In addition to all the civil lawsuits, Arthur Andersen is being threatened with
loss of its
license to do business in Connecticut.
ISSN 1534-0236
Technology and ideology alike are exercises in applied imagination.
In addition to all the civil lawsuits, Arthur Andersen is being threatened with
loss of its
license to do business in Connecticut.
The attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, said: "The issue is simply one of trust. Public auditors have a duty to protect the public. When they fail in that duty, the public must be protected from the auditors."
It's a strange universe:
Sara Jane Olsen, formerly Kathleen Solian, and her friends have published a
cookbook
to raise money for her legal defense. The title is Serving Time.
The lox recipe is charming:
Rub fresh salmon on both sides with salt. Add parsley. Press down with heavy Riverside Shakespeare collection for 2 days in the refrigerator.
- Fresh salmon
- Parsley
- Salt
Slice in paper thin slices. Serve with capers, lemon wedges, and crackers.
I'm going to hope that there's an omitted step about wrapping the fish in plastic wrap, to protect it, and the book covers, from each other.
A bigger
world than we thought: Judith Kleinfeld looks at the
original
"six degrees of separation" research. It turns out that very few of the documents
in Milgram's study reached their intended recipients:
In the first "small world study," using starters in Wichita, Kansas and an obscure target, the wife of a divinity student in Cambridge, almost no chains were completed. Only 3 of the 60 documents ever reached the wife of the divinity student. Yet Milgram's Psychology Today article featured an arresting anecdote from this first study---one letter reached the wife of the divinity student in only four days.
The few serious attempts to replicate the work show similar results, but some interesting patterns--for example, the chances of a letter getting from a white person to a black one were significantly lower than the chances of a letter reaching a person of the same race, even though the race of the recipient was not specified. This again suggests that there isn't a single world-wide social network, but several separate networks. Kleinfeld, being a psychologist, also considers why people are so eager to believe in "six degrees of separation".
But how likely would it be, for people who travel in similar social networks, never to meet anyone anywhere anytime that they had had a connection with in the past?She notes that many people believe that such meetings are "meant to happen," not coincidence or chance. [via the invaluable Red Rock Eaters]
A new--or very
old--kind of
microbial community has been found, in a hot spring 200 meters under
Idaho. The Archaea living there combine hydrogen from the rocks with
carbon dioxide, and give off methane. If there is life elsewhere in the
Solar System, it may resemble these organisms, not those of us who live
on the surface, in the sunlight.
"Feed a cold,
starve a fever" may actually help, at least if the fever is from a
bacterial infection. The researchers stumbled on this while
testing the effects of alcohol on immune response (and finding none). They warn
against changing your behavior based on a small study, but if you're doing this
already, there's now a bit of science to back you up.
Rebuilding
the Winter Garden: a bit of a puff piece, but thorough, including the search
for fancy multi-colored marble and the expectation that people will come for the
east view, of the World Trade Center site. They hope to reopen by September, and
offer outdoor performances this summer. (Registration required, or use cpunks/cpunks.)
Japan wants to
farm
minke whales: the plan involves trapping them in the open sea and keeping them
in an enclosed bay, to study their breeding habits, show them to tourists,
and eventually kill and eat them.
Richard Page, whale campaigner for Greenpeace International, said farming such a large wild animal would pose extraordinary difficulties."For some of the larger whales, like the humpback, their mating and calving grounds are known. The problem is with the minke no one knows where it breeds or where it calves. It is wildly optimistic to think that captive minkes will oblige by mating and calving in captivity.
"Even if it were possible, the idea of hundreds of whales being kept in such a small area of sea would lead to extraordinary difficulties in feeding them. Apart from being totally against the idea in principle, I just cannot believe it would work."
It's Sunday, and there's not much going on:
B8 d t++ k s- u f i+ o- x e c--
The "t++" is questionable, but there wasn't a choice for "I hand-code HTML using
a text editor."
The history of art now goes back
70,000
years, in the form of abstract designs on two pieces of ochre found near
the Indian Ocean. The patterns are complex, but one researcher suggests they
may have just been doodlings.
This is going to be interesting: a federal judge has ruled that
fingerprints
cannot be called a match, because they don't meet the standards set by a
1993 Supreme Court decision. Experts can still point out similarities between
crime scene prints and those of a defendant, and that no two people have the
same prints. However,
what such expert witnesses will not be permitted to do is to present `evaluation' testimony as to their `opinion' that a particular latent print is in fact the print of a particular person.Prosecutors fear that juries will be less convinced by "points of similarity" than by an expert who can say "these prints prove that the defendant held the weapon."
Handwriting and ballistic analysis, already weakened by other rulings, may lose further value as evidence, leaving DNA analysis as the only rigorous and accepted evidence of identity. Assuming, of course, that the decision is upheld, and that other courts follow Judge Pollak's lead. [via Follow Me Here]
"Journalists
are supposed to write news, not be the news": one of the few remaining
foreign journalists in Zimbabwe discusses the
repressive
climate in that country, and a new bill that
will make it impossible for foreign journalists to work in Zimbabwe and extremely difficult for Zimbabwean journalists to work.The bill states that all journalists working in Zimbabwe must have licences issued by the minister of information, the same Jonathan Moyo who attacked me in today's Herald. Only Zimbabweans are eligible to apply for the licences. T hose who do get the licences will have to operate under extremely restrictive conditions. They will not be able to criticise the president or the police. They will not be able to quote the Herald newspaper, which frequently enunciates government policy, without written permission from the paper's management. The list of restrictions goes on and on for 44 pages.
The
Dictionary
of All-Vowel Words inventories sound effects, Polynesian birds,
and oddities coined by James Joyce. "Aye, I eye you"--except that,
while counting Y as a vowel, the author lists "ye" but not "you."
[via Isomorphisms]
What color is the
universe? (Your monitor may vary.)
The Pentagon wants to
store,
rather than destroying, nuclear warheads removed because of a
disarmament treaty with Russia. Opponents point out that Russia might
well do the same--and weapons stored there wouldn't be as safe. What
does "disarmament" mean, again? [via
Red
Rock Eaters]
The popular "dietary
supplement" coenzyme-Q actually speeds
aging
in worms.
In St. Louis, people are furious that the remains of euthanized pets
are being rendered and, in some cases,
used
in petfood. Emotional issues aside, it looks disconcertingly like the origins
of mad cow disease, although the products of the rendering plant are
apparently fed only to poultry, not cattle. Meanwhile, there's no obvious
alternative: incinerators are expensive, and nobody wants one next door.
Copyright 2002 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
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