was already first draft tweaked.

One problem: It's a romance, set in a future where "They had themselves brainwashed into being in love, and lived happily ever after" is an acceptable romance ending. I need to adopt that mindset while working on the story. So far, I've been distanced from that way of thinking.

"They Might Be Windmills" -- A bit more zero draft.

"History Line" -- A bit more zero draft.
_________________________
A wearable camera full of sensors could help people with memory problems, according to Microsoft researchers [in the UK].

The prototype SenseCam takes an instant snap every time it spots changes in movement, temperature or light.

"SenseCam has been designed to act like a black box for the human body," lead researcher Lyndsay Williams told BBC News Online.

"It was something I originally created as a method for helping my family find their keys at home...."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/3797581.stm

David Brooks: "It's been said that every society has two aristocracies. The members of the aristocracy of mind produce ideas, and pass along knowledge. The members of the aristocracy of money produce products and manage organizations."
http://nytimes.com/2004/06/15/opinion/15BROO.html

Apparently, he's never heard of aristocracies of birth, military aristocracies, or government-service aristocracies. For most of recorded history, almost all societies were dominated by some combination of these. Aristocracies of mind and aristocracies of money were marginal at best.

Brooks's column is one reason why I find it increasingly harder to take the New York Times seriously.
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• Correction item Lore tat iriustie vel utat ad exero eros alit at wismolum deliquipisl irilissenim ea facipit, velis nonsequ psuscilisi blam.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4828584.htm
________________
[David Bernstein, June 15, 2004 at 11:40am] Possible Trackbacks
Most Blatant Lie I've Heard for a While:

Heard on NPR: Montgomery County, Maryland, is considering a measure that would ban very large retail stores, a measure intended to prohibit WalMart supercenters in the county. The measure is being push by Giant Food (a local supermarket chain). A spokesperson for Giant says that the company is not worried about competition, but rather "is concerned about the enviromental impact of the supercenters."
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_06_14.shtml#1087314018
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From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 15-Jun-2004
Public Library of Science Biology
New technique developed for deciphering brain recordings can capture thinking as it happens
A team led by University of California San Diego neurobiologists has developed a new approach to interpreting brain electroencephalograms, or EEGs, that provides an unprecedented view of thought in action and has the potential to advance our understanding of disorders like epilepsy and autism.
Swartz Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Public Release: 15-Jun-2004
Public Library of Science Biology
Ecology drives the worldwide distribution of human diseases
Comparative analyses reveal that human pathogens increase towards the equator and that the relationship is linked to climate - this has important implications for global biodiversity, public health and environmental epidemiology.
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From the UK edition of Google News:
Iris scanners to be introduced at airport
Granada Reports - 30 minutes ago
Manchester Airport could be using eye scanners to increase security at terminals within a year. The new technology's being brought in by the Home Office because it's very difficult to forge iris scans. At first it will be a voluntary system and will be ...
Biometric screening planned at five airports MLive.com
Iris scanners fitted in airports BBC News
4ni.co.uk - The Scotsman - The Australian - Jerusalem Post - and 12 related

Monday June 14, 2004. On June 26, light rail service begins in the Twin Cities. A slew of bus routes will change -- to connect with the first light rail line, or for other reasons. Some routes will go out of existence; others will be born.

Today I went to the Transit Store in downtown Minneapolis to pick up new schedules. I got most of what I'll need; one schedule doesn't seem to be available yet. Nor does the new transit map.

***On to Shinder's News, where I hadn't been in a while. The "adult" section -- walled off from the rest of the store -- was gone. I suspect written and visual-recording porn has trouble competing with what's on the web.

***There were other things I'd intended to get done today, which didn't get done. I've been feeling blah, and I'm not sure why.

***Email: THE VIEW FROM ENTROPY HALL #34, by Ed Meskys; originally for APA Q. Material on: Toronto's trolleys, a nearby historical-recreation village (and others elsewhere), Lithuanian community (which seems to be predominantly Lutheran; this is roughly equivalent to an Irish community in North America being predominantly Greek Orthodox). Silverlock. sight-to-touch translation device for the blind. Patricia C. Wrede's Dragon books. The Borrowers series. The movie Homecoming, based on Cynthia Voigt's novel, and Cynthia Voigt's work in general. Marge Piercy's He, She, and It. If someone else had written Lord of the Rings. Letters of comment from rich brown (not to be confused with Rich Brown), Karen Anderson, Ruth Berman, Mark Blackman, Ned Brooks, Mark Mandel, and others. Mailing comments from John Boardman. Mailing comments to various people.
_______________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- A bit more first draft material added.

"They Might be Windmills" --

"History Line" -- A bit more zero draft material added.

Maybe I shouldn't laugh at this:

CAMP RIPLEY, MINN. -- Several years ago, the staff at Camp Ripley decided that "we just can't train soldiers with bears crawling through tents and trucks," as Bill Brown put it.
Published June 14, 2004 http://www.startribune.com/metro/

From the Ballad-L mailing list:

....the New Zealand Currency Decimalization Song (from 1967, I think)...runs through a mnemonic for converting small sums in old pennies to new cents, to a polka-like tune. It was re-released in the 1980s on a two-LP collection of Australian and New Zealand tastelessness called "Antipodean Atrocities", which I think John Peel put together.

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 13-Jun-2004
Nature Neuroscience
Brains at work: learning a second language may not be as laborious as believed
Adults often struggle trying to learn a second language, but the process may not be as tedious and slow as commonly believed. University of Washington researchers who followed colledge students learning first-year French have found that the students' brain activity was clearly discriminating between real and pseudo-French words after only 14 hours of classroom instruction.
NIH/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Drinking tea may delay female puberty
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040612/food.asp

From Google News, an astounding discovery:
Angry Men Shouldn't Drink
Forbes - 55 minutes ago
MONDAY, June 14 (HealthDayNews) -- Men with high levels of trait anger and low levels of anger control should not drink alcohol, says a study in the June issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
When and How You Drink Matter to Liver Atlanta Journal Constitution (subscription)
Study finds women's pattern of drinking key factor in liver damage risk WIS
and 6 related

From the UK edition of Google News:
Breakthrough for Sinn Fein on both sides of the border
Independent - 1 hour ago
Sinn Fein were the most conspicuous winners in both parts of Ireland yesterday, taking the party's first-ever European seats in the Republic and in Northern Ireland.
Can polar extremes do business? BBC News
Sinn Féin wins first Ulster MEP Guardian
Scotland on Sunday - Reuters - ePolitix - EUbusiness - and 42 related

From the India edition of Google News:
Hindus smash up cinema after Bollywood breaks lesbian taboo
Independent - 2 hours ago
Hindu extremists laid siege to a Bombay cinema yesterday, smashing windows and burning effigies on the street outside, demanding that the screening of a new Bollywood film be stopped.
Sena boys can't stand Girlfriend Calcutta Telegraph
Culture cop role upsets Bollywood Times of India
Keralanext - New Kerala - BBC News - Rediff - and 29 related

A Nation Divided? Who Says?
By JOHN TIERNEY
Some scholars say the notion of a polarized nation is largely a myth created by people inside the Beltway shouting at each other....

Why, if the public is tolerant, would the political elites be so angry? One reason given by Professor Fiorina is the decline of party bosses, who promoted centrist candidates because their patronage systems depended on winning elections, and the corresponding rise of special-interest groups, who are more concerned with candidates' ideology.

Losing an election doesn't put pro-life or gun-control advocates out of work - in fact, it can help raise money for the cause. Nor does it hurt broadcast ratings or book sales for polarizing media figures like Sean Hannity and Al Franken, who need battles to keep their audiences entertained.

Another reason is gerrymandering, which has created so many safe seats that the only threat to incumbents comes from within the party, forcing them to appeal to the partisan voters who dominate primaries.
http://nytimes.com/2004/06/13/weekinreview/13tier.html

POOR BURT COHEN. Literally. The reason for the surprise, last-minute withdrawal of State Senator Burt Cohen (D-NH)Burt Cohen from the race against US Senator Judd Gregg (R) was explained over the weekend. While Cohen was unlikely to win -- or possibly even come close -- he was a credible candidate who had raised around $700,000 to date and would have given NH voters a thoughtful ideological choice. From various published reports in the state, it appears that Cohen's campaign manager Jesse Burchfield has skipped town and -- with him -- nearly all the money that remained in Cohen's campaign account is also allegedly missing. The amount: reported to be around $200,000. There were some vague red flags: the FEC recently warned the Cohen campaign that the numbers in at least two of their financial reports were not adding up correctly, and that the formulas used to make the calculations appeared unusual. The campaign Friday brought in an accountant and attorney to go over all the financial records. Sources also indicate the campaign has taken steps to trigger a formal criminal investigation of the matter. FYI: Other victims of similar embezzlements in recent years include US Senator Joe Biden ($400,000 stolen), US Senator Elizabeth Dole ($174,000 stolen), Congressman John Boehner ($617,000 stolen), Congresswoman Anne Northup ($40,000 stolen), Congressman Doc Hastings ($28,000 stolen), and Congressman Ernest Istook ($32,000 stolen).
http://www.politics1.com/

Also at Politics1, see A DIFFERENT WAY TO HANDLE THE MEDIA -- discussing a political candidate who is also First Rabbi of the Libertarian Church.

Sunday June 13, 2004. In my sleep, I worked out something about fiction. When I read fiction, I'm interested in what happens to the characters; the protagonist(s) and the next tier of characters.

If nothing changes, then -- no matter how many action scenes there are -- I lose interest. That's one reason why I gave up on Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" fantasy series. If there are too many major characters to keep track of, I lose interest.

And if Dorothy Heydt's Eight Deadly Words -- "I don't care what happens to these people" -- enter my mind, I stop reading.

Note: The protagonist and other major characters don't have to be living creatures. Examples in which they aren't: George R. Stewart's Storm, Fire, and The Years of the City, whose protagonists are a hurricane, a forest fire, and a Greek colony in southern Italy.
_____________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- A bit more changed from zero draft to first draft. A bit of first draft tweaked.

"They Might be Windmills" --

"History Line" -- I didn't want to begin another story, but this one insisted. I've had parts of it in the back of my mind for a while. Zero draft started.
______________________
Technophiles could soon use mobile phones to create and access interactive city guides. A four-week trial of the latest technology has just begun in London.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040607/040607-10.html

A girls' team, a fired coach, and Title IX
By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – When coach Roderick Jackson complained that his girls' basketball team was being treated like second-class citizens at Ensley High School in Birmingham, Ala., school administrators took firm and immediate action - against Coach Jackson.

"I was told that I was not a team player, that I needed to play ball or I was going to make problems for myself," Mr. Jackson says. "And they weren't joking." He was fired.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0614/p01s01-usju.html

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 13-Jun-2004
Psychology and Aging
Being bilingual protects against some age-related cognitive changes, says new research
Most will agree that two heads are better than one in solving problems. The same logic may be true for language and retaining cognitive processes as we age. Being fluent in two languages seems to prevent some of the cognitive decline seen in same-age monolingual speaking persons, according to the findings of a study appearing in this month's journal of Psychology and Aging.

Public Release: 13-Jun-2004
Two billion vulnerable to floods by 2050; number expected to double or more in two generations
The number of people worldwide vulnerable to a devastating flood is expected to mushroom to 2 billion by 2050 due to climate change, deforestation, rising sea levels and population growth in flood-prone lands, warn experts at the United Nations University.
United Nations University

Public Release: 13-Jun-2004
American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Genetic modification in mice lowers cholesterol and homocysteine by half
Scientists report that mice genetically altered so as to lack either of the two different pathways through which humans, mice, and other animals provide lipids for high density and low density lipoproteins did not appear to suffer any ill effects. But, animals from both groups had markedly lower levels of cholesterol in their blood stream. Alteration of one of the pathways also lowered blood levels of homocysteine by 50 percent.
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Institutes of Health, Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research

Saturday June 12, 2004. I woke up much earlier than usual, after going to sleep much earlier than usual.

To Pilgrim Lutheran Church, for their bag sale. For $1, I got a fair amount of stuff I needed. (Plus, of course, some things I didn't really need.)

On to Pillsbury House for the Clutterers Anonymous meeting. The new meeting space works well, and there's now a solid core of regular attendees.

***One acquisition from the bag sale was a decades-old collection of selections from Pulitzer Prize winners. I was surprised at how boring I found the fiction selections. This may have been partly due to editorial bias; several of the writers have also produced fiction which I enjoyed. The nonfiction selections ranged from mildly interesting to "Now I remember why I never finished reading that book."

But the poetry interested me.

I hope some literary historian has tracked changes in what's considered Pulitzer-worthy. Because if not, I'll probably end up doing that.

______________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done. A bit of political commentary.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Improved some wording in the first-draft part. Didn't tackle what's still in zero draft.

"They Might be Windmills" -- Added a bit more information.

Friday June 11, 2004. '"What time is it?" I yawned as I sat up trying to shake off the final ruminants of sleep.' From an amateur sex story on the web.

Writing: Daily exercise -- done, posted here earlier.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Added another ingredient.

"They Might be Windmills" --
________________________
The newest prison contraband: cellphones
Cellphones are allow inmates to communicate freely with the outside world and conduct illicit activity from behind bars. By Kris Axtman
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0611/p01s04-usju.html
___________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 10-Jun-2004
Gulf of California Conference
Hidden cost of Colorado River diversions is $2.4 billion annually
The Colorado River's water no longer flows all the way to the Gulf of California. A University of Arizona researcher reports the first dollar estimate of the benefits society would get from the natural functioning of a healthy Colorado River delta.
National Science Foundation, Environmental Defense, University of Arizona's Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, UA's Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy

Public Release: 11-Jun-2004
Seminars in Dialysis
190 end-stage renal disease patients die each day: Epogen usage questioned
Seminars in Dialysis, a peer-reviewed journal published by Blackwell Publishing, is featuring the much-publicized* controversial editorial authored by Dennis Cotter in its May issue, despite outright rejection from a competitive journal, Dialysis and Transplantation.

From the full press release: For initial coverage of article rejection and controversy, see “Journal rejects article after objections from marketing department" by Owen Dyer, British Medical Journal, Volume 328 January 31 2004, page 244 and "Business, Science Clash at Medical Journal" by Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post, Saturday, February 7, 2004, page A02. The controversy surrounding this article began when first rejected from being published because it was considered inflammatory to the pharmaceutical industry and their advertising influences. The article is now receiving the chance to be read and discussed so clinicians can review the best treatment course for their dialysis patients. Additional background on the suppression of this paper can be found at http://www.wame.org/marketing.htm.

Third-person Narrator as a Character

Third-person fiction is told by an "implied narrator," according to literary theory. In practice, the implied narrator is usually enough like the author that this bit of theory can be ignored during the writing process. (Or the implied narrator is enough like the writer's usual public mask that there's no practical difference.) But an implied narrator who's not like the writer can be a useful tool.

Example: A story set in the 22nd century might have as implied narrator a 24th-century historical romance writer. To that narrator, the 22nd century would be charmingly old-fashioned; to the actual writer of today, it wouldn't be. This implied narrator would project the moral values of her own time into the century before last; and those wouldn't be nearly the same as the writer's values. (Well, not if the writer is any good at building futures.)

In theory, "historical fiction" set in our time whose implied narrator and implied reader are in the future could tell a lot about that future without explicitly saying anything about it. The clues would be 1) what this fictional author has to explain to readers and 2) what she gets wrong.

Thursday June 10, 2004. Rummage sale at Pilgrim Lutheran Church's school, 3910 Stevens Avenue. On that part of Stevens, there's no way to forget which side of the street a building is on. The other side is taken up by a fence which protects Stevens from the freeway.

I spent a bit over a dollar. Saturday morning will be a $1 bag sale; right before my Clutterers Anonymous meeting.

To Steeple People thrift shop. I donated some "I might need it someday" stuff, bought a couple of teaspoons, and picked up some free magazines.

Across the street to the Wedge. Bought catnip, among other things; it doesn't do for me what it does for cats, but catnip tea does give me a slight lift.

Picked up a copy of the Southwest News. As usual, about half the car thefts included in the police report were from people who'd either left their keys in the ignition or left them in plain sight in their cars.
_____________________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Political predictions. Sent to the newsgroups soc.politics and alt.history.future.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Added a new element. As it runs now: They have themselves brainwashed out of needing each other, have themselves brainwashed into being in love, and live happily ever after.

"They Might be Windmills" -- One conversation added.
____________________
From the UK edition of Google news:
Row grows at Reid's defence of smoking
The Herald - 2 hours ago
JOHN Reid, health secretary, sparked a major political row when he claimed that smoking was one of the few enjoyments left to those living on council "sink" estates.
Ministers plan to set tougher targets for cutting smoking Independent
Docs Fury As Reid Sparks Cigs Row Glasgow Daily Record

From the India edition of Google News:
Skeletons tumble out of temple closet
Sify - 45 minutes ago
Workers repairing a centuries-old temple in a West Bengal village have come across dozens of human skeletons, fuelling theories of mass murders and human sacrifice.
VHP bid to invade Red bastion Times of India
India News: Human skeletons dug out of ancient temple Keralanext

From The Economist's free weekly business ezine:

Germany's constitutional court confirmed a ban on Sunday shopping by throwing out a legal challenge from Kaufhof, a department-store chain, while recognising that exceptions, such as shops in railway and petrol stations, are growing. According to the constitution, Sundays and official holidays are upheld as days of “spiritual elevation”.

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 9-Jun-2004
Neurology
Yoga reduces fatigue in MS patients, OHSU study finds
Just six months of yoga significantly reduces fatigue in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), but it has no effect on alertness and cognitive function, says a new Oregon Health & Science University study published in Neurology. The study found that yoga is as good as a traditional aerobic exercise program in improving measures of fatigue, a common and potentially disabling symptom of MS. It was the first randomized, controlled trial of yoga in people with MS.
National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 9-Jun-2004
Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association
Nitric oxide deficiency raises cardiovascular disease risk in African Americans
African Americans suffer from cardiovascular diseases at a rate about five times higher than the rest of the U.S. population. In a new study, scientists may have found a culprit: a serious deficiency of nitric oxide, a small molecule vital in the regulation of blood flow and blood pressure. The research team, led by Ohio University biochemist Tadeusz Malinski, examined the blood vessel cells of 12 white and 12 black healthy female subjects.

Public Release: 9-Jun-2004
Journal of Neural Engineering
Human subjects play mind games
That's using your brain. For the first time in humans, a team headed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has placed an electronic grid atop patients' brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains.
National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 9-Jun-2004
Memory fails you after severe stress
People think they'll never forget traumatic experiences, but new research shows that memory is very hazy after severe stress. When military personnel were subjected to severe physical and mental stress in a mock POW camp run by the US military, most failed to identify their interrogators a day or so later. The finding casts serious doubt in the reliability of victim testimonies in cases involving traumatic trauma.

Public Release: 10-Jun-2004
Journal of Physiology
Deciphering the limits to human maximal exercise performance
The main factor limiting maximal exercise capacity is the amount of O2 that can be delivered to the active muscles. Studying elite cross-country skiers, Dr Jose A. Calbet and a team of Scandinavian colleagues led by Professor Bengt Saltin present, in the forthcoming issue of The Journal of Physiology, show that during maximal exercise in the upright position and to avoid hypotension humans must restrain the voracity for blood flow of active muscles.

Public Release: 10-Jun-2004
Ecology Letters
Manipulating biotope space can enhance beneficial biodiversity effects
Using diverse plant mixtures instead of monocultures can increase yield and other ecosystem goods and services on which humans depend. Recent studies showed that such beneficial effects of biodiversity depend on complementarity between species in resource use, as is the case if species root in different soil depths. Scaled up to agricultural systems this means that benefits of intercropping may be greater on deep soils and that soil erosion may reduce intercropping benefits.

Public Release: 10-Jun-2004
Ecology Letters
[full press release]

In the forthcoming issue of Ecology Letters Svenning & Skov use bioclimatic modelling to show that among 55 native European tree species, 36 occupy less than 50% of their climatically suitable range. Many of these species naturalize extensively outside their native ranges, providing support for the conclusion that European tree species ranges are strongly controlled by dispersal limitation despite 10,000 years of relatively stable climate.

In the coming century, the global mean surface temperature is expected to rise an unprecedented 1.4 to 5.8°C. Given the limited climate-tracking exhibited by European tree species during the past 10,000 years, the authors warn that we should expect most of them to be unable to track such dramatic climate changes.

Public Release: 10-Jun-2004
Science
Canine word-learning research published in Science
Dog owners convinced of their pets' grasp of human language may be validated, at least in part, by new research on the word-learning abilities of a German family's Border collie. Scientists who studied a dog with an approximately 200-word "vocabulary" suggest that some aspects of speech comprehension evolved earlier than, and independent from, human speech.

Public Release: 9-Jun-2004
Personality & Social Psychology
Why grandparents prefer certain kin to others
Grandparents systemically prefer some grandchildren to others because of doubts about genetic lineage new Australian research confirms.
____________________________
Power implant aims to run on body heat
The project hopes to tackle a big drawback of life-saving implants
like pacemakers - their batteries running out
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995091

Greedy hackers can hog Wi-Fi bandwidth
Linux users can tweak their computers to increase their share of
bandwidth, computer scientists warn
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995085

Virtual fences to herd Wi-Fi cattle
A farmer could control multiple herds from a single server at home,
as if he were playing a video game
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999507

Wednesday June 8, 2004. Pillsbury House, where I do data entry for the Community Barter Network and Pillsbury House's volunteer program. Besides me: the director of Pillsbury House, the Pillsbury United Communities computer expert, and someone from the company which designed the new program I've been using.

One report I'd thought couldn't be run turned out to be easy.

And there will be changes in the program which will make it simpler (or, in some cases, possible) to do certain things. Some the director needs to do, some I need to do.

After the meeting, I did this week's data entry. And ran the reports needed for the Time Dollar Store to know who has enough Time Dollars to shop there.

And they printed out in the wrong neighborhood. The PUC computer person had signed on to that computer, and the reports printed out in the building where she usually is....
______________________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- There are Supermen, and they intend to take over. It's an old idea in written sf, and is used often enough to be a familiar one. But it's usually only one group of post-humans. At most, there might be two or three competing groups.

But what if such groups were common? You read the police report in your local paper: So many cars stolen, about half left running and with the keys in the ignition. So many people who dropped packages of drugs when they saw the police coming. Another homo superior conspiracy broken up; as usual, those members old enough to be tried as adults were charged with misdemeanors, the rest fed into the juvenile justice system.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" --

"They Might be Windmills" -- The daily exercise turned out to be about the story's background.
________________________
From http://www.livejournal.com/users/Goddes/

Using a computer to cook eggs:
http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/~htsu/humor/fry_egg.html

Anything which emits enough heat can be used to cook. Whether it should be or not -- it took a while for printers to figure out that cooking with the equipment for melting down lead type was not a good idea. There've been at least two cookbooks on using car engines -- one published in the 1920s (sorry; I don't recall the title) and the other much more recently: Manifold Destiny.

And there's a recipe for cooking turkey (or, in some versions, salmon) in a dishwasher:
... Salmon will be done when the dishwasher runs the full cycle. .... Nutrition Info Servings Per Recipe: 4. Amount Per Serving. ...
http://seafood.allrecipes.com/az/SlmninthDishwshr.asp - 50k - Cached - Similar pages

Google doesn't turn up any turkey recipes.

A whole lot of information sources
http://www.eyebeamresearch.org/annualdatasources.htm

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 9-Jun-2004
A bridge smaller than the width of a human hair
A team at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, has recreated two major British landmarks - the Tyne Bridge and the Antony Gormley's Angel of the North sculpture - so they are smaller than a pinhead and invisible to the naked eye, to showcase their expertise in advanced miniaturisation technology.

Public Release: 9-Jun-2004
Neuron
How brain gives special resonance to emotional memories
If the emotional memory of a traumatic car accident or the thrill of first love are remembered with a special resonance, it is because they engage different brain structures than do normal memories, Duke University researchers have discovered.
National Institutes of Health
____________________________
Harmonic-hopping in Wallacea's bats
TIGGA KINGSTON & STEPHEN J. ROSSITER
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePLh0BfwT60Ch0NzU0AS

Echolocation signals reflect niche differentiation in five sympatric
congeneric bat species
BJÖRN M. SIEMERS & HANS-ULRICH SCHNITZLER
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePLh0BfwT60Ch0NzV0AT

Tuesday June 8, 2004. A bit sick. Not enough to keep me from running errands; but enough that I haven't been particularly interested in anything.
___________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- done.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- a bit of foreshadowing inserted. A bit of rewording.
_______________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 8-Jun-2004
Purdue mathematician claims proof for Riemann hypothesis
A Purdue University mathematician claims to have proven the Riemann hypothesis, often dubbed the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics.

Comments of Comment

snippy 2004-06-06 21:21
Tara K. Harper writes through her dreams, but not quite like that. She works out the story in her head like a movie, and then writes it. If she comes to a new problem while writing, she dreams it out that night.

dsgood 2004-06-08 22:08
Robert Louis Stevenson also dreamed stories; I don't remember the details, but I think he used yet a third method.

timprov 2004-06-06 22:27
I don't get why so many vegetarians/vegans feel the need to spend so much time on fake animal products. There are so many good vegan things to be made that aren't fake nonvegan things. I'm occasionally tempted to write a vegan cookbook, despite being entirely unqualified, just because the competition seems so pathetic.

dsgood 2004-06-08 22:14
Partly because to many Americans it's not a real meal unless it includes meat, I think.

And partly because those vegetarians and vegans who want to Preach The Word are like other preachy types -- they usually don't understand the people they're preaching at.

timprov 2004-06-06 22:01
"They Might Be Windmills" is a very nifty title.

dsgood 2004-06-08 22:20
Thank you!

mrissa 2004-06-07 21:55
Considering that Spinrad was offering his most recent book for $1 and had no takers, I'm not sure his is the example we want to use of near-future wrong-prediction SF doing well....

Not that I disagree with the general point, mind.

dsgood 2004-06-08 22:33
I wasn't giving it as an example of doing well, but as an example of it getting into print -- and being reprinted after it had definitely been proven wrong.

As for He Walked Among Us -- after reading the sample given at Spinrad's site, I decided that it hadn't sold because it wasn't very good.

It's now available as an ebook and as a Print On Demand book. I'm not sure how close it is to the self-publication end of the spectrum.

Apartments in Paris aren't cheap, so he's probably getting a good income from writing something.

timprov 2004-06-08 03:04
I'm not sure where the boundary is between failed predictions and alternate history/alternate future history.

For instance, mrissa and I are working on a story that assumes a very Gibson-esque cyberpunk near future (in the story's past). Neither of us takes it seriously as extrapolation, but it hasn't not happened yet, even though it looks terribly unlikely at this point.

dsgood 2004-06-08 22:43
Some failed predictions have retroactively been relabeled as alternate history. For example, Poul Anderson's first future history; World War Three failed to occur on schedule.

By the way -- if you were to write a story in which the near future included only likely things, you would get some things very, very wrong.

oursin 2004-06-08 05:20
I thought that the reason that sf writers weren't writing about 2000 in 1999 were 'that's like, so 1950s' (or, 'been there, done that, decades ago')

dsgood 2004-06-08 22:48
Well, imitations of E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" have been published for almost a hundred years. And stories in which the last two people on Earth turn out to be named Adam and Eve keep being published -- despite being prominent on editors' "Don't send me this!" lists.

From Denny Lien Dennis Lien

Though there were a small spate of Y2J stories out just before the 2000 clickover. I even had an idea for one myself but lacked the skills to write it, mercifully. It assumed that The Second Coming would respect time zones, so that people elsewhere in the world could see the Skies Open, G*d Descending, Demons Fleeing etc. at midnight+ in one zone, and hence had from 1 to 23 hours to Repent And Be Saved before it got to their own zone.

Here's a list I did for Stumpers a few years back of stories which I could think of that were set in the year 2000. I'm sure there are many more (I've found more since, in fact):

Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 15:43:30 -0500
Subject: % SF set in 2000

At 11:13 AM 9/11/00 -0700, BALIS/PLS/SVLS Reference Center wrote:

We're looking for lists of science fiction novels set in the year 2000. So far we've found quite a few in Bleiler's _Science fiction: the early years_, which covers works published through 1930. Our library patron is hoping to find titles that were published through the 1960s, however, and that's where we've run into difficulty. _Olderr's fiction index_ has subject access, but doesn't help in this case as it was only published from 1987-90. We have found 3 titles published in the 1950s on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database at sfsite.com, but otherwise SF sites on the web seem to focus only on later works. We thought surely the SF newsgroups would have talked about this, but a search of archives on Deja.com did not find any.

Does anyone know of any SF novels published between 1930-1969 which take place in 2000? Or know of any other sources which provide subject access to science fiction?

Other sources we've tried: OCLC; Fiction catalog; Reference guide to science fiction, fantasy & horror; Science fiction writers (Scribner series); Locus Magazine's index to science fiction; letter to Locus; call to a local SF bookstore.

Many, many thanks for any help,
Catherine Sylvia

The Bleilers have a companion volume (SCIENCE FICTION; THE GERNSBACK YEARS) which lists another dozen or so stories set in 2000, but again none of these would have been published after 1930. (THE GERNSBACK YEARS covers stories that appeared up through 1930 in sf speciality magazines; e.g. AMAZING, WONDER, and so on; THE EARLY YEARS covered stories in book form or in general magazines such as ARGOSY, HARPER'S, and so on.)

Even though you speak of novels, I'd think you'd want to note this thematic short story anthology:

The Year 2000 ed. Harry Harrison (Doubleday, 1970, hc)
" America the Beautiful " Fritz Leiber " ss *
" Prometheus Rebound " Daniel F. Galouye " nv *
" Far from This Earth " Chad Oliver " ss *
" After the Accident " Naomi Mitchison " ss *
" Utopian " Mack Reynolds " ss *
" Orgy of the Living and the Dying " Brian W. Aldiss " nv Moment of Eclipse, London: Faber & Faber, 1970
" Sea Change " A. Bertram Chandler " nv *
" Black Is Beautiful " Robert Silverberg " ss *
" Take It Or Leave It " David I. Masson " ss *
" The Lawgiver " Keith Laumer " ss *
" To Be a Man " J. J. Coupling " ss *
" Judas Fish " Thomas N. Scortia " ss *
" American Dead " Harry Harrison " ss *

As far as novels are concerned, the only post-1930 ones that a first round of brain cudgeling calls to mind are:

POINT ULTIMATE by Jerry Sohl (begins in 1999; don't recall if plot "carries over" into 2000 or not)
THE LIGHTS IN THE SKY ARE STARS by Fredric Brown (I believe the turn of the year from 1999 to 2000 is a big deal scene in this one)
THE STOCHASTIC MAN by Robert Silverberg (ditto, but this one was first published after 1969, so...)

Also, Mack Reynolds has several books set in 2000 per their titles (some in direct answer to Bellamy), which I imagine you've found; these again are post-1969.

One source that annotates a number of sf novels and *does* include date of plot/action is this:
\Survey of science fiction literature : five hundred 2,000-word essay reviews of world-famous science fiction novels with 2, 500 bibliographical references / edited by Frank N. Magill. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, c1979. 5 v. (xxv, 2542, vii p.); 24 cm.

but there's no overall index by date, so one needs to thumb through all entries to compile a list. (Dates are given at the start, along with author, date of publication, type of work, and locale of plot.)

I have a very vague memory that I *may* have seen a list of stories set in 2000 in one or the other of the following:

THE ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION LISTS by Michael Ashley
THE COMPLETE BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY LISTS by Maxim Jakubowski and Malcolm Edwards

Further, Hal Hall's bibliographies of criticism/secondary sources about sf (published in book form by Gale as SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REFERENCE INDEX) are now available free on the web as a searchable database: try searching such terms as "2000" or "millenium" or "two thousand" etc. on the chance someone has already published such a list somewhere that Hall may have indexed:

If you have access to the cd-rom version of the Clute/Nicholls ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE FICTION (I have only the book version), one could presumably search that for "2000" or "two thousand."

A half-remembered long shot: John Atkins' book TOMORROW REVEALED (1956) involves a future society which has inherited a number of sf books which it takes to be real history and tries to construct therefrom a consistent history of the past. I don't recall (it's been thirty years since I read it) if the characters assign actual dates to these "historical events" or not.

later:

offlist

Catherine-- Back in September of 2000, you were looking for examples of sf novels set in the year 2000. I'm sure the need is long gone, but just in case you're curious, I recently had an offlist query from someone looking for sf involving New Year's scenes (most of which, not surprisingly, are also Y2K scenarios), and in course of digging around for her I found a couple of new examples plus a website from someone who had made a habit of reading sf set within a year of 2000. Thought you might be mildly interested, so, through the miracle of cut and paste...

Following are set in the last few weeks of 1999 (or of 2000) and the approaching millenial NY switchover is a big deal, but I don't know if they include actual New Year scenes or stop before they get there: ZEITGEIST by Bruce Sterling (embarassingly, I read this and still can't recall); SPACELAND by Rudy Rucker; GOOD NEWS FROM OUTER SPACE by John Kessel.

I see with a bit of googling that the animated sf TV show FUTURAMA involved someone who was frozen on a NYEve and thawed centuries later on a NYDay or somesuch; maybe there have been novelizations spun off from that show (which I've never seen...)?



and I also found a website of someone who made a project of reading and reviewing sf set at that time. The URL for that website is

The Millenial Reviews site whose URL I gave a couple years back has changed;
it's now at http://www.cloggie.org/esseff/millennial-reviews.html

Posted by: Daniel S. / 1:03 AM

Monday June 7, 2004. A mostly-lethargic day. The temperature got above 90, and I spent only parts of the day in air-conditioned spaces; but I suspect I would have been lethargic anyhow.
_________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Done. Posted a bit earlier in this journal.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- A bit more done.

"They Might be Windmills" -- It now has a beginning and an end. Still lacks a middle.
________________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 7-Jun-2004
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Parting genomes: UA biologists discover seeds of speciation
Two closely related fruitfly populations are caught early in the act of evolving into new species.

Public Release: 7-Jun-2004
UF researcher: New low-carb potato to debut in January
Potatoes may be on the no-no list for high-protein diets, but a University of Florida researcher says a new low-carb potato will help win back die-hard carbohydrate counters.
HZPC Americas Corp

Maybe. This makes me dubious: "The potato doesn't look or taste like anything that's now on the market...."

Seems to me that people who want to eat potatoes again will want potatoes which look and taste the way potatoes "should".
_____________________
West Virginia: Charleston -- A foreign exchange student program has replaced its area coordinator after students complained that they were abandoned and mistreated. High school teachers backed up the complaints. A couple who was assigned to look after several students said they were spoiled, lazy troublemakers who never appreciated anything done for them.
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20040607/6263284s.htm

On Writing the Future

In 1999, someone asked on the Writers list why sf writers weren't busy with stories about the year 2000.

I explained about magazine and book lead times. A story written in 1999 would likely appear in 2000 at the earliest.

To me, it seemed obvious that creating fictional futures likely to be proven wrong by the time they appeared in print was a bad idea. But some writers and publishers don't see it that way.

Consider this, by Norman Spinrad: "_Russian Spring (Bantam Spectra 0-553-29869-0, Oct ’92 [Sep ’92], $5.99, 643pp, pb, cover by Bruce Jensen) Reprint (Bantam 1991) near-future sf novel set in a world where America is declining and the success of perestroika has made Russia the world’s strongest power."
http://www.locusmag.com/index/b447.htm The Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984-1998)
by Charles N. Brown & William G. Contento

This book was first published in October 1991, when it should have been obvious that the Soviet Union wasn't likely to become the world's strongest power. Russia seceded from the Soviet Union on December 12, 1991. The book was reprinted in October 1992.

Apparently, neither author nor publisher was bothered by the failed predictions.

And then there's the 2001 Baen edition of Andre Norton's The Time Traders. In the late 1950s, when Norton wrote this novel, the Soviet Union was a plausible set of villains. But by the turn of the millenium, there were two choices. It could be published as done originally, and readers would have to accept the 1950s flavor. Or it could be updated.

Baen likes to update the old novels it reprints. It's done with the consent of the authors (or of their heirs); but the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written has had some unkind comments about this policy. (Some of them from a writer whose first book has now been published by Baen.)

The story time was changed from present to nearish future. The Soviet Union was replaced by a Russia which had reacquired 1) Soviet habits and 2) Soviet scientific and military power.

I would say that the chances of Russia becoming a superpower again in this century are only a bit higher than the chances of Saudi Arabia turning Lutheran early next week.

Sunday June 6, 2004. Some recent reading: Mormon America, Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling.

A History of the Amish, Steven M. Nolt.
________
"It has defiled all forms of medical treatment...." From the "I'm dying, help me give my money to charity" variant of the Nigerian Letter.
_______________________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- Something I'm not sure I should count because 1) it's been stewing in my head for a few days and 2) it's definitely becoming a story.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Tweaked it a bit.

"They Might Be Windmills" -- It's been accreting around the line "His father had been my mother, and his mother had been my father."

I now have the beginning, the problem two major characters must deal with, and the ending. I'm still missing the major characters the plot, and a few other minor details.
________________
Thanks to The Horny Goat on soc.history.what-if:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/print/CTVNews/1077832280101_73241480/?hub=CTVNewsAt11&subhub=PrintStory&articleURL=
Native group blasts Stephen Harper over gaffe
CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Fri. Feb. 27 2004 8:46 AM ET

Conservative leadership hopeful Stephen Harper was forced to apologize after a congratulatory letter bearing his signature was sent to an Ontario native organization. Unfortunately for Harper, his letter referred not to a native celebration, but to one in the Indian subcontinent.

"On the occasion of India's national day, I salute the Indian community for long-standing contributions to the economic and cultural vitality of our wonderful country," reads the letter, leaked to the media.

The mix-up prompted a sharp response from the president of the Ontario Federation of Indian Friendship Centres, Rick Lobzun.

"This is 2004, Mr. Harper, not 1492 - the last time a man got lost looking for India," he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday.

"Look what has happened to the aboriginal population ... since then."

"I used to write in my sleep. I thought it was a fairly common phenomenon, but it turned out nobody knew what I was talking about. They thought I simply wrote down my dreams. No: I wrote while asleep -- mentally composing a piece and then revising it 20, 40, 60 times. On waking, I'd remember the process, but not the text. So I put a notebook by my bed and trained myself to wake up after I finished dream-writing. I'd touch the wall over my head so that the coolness of the plaster would anchor me to reality and recite the work to myself in order to read it into the forebrain. Then in the morning I'd write it down." Michael Swanwick, explaining how he learned to write flash fiction. Locus, June 2004, p. 72.
_____________________
"Fish are our fellow citizens with scales and fins."

Citizenship is a legal status.

"Try meat impostors -- veggie burgers, 'ham,' 'hot dogs,' and 'turkey' made out of soy and other meatless ingredients. They taste close enough to the real thing to fool any die-hard carnivore...."

This does not match my experience; nor the experience of any vegetarian or vegan I've talked with about such things.

Quote source: a pamphlet from PETA.
________
Why Muslim women fit into European society faster than men
The reasons for the gender gap in integration begin in the family, but don't end there. By Jennifer Ehrlich
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0607/p07s02-woeu.html

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Saturday June 5, 2004. I found a useful freeware program: SuperEdit, a programmer's editor which I'm using as a text editor.

It's easier for me to write (formally or informally) with a text editor than with a word processor. And revising is easier if I switch text editors.

First choice: Metapad. SuperEdit is now my second choice.

***Rummage sale at St. Mary's Greek Orthodox Church, part of the ECCO neighborhood sale.
I got there a couple hours before the sale ended, and everything over a quarter was half-price. I got a bag full of good stuff for a bit under three dollars. (I could have gotten more -- for example, a wok priced at fifty cents.)

Definitely a good sale. And this was near the end of the second day.

What I saw in the rest of the neighborhood was disappointing.

Note: Slightly under half the St. Mary's volunteers looked Greek (or at least Mediterranean) to me.

***Mnstf at Scott and Irene Raun's. I enjoyed it. So did a newcomer who sounded as if she'll be coming to more meetings.
_______
Writing: Daily exercise -- a political rant.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- I didn't expect to get anything done, but I did a small bit.
______________________________
Most Minnesota gun deaths are suicides, study finds

Three out of four firearms deaths in Minnesota from 1998 through 2001 were caused by self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to a report released this week by the Minnesota Department of Health.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4813025.htm

Friday June 4, 2004. I ran into Nate Bucklin on the bus.

I got off at Bryant and 31st -- and my right sandal fell apart. I'd been heading for a garage sale a couple of blocks away; I decided to continue on. If I didn't find footwear the right size, I would return home and put on shoes.

And then I cut my toe. And found out the wrong way that the aspirin I've been taking as a blood thinner works.

Luckily, the sale was at a nursing home. I got patched up. Found a pair of shoes which were almost large enough. And I got some things I needed, at low prices.

And that knife I got for a dime is indeed sharp.

I went home, put on shoes that fit, and went to the HealthPartners Uptown pharmacy. There was a glitch; I would/will have to return next week for what I needed. I bought some non-prescription supplies.

On to the Walgreens between 24th and 25th on Hennepin, where I bought sandals.

Back to Uptown. Groceries at Rainbow Foods, a few things at DreamHaven Books.

***Writing: daily exercise -- A short political rant:

If you're sure you have the solution, you're part of the problem.

I don't think any theory available today is adequate to diagnose social problems and decide what remedies would solve those problems. I don't care how sound you think your mathematics, theology, dialectic, or futurology is; the evidence so far is that it doesn't work worth a tinker's dam.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- Wrote in something which I was certain was already there.
______________________________________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 4-Jun-2004
Psychology and Aging
'Imagination' helps older people remember to comply with medical advice
A healthy dose of 'imagination' helps older people remember to take medications and follow other medical advice, according to a new study supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), a part of the National Institutes of Health. The findings appear in the June 2004 issue of Psychology and Aging.
NIH/National Institute on Aging

Public Release: 4-Jun-2004
Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention
Study links diabetes and colorectal cancer
Diabetics are three times more likely to develop colorectal cancer than people with normal blood sugar levels, according to a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge, U.K., reporting in this month's edition of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

Since neither LiveJournal nor Blogger provides the kind of comment column I want, I'm improvising my own version.

Thursday June 3, 2004. Last night, I did some leg exercises with my right leg -- the one I've had the most problems with. It didn't get as cold last night, and it feels better this morning. So, I'm going to start doing exercises with both legs. (The problem is poor circulation in my leg veins.)

mayakda 2004-06-04 05:31
Would a blood thinner help with the circulation? I noticed that if I add ginger to my diet (and drinking lots of water too) before giving blood, I'm in and out of the red cross bus in record time.

dsgood 2004-06-04 20:19
I've been taking an aspirin a day, on medical advice.

I didn't know that ginger was a blood thinner!

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- One word in title changed, from "Old" to "Own". A bit more of the story fleshed out. Took out a chunk which I'd decided didn't belong; I'll probably give the information in a brief conversation, rather than half of the ending scene.

cakmpls 2004-06-04 06:26
I'm interested in your title change. I've always known the line as ". . . Own True Love," and I had presumed (I may have missed your discussing it) that "Old" was deliberately chosen for a meaning in your story.

dsgood 2004-06-04 20:37
I've encountered both versions. I originally chose the "old" variant when I thought the story was "Juliet shoots Romeo." Now it's morphed. (For one thing, I didn't originally intend to mix the situation of "The Two Sisters" with polyamory.)

One thing which interests me about "The Demon Lover" (aka "James Harris," aka "The House Carpenter") is the FOAFtales ("I know it's true, because I heard it from a Friend Of A Friend of....") associated with it. People knew the names of the characters, for one thing -- even those who knew it by titles other than "James Harris." And none of the names are mentioned in any version of the song I've come across.

Thursday June 3, 2004. Last night, I did some leg exercises with my right leg -- the one I've had the most problems with. It didn't get as cold last night, and it feels better this morning. So, I'm going to start doing exercises with both legs. (The problem is poor circulation in my leg veins.)

Also last night, I drank catnip tea for the first time in a while. It doesn't have the effect on me it does on cats

Today: I ran into Nate Bucklin on the #23 bus.

To the Walker Library, where I paid my fines and then took out books.

Then a #6 bus to Franklin Avenue, and the #2 along Franklin to the Seward co-op.

Franklin Avenue is still recovering from the loss of the streetcar line. That loss was nearly fifty years ago.

I decided I don't like the Seward co-op as much as I like the Wedge.
_________
From rec.arts.mystery:

Me:>> I've read that the territory of Japanese villages used to be "as far as the drums can be heard." Which would account for LOUD DRUMS being selected for.
>
> This is true.
>
> Dave
> http://www.kumidaiko.com/
> The Source for Taiko News
>
Thanks!

And it occurs to me that it's probably a good thing no society has set the boundaries at "As far as the village can be smelled."
___________
Writing: Daily exercise -- On alt.callahans, a Libertarian explained to me that we all know the abolition of the state is not a realistic goal. I explained back that non-state governments had existed about twenty times longer than state governments (or two hundred times longer, depending on one's definition of "human.") That the nation-state is only a couple of centuries old. And that new technologies might make new forms of government possible.

Today's exercise turned out to be speculation on what those new forms of government might be.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love" -- One word in title changed, from "Old" to "Own". A bit more of the story fleshed out. Took out a chunk which I'd decided didn't belong; I'll probably give the information in a brief conversation, rather than half of the ending scene.

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 3-Jun-2004
Gerontologist
'Brown bag' gives more complete picture of meds taken by older adults
In a recent Penn State study, when adults age 65 to 91 were asked to bring in all of their prescription medications in a brown paper bag, the resulting list was more complete than their official pharmacy records.
National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 2-Jun-2004
Partnership gives federal, local fire managers a powerful tool
To help federal agencies and local authorities manage fire risk, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service has analyzed and combined existing census and vegetation data in an innovative way. The result of this partnership is a new understanding of wildland/urban interfaces across the country, and a map that reflects congressional policymakers' definitions of at-risk communities.
National Fire Plan

Public Release: 2-Jun-2004
Nature
Biology of aging
The life expectancy of fruit flies increases an average of 50 percent when signals within cells of fat tissue are blocked or altered, new Brown University research shows. Published in the current issue of Nature, results of the study suggest that reduced levels of insulin in one tissue regulates insulin throughout the body to slow aging – a finding that brings science one step closer to cracking the longevity code.
National Institutes of Health, American Federation of Aging Research, Ellison Medical Foundation, Pfizer, Inc.

Public Release: 2-Jun-2004
An eye on the tongue
A system developed by neuropsychologist Maurice Ptito at the Université de Montréal, together with colleagues from Denmark and USA, can activate brain areas that are normally reserved for visual information to allow blind people to "see with their tongue".

Public Release: 2-Jun-2004
Nature
Researchers establish first molecular link between eating and aging
The day when people can eat their favorite foods, stay thin and live to 120 without age-induced diseases may be near. Researchers at MIT believe they've found the key to a long, lean, healthy life in a single protein that controls whether a mammal stores fat or sheds it. The work could lead to drugs that mimic that protein, allowing humans to get the longer lifespan without the negative side effects, said Professor Leonard Guarente.
National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 3-Jun-2004
Geology
Continents played key role in collapse and regeneration of Earth's early greenhouse, geologists say
Now, the geologic record revealed in some of Earth's oldest rocks is telling a surprising tale of collapse of early Earth's greenhouse - and its subsequent regeneration. But even more surprising, say the Stanford scientists who report these findings in the May 25 issue of the journal Geology, is the critical role that rocks played in the evolution of the early atmosphere.
NASA

It’s not often that the audience at a scientific meeting gasps in amazement during a talk. But that’s what happened when researchers revealed the result of deleting huge chunks of seemingly vital DNA from lab mice. Instead of the serious problems they were expecting, the mice could still run around, ate and slept normally, and overall appeared to have nothing at all wrong with them. The discovery leaves researchers wondering why the DNA targeted has been so carefully conserved during evolution… MORE
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995063

Dancing lasers levitate carbon nanotubes The trick may offer engineers who want to build microchips from nanotube components a way to move the tiny devices into place
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995065

Massive black holes common in early Universe
Astronomers reveal hundreds of hidden giants - most are buried in dust and were only found by combining data from several telescopes
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995060

Cows immune to BSE near reality
A major advance towards producing prion-free cows is made by researchers aiming to produce human antibodies in milk
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995059

Pumped-up dummy does the ironing
A human-shaped dummy that fills itself with hot air is the first machine designed for the home that can press shirts
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995058

Bug-laden foam destroys stink of manure
It would be sprayed onto the dung heaps or lagoons at intensive farms, to freshen the air for local communities
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995055

'Smart bullet' reports back wirelessly
The projectile can be fired at a target and then transmit information collected by a tiny inbuilt sensor
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995054

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if the Earth was hollow below the crust? Frying, starving, freezing and drowning would be just some of the problems. Find out more in this week’s Last Word section...MORE
http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw1094

Wednesday June 2, 2004. To Pillsbury House, where I did data entry for the Commmunity Barter Network and Pillsbury House's volunteer program.

After that, I went to Uncle Hugo's sf bookstore and Uncle Edgar's mystery bookstore.

"Jane Haddam is in a box on the floor" -- sign in the used section of Uncle Edgar's. In a mystery, there really would have been a mystery writer in a box on the floor.

On my way to Steeple People thrift store, this came into my head: "His father had been my mother, and his mother had been my father."

I have some idea what triggered it. I'd been looking out the bus window; decided that a bike rider was definitely female, the essential clue being wide hips. Then my thoughts drifted to usually being able to tell whether a woman had formerly been a man, because current sex-change technology isn't up to reshaping the pelvis (and the rest of the skeleton.)

Bought stuff at Steeple People. Headed for the Wedge co-op, across Lyndale Avenue. On the way, the next line came into my head: "And none of us really liked each other."

***Mail: Einblatt (Mnstf newsletter).
Penzys catalog, with a plug for Raspberry Enlightenment.
A guide to summer outdoor music in the Twin Cities area.
_________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- I decided those two lines which had come into my head would count for that.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Old True Love" -- A bit more done, which should make part of the ending more plausible.
_____________________
Release of methane from a volcanic basin as a mechanism for initial Eocene global warming
HENRIK SVENSEN et al.
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePGZ0BfwT60Ch0Ngz0AR

I don't understand this one:
Nonsense-mediated messenger RNA decay is initiated by endonucleolytic cleavage in Drosophila
DAVID GATFIELD & ELISA IZAURRALDE
http://info.nature.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/ePGZ0BfwT60Ch0Ng80AL

And the abstract doesn't help much:

In eukaryotic cells, messenger RNAs harbouring premature termination codons (PTCs) are rapidly degraded by a conserved post-transcriptional mechanism referred to as nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD), which prevents the synthesis of truncated proteins that could be deleterious for the cell. Studies in yeast and mammals indicate that degradation by means of this pathway can occur from both the 5' end of the message (involving decapping and 5'-to-3' exonucleolytic digestion by XRN1) or the 3' end (through accelerated deadenylation and exosome-mediated 3'-to-5' decay). Here we show that, contrary to expectation, degradation of PTC-containing messages in Drosophila is initiated by endonucleolytic cleavage(s) in the vicinity of the nonsense codon. The resulting 5' fragment is rapidly degraded by exonucleolytic digestion by the exosome, whereas the 3' fragment is degraded by XRN1. This decay route is shown for several PTC-containing reporters, as well as an endogenous mRNA that is naturally regulated by NMD. We conclude that, despite conservation in the NMD machinery, PTC-containing transcripts are degraded in Drosophila by a mechanism that differs considerably from those described in yeast and mammals.
_________________
From Midwest Mountaineering's e-newsletter:
Buzz off clothing from Exoffico. It is finally here! Clothing that is treated to repel bugs. It has no smell, but bugs hate it. The treatment is supposed to last for over 25 washings. This would be great for fisherman who don't want DEET on their hands, people traveling to mosquito-infested areas of the world, or anyone living in Minnesota!

The Sterling climbing rope company is now making shoelaces...I know it may seem like a minor thing but these are really great laces. Built by people who make really great climbing ropes. Give you [sic] boots new life with some great new laces!

From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 2-Jun-2004
Journal of Clinical Oncology
Study finds high rate of genetic mutation in younger Korean women with breast cancer
Although Korean women have one of the lowest rates of breast cancer worldwide, they are diagnosed at an earlier age and have a surprisingly high incidence of a genetic mutation known to contribute to breast cancer.
________________
From Google News:
City of Brotherly Love Kicks Off Gay Ad Campaign
Reuters - 15 minutes ago
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, has launched the first US television advertising campaign to promote a city as a gay destination, officials said on Wednesday.
Philly Seeks To Attract Gay Tourists KYW
Philadelphia debuts first commercial aimed at gay travelers USA Today
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Philadelphia Inquirer (subscription) - The Gay Financial Network - CNN - and 52 related
______________________
From New Scientist's e-newsletter:
THE BOLDEST CUT
While chopping grass to feed the family buffalo, nine-year old Sandeep's hair got caught in a threshing machine, ripping off her entire scalp and face. Her family salvaged what they could and an experienced microsurgeon successfully replanted it. Since that fateful day in 1994, there have been two other known cases of surgeons heroically replacing entire faces. This has led to the inevitable question: if it's possible to reattach such torn-off faces, couldn't we also carry out face transplants using the faces of the newly deceased to treat people with disfigurements? New Scientist has learned that surgeons and scientists are requesting formal approval to carry out a transplant...
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=2&id=mg18224495.900

WONDERFUL SPAM
Living organisms are infested with enough of the biological equivalent of spam mail to make the internet's flood of junk pale into insignificance. It's a little shocking to discover that every cell nucleus in your body is crammed with millions of years' worth of genetic junk mail. It takes up the vast majority of the genome -in fact only 2 per cent actually codes for the proteins we need. Biologists have long regarded the rest as garbage. But is it? A growing number of geneticists now say it may not be junk after all...
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=2&id=mg18224496.100

TECHNOLOGY:
FROM ROCKS TO RICHES
He peered down a microscope at a brilliant blue sapphire. At first glance, the 15-carat stone might fetch thousands of dollars. But something wasn't quite right. It turned out a new gem treatment was being used to convert poor quality gems into more valuable ones. And it's only a matter of time before a new treatment surfaces...and if treated stones flood the market and make their way into shops, then the coloured gem industry could collapse...
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=4&id=mg18224494.000

FEEDBACK
A MORE unusual paper title than most: "Molecular phylogenetic analyses indicate extensive morphological convergence between the 'yeti' and primates" (Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, vol 31, p 1). The authors had been supplied with "yeti" hair for DNA analysis, but we can skip further details and leap directly to their conclusion: "All our analyses clearly indicate that the yeti is nested several nodes within a specific ungulate group (ie, the perissodactyls [the group including horses, rhinos and tapirs])...These results demonstrate that extensive morphological convergences have occurred between the yeti and primates."

All the more remarkable, therefore, that one Georges Remi wrote 44 years ago of an explorer who identified the correct phylogenetic position of the yeti when he yelled at it "You odd-toed ungulate!", despite having seen only footprints in the snow. And who might this prescient Remi be? He's better known as Hergé, author of Tintin in Tibet.

Oh, and as you've probably guessed - the Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution paper was published on 1 April 2004.

Tuesday June 1, 2004. I had my annual checkup at HealthPartners Uptown. I'm now safely away from the borders of diabetes and high blood pressure.

But the veins in my legs are still a problem.

I'm about thirty pounds lighter than I'd been, and will probably continue to lose weight for a while.

I mentioned that my toenails had gotten brittler these last few years. He reassured me that this wasn't a sign of anything dire. If it bothered me, I should eat Jello or take gelatin capsules.

Across the street to Penzeys Spices. I stocked up on Florida Seasoned Pepper, which substitutes sour salt (citric acid), lemon peel, and orange peel for salt. I also got two non-salted mixtures: balti seasoning and vindaloo seasoning.

On to the Wedge co-op. They had non-salted chicken in the deli; since I'd suggested this (the deli manager had already been thinking about it), I felt I ought to buy it at least every now and then. I also got bulgar; I like it, and it's cheaper than rice. (Not everywhere; but at the Wedge, it's cheaper than rice is at any store I know of.)

Mail: An ad from the Stephen King Library. Which led me to wonder if anyone had written a cross-over between Stephen King's Maine and the Maine depicted in the TV show "Murder She Wrote."

De Profundis; monthly newsletter of LASFS (the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society).
________________
Writing: Daily exercise -- posted to this journal.

"Well Met, Well Met, My Old True Love" -- I got a bit more done. Not nearly as much as I intended; I think mostly because I had medical stuff on my mind.
_______________________
** Mitochondrial Mutations Blamed for Aging

Despite the search for the fountain of youth, growing older remains inevitable. Some biochemical effects of aging are thought to relate to cell structures called mitochondria, thousands of which are present in every cell. Mitochondria are the cell's energy converters and have their own DNA. Scientists have long known that mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) become increasingly common in older animals, but they have not been able to determine whether such mutations are a cause of aging or an effect. Until now.
http://cl.extm.us/?fe9013717c63057d73-fe3117727760037d771076
______________________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 1-Jun-2004
Journal of Management
Study: Business people win when they apologize, take personal blame for mistakes
Love means never having to say you're sorry - but a new study suggests that attitude won't fly in the business world. People who are wronged in a business transaction may be more likely to say they would reconcile if the offender offers a sincere apology - particularly if the offender takes personal blame for the misdeed. While it's obvious that apologies would help smooth a bruised business relationship, such messages of regret are not common enough.

Public Release: 1-Jun-2004
'Controlling light with light': Making optics history at Stevens
Dr. Rainer Martini and post-doc Robert Murawski have taken a mid-infrared laser beam, illuminated it directly with a near-infrared fiber-optic laser diode, and switched a message from one beam to the other. The concept is not new, but its first demonstration in a laboratory opens new horizons in telecommunications, with implications for the secure, all-optical transmission of voice and data.
Stevens Institute of Technology

A New Age Bookstore in Elfland

They call us "dykes" -- rather, that's how their word for us translates. Fantasy writers tend to use the term "Midgarders" instead, to avoid the modern associations of "dyke". New Age writers (their term actually is closer to "New World Order" than to "New Age") use both, not always consistently.

And yes, we're as mythical in their world as they are in ours.

Camelot Books and Herbs in St. Brendan has a book section for people who believe in us. Unfortunately, I'm only able to read those books while I'm in Elfland; I understand this is true for most people who travel between the worlds. Otherwise, I would bring back large batches.

The nonfiction books have a great deal to say about our ability to foretell the future. It seems that we never make bad investments, or get caught by unexpected bad weather. Oddly enough, our prophecies always seem to agree with the author's point of view.

As for the fiction: their stories set in our world take for granted that we live in a feudal, pre-industrial society. It's not quite the same stereotypical Old Times as in our fantasy about them, of course. For one thing, women are the rulers. (Or were; in recent times, these fictional societies have become more gender-equal.)

How Household Junk Can Grow Into Mountains
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
People who compulsively hoard objects have singular patterns of brain activity that distinguish them from others who have obsessive compulsive disorder.
http://nytimes.com/2004/06/01/health/psychology/01hoar.html
_________________________
From EurekAlert http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php:
Public Release: 1-Jun-2004
Experimental Neurology
Cells from fat tissue turned into functional nerve cells
Two years after transforming human fat cells into what appeared to be nerve cells, a group led by Duke University Medical Center researchers has gone one step further by demonstrating that these new cells also appear to act like nerve cells.
Faculty Research Fellowship of the American College of Surgeons

Public Release: 1-Jun-2004
Journal of the American College of Nutrition
Flavonoid-rich dark chocolate boosts blood vessel function, study suggests
UCSF scientists are publishing sweet results of a study examining chocolate's effects on blood vessel function in healthy people. The team reports that small daily doses of flavonoid-rich dark chocolate consumed over a two-week period improved blood vessels' ability to dilate, or expand. They also report that a particular flavonoid thought to be beneficial for blood vessel function, epicatechin, was absorbed at high levels in the blood.
UCSF School of Nursing

Public Release: 1-Jun-2004
Sports Psychologist
UCLA/UC Santa Cruz study offers new perspectives on NCAA coaching legend John Wooden
A study by researchers at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and UC Santa Cruz reveals the daily, detailed and deliberate planning behind the unprecedented coaching success of UCLA basketball legend John Wooden, who led teams to an unprecedented 10 NCAA championships.
LessonLab

http://www.politics1.com/
POLITICS, GAMBLING AND PORN. We couldn't resist this story. Boxing publicist and gambling promoter Charles Jay of Indiana has already managed to do what most third party Presidential hopefuls fail to do: qualify for ballot status for November. Jay will appear on the Utah ballot as the Presidential nominee of the new Personal Choice Party (PCP) -- and hopes to qualify for the ballot in several other states, while running as a write-in elsewhere. Jay defeated gadfly perennial candidate and self-declared "Acting Utah Governor" Lawrence Topham with 88% of the vote at last week's PCP convention. The PCP appears to espouse a quasi-libertarian philosophy with pro-choice, pro-gun, pro-gambling and pro-privacy rights platform planks. Jay, for his part, has declared that nationwide legalized gambling is going to be his campaign's top issue, because "any person who supports legalized gambling would also logically support other individual freedoms." As for a VP runningmate, Jay selected his friend and former Ivory Soap model-turned-1970s porn star Marilyn Chambers.

http://www.personalchoice.org/
ARTICLE II - EMBLEM

The official emblem of the Personal Choice Party is the smiley face, symbolizing the Pursuit of Happiness. To represent the Personal Choice Party on the ballot, the State shall be provided with a standard smiley face. Party members shall be free to choose from among the countless multitudes of smiley faces, the one that best represents the Personal Choice Party for them.