04w10:2 History Posted March 3rd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 10 number 2 (history) ——————————————————————— The Reasons for the Current Upsurge in Memory | Pierre Nora http://www.iwm.at/t-22txt3.htm “It is of crucial importance, for it has shattered the unity of historical time, that fine, straightforward linearity which traditionally bound the present and the future to the past. In effect, it was the way in which a society, nation, group or family envisaged its future that traditionally determined what it needed to remember of the past to prepare that future; and this in turn gave meaning to the present, which was merely a link between the two. Broadly speaking, the future could be interpreted in one of three ways, which themselves determined the image people had of the past. It could be envisaged as a form of restoration of the past, a form of progress or a form of revolution. Today, we have discarded these three ways of interpreting the past, which made it possible to organize a ‘history’. We are utterly uncertain as to what form the future will take. And because of this uncertainty, the present-which, for this very reason no doubt, now has a battery of technical means at its disposal for preserving the past- puts us under an obligation to remember. We do not know what our descendants will need to know about ourselves in order to understand their own lives. And this inability to anticipate the future puts us under an obligation to stockpile, as it were, in a pious and somewhat indiscriminate fashion, any visible trace or material sign that might eventually testify to what we are or what we will have become. ” Artifact: Visionary Art | Charles Paul Freund http://www.reason.com/0402/artifact.shtml “These spectacles, auctioned in the fall by Sotheby’s, are said to have belonged to J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), the British painter whose wholly original treatment of luminosity late in his career inspired the Impressionists and revolutionized art. But British eye surgeon James McGill, a student of Turner’s work, believes the glasses are evidence that Turner’s late style was actually a result of his deteriorating vision. Turner ‘was painting exactly what he saw,’ McGill told Britain’s Guardian. ” Artifact: Webcam in the Round | Charles Paul Freund http://www.reason.com/0401/artifact.shtml “Behold the Tholos, where the webcam meets the circular, painted panorama of the 19th century. The device, which features a 23-foot wrap-around screen some 10 feet high, works in pairs: People gathered at one Tholos can see real-time, life-size HDTV images of people around a distant partner device, with microphones enabling users to converse.” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 03 March 2004 @ 2:09 PM
04w10:1 Posted March 1st, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 10 number 1 I now find myself trying to please an audience; even though I know some of you personally, I also know I have never met some of you lucky enough to be part of this club. I say this because today’s selections border on being boring, but are paired as examples of the evolution of our language. Article One discuses the new standards imposed by the infamous American SAT test (and this dear folks I thought would only be interesting to one person I know, but I had to tell myself, ‘if it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for the rest’). Because the SAT’s aren’t an issue in Canada I found it a bit of a yawner, with its tone is somewhat haughty and mocking. However, the impression it left on me is how it illustrates what we consider good writing to be (and thus, what constitutes a good read) has, along with the lexicon and pronunciation, changed over the centuries. I was also left with the impression that such changes are marked by certain individual styles, whose novelty becomes influential. The second article is etymological: the question of why The Passion of the Christ is called such. There are a lot of articles out there on the film The Passion of The Christ and its supposed controversy, but I’ve been sparing you them since I find many of them slanted and unfair. But I am no censor: if you’re really interested contact me and I’ll send you some links. (Hint: there’s a lot on Slate.com, including a great critique by Christopher Hitchens posted this past weekend. The best thing I’ve read about the film is a partial translation from a French newspaper available here). Another note: due to server issues I have been unable to update my website (including the goodreads archive index) for the past month, but hopefully things will be back up and running in the next week or so. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore? | by John Katzman, Andy Lutz and Erik Olson http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/03/katzman.htm “How several well-known writers (and the Unabomber) would fare on the new SAT […] Reader’s evaluation: This essay is poorly organized, with only one paragraph (though, to Mr. Shakespeare’s credit, the topic sentence does speak to what the rest of the sentences in his one paragraph are about). It is riddled with errors in syntax, incomplete sentences being the most noticeable problem. Although his supporting sentences are vivid in their description, they are vague and general, not true examples. And he unfortunately spells ‘honor’ with the extraneous ‘u.’ Grade: 2 out of 6” Why Is It Called The Passion? | Sam Schechner http://slate.msn.com/id/2096041 “The simple answer is that the English word passion referred to Jesus’ suffering long before it evolved other, more sultry meanings. Today, the word still refers to Jesus’ torments, as well as to retellings of the crucifixion in the Gospels and elsewhere, even in pieces of music. (Before Gibson’s Passion, for instance, there were Bach’s Passions.) But the Christian meaning and its modern, carnal cousins are not entirely unrelated. In fact, the more common meanings of the word passion—strong emotion, zeal, and sexual desire—grew organically from the Christian sense over the course of several centuries. ” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 01 March 2004 @ 3:03 PM
04w09:1 Jesus Harry Potter Christ Posted February 23rd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 9 number 1 (jesus harry potter christ) ——————————————————————— Boobs, blood and Bible-bashing | John Patterson http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1151479,00.html “Here we go again with the same old hypocrisy. Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which features a fair acreage of flesh, and whose politics are avowedly of the 1960s left, gets slapped with an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board, thus guaranteeing a drastic narrowing of its audience and a lowering of its profitability. Meanwhile, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a medievally reactionary Bible-basher drenched in the literal blood of the mythical Lamb, featuring extensive, non-sex-related applications of scourge and lash, close-ups of nails being hammered through flesh, and a bloody spearing or two, gets pushed out to 3,000 screens nationwide under the more inclusive R-rating, which means newspapers will carry its ads, and children will be allowed to see it. ” Eichmann in Hogwarts: Harry Potter and the banality of evil. | Julian Sanchez http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1568/6_35/109085444/p1/article.jhtml “Umbridge and Fudge may be power hungry, but their malevolence is not the raw nihilism of a Voldemort. Umbridge is particularly insufferable precisely because her transformation of Hogwarts into an increasingly regulated panopticon is motivated by an apparently sincere self-righteousness. A central theme of The Order of the Phoenix, then, is what Hannah Arendt called ‘the banality of evil.’ The bureaucrats are doing good by their own lights, following orders. Former Hogwarts prefect Percy Weasley is a case in point. In the past, Percy served as comic relief, a stuffed shirt whose obsequiousness toward authority figures was matched only by his imperiousness toward younger students. Now Percy is a Hogwarts graduate and assistant to Minister Fudge, and his blind affection for his masters leads him to join the smear campaign against Harry. The transition from buffoonish to sinister is seamless. ” It’s all Greek to Harry Potter | BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/3469023.stm “Mr Wilson said writing the book had its challenges. ‘Everybody asked me, what’s the Greek for Quidditch? ‘What’s the Greek for bludger and snitch and all these other technical terms that JK Rowling has invented?’ […] The classics teacher showed the ancient Greek version for the first time this week at Scott School in Bedford, where he read to the children. One of the pupils told BBC Look East: ‘I didn’t know what he was saying, but I did recognise a couple of words and it did make us laugh.’ ” Mel’s Maligners | George Neumayr http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=6170 “Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is provoking religious slights — on Christians. Diane Sawyer’s Primetime interview with Gibson dripped with an insulting condescension toward Christianity, a condescension liberals would regard as bigoted were it aimed at Judaism or Islam. Sawyer, brows furrowed, looking almost in a state of physical pain, felt free to question Gibson’s faith with a surely-you-can’t-believe-that? air. As Gibson spoke about such things as his belief in the Devil and the Holy Spirit, Sawyer’s face registered a wincing incredulity. She looked like a horrified anthropologist who had just stumbled upon some grotesque religious sect. […] Talk show hosts usually coo over the convictions of artists and believers. Not so with Gibson. His convictions are so in need of correction that Sawyer, suddenly an art monitor, demanded to know why he didn’t make a different movie. ‘You could have made a life of Jesus,’ a nice and fuzzy movie without the crucifixion, Sawyer told Gibson.(The fatuousness of Sawyer reached its bottom when she referred to the movie as an ‘anti-date movie.’)” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 23 February 2004 @ 2:49 PM
04w08:2 Tommy Toomuch Reality Posted February 18th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 8 number 2 (tommy toomuch reality) ——————————————————————— eBay auction of ‘eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nieeine’ on hold | Ian Demsky http://tinyurl.com/2hl8s “The phone number popularized by 1982’s one-hit wonder Tommy Tutone – Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nieeine – rings into a Murfreesboro used-car dealership in area code 615. Tuning in to national attention for the auction of New York’s 212 version of the number on eBay, the dealership put its number on the Internet auction block Monday. […] The bizarre convergence of ’80s pop culture and offbeat Internet auctions made ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday. Before the auction was canceled, New York’s ‘Jenny’ was going for more than $200,000. ” My Big Fat Obnoxious Prank | Joy Press http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0407/tv.php “Somehow we’ve grown accustomed to violation as prime-time entertainment. Violation of privacy – not only do we contend with security cameras in public spaces, the invasive threat of the USA Patriot Act, and cell phone users covertly snapping photos of people, but we also have hidden TV camera crews prowling through once anonymous city streets, looking to catch us at our most vulnerable. And violation of trust -more and more reality shows weave blatant deception into their basic premise, throwing unwitting victims into situations that range from the surreal and embarrassing to the downright traumatic. […]Critics may mock hidden-camera shows as the lowest rung of reality schlock, but the daddy of them all – Allen Funt’s Candid Camera -began with noble intentions. Funt believed that by secretly filming, he could reveal how average people respond to societal pressures and conflicts. ‘The worst thing, and I see it over and over, is how easily people can be led by any kind of authority figure,’ Funt once said. […] As McCarthy points out to me, ‘Networks have standards-and-practices offices to oversee things like swearing and sexuality and violence, but there’s nothing comparable to the institutional review boards that looks at the ethics of these programs.’ It’s left to the shows’ producers to think about where to draw the line – or not. ” Long urls made short by using TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Wednesday 18 February 2004 @ 1:21 PM
04w08:1 Nazi Porn Posted February 17th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 8 number 1 (Nazi Porn) ——————————————————————— High-definition porn has arrived. That’s bad news for HDTV. | Brendan I. Koerner http://slate.msn.com/id/2094788 “The HDTV microscope could kill the fantasy that the adult industry peddles. Hollywood is already learning this lesson the hard way: HDTV has revealed that some glamorous stars look a lot more pedestrian than we’ve been led to believe. And the makeup tricks that protect the aging and less-than-perfect are easy to spot in HDTV. When technology pundit Phillip Swann first saw the Charlie’s Angels movie in HDTV, he was taken aback by Cameron Diaz’s appearance. ‘Diaz looks like a different person,’ he marveled in the pages of Television Week, noting that her face has been ravaged by acne over the years. ‘She’s still very pretty. But to be very frank, I doubt that she would make People’s ‘Most Beautiful’ list.’ ” The Eloquence of Pornography | Laura Kipnis http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/special/eloquence.html “Pornography should interest us, because it’s intensely and relentlessly about us. It involves the roots of our culture and the deepest corners of the self. It’s not just friction and naked bodies: pornography has eloquence. It has meaning, it has ideas. It even has redeeming ideas. So why all the distress? […] Despite knowing this, it’s difficult to envision contemporary pornography as a form of culture or as a mode of politics. There’s virtually no discussion of pornography as an expressive medium in the positive sense — the only expressing it’s presumed to do is of misogyny or social decay. That it might have more complicated social agendas, or that future historians of the genre might produce interesting insights about pornography’s relation to this particular historical and social moment — these are radically unthought thoughts.” Porn und Drang | Luke Harding http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1146258,00.html “Before submitting his manuscript to his publisher last summer, Kunkel had researched long and hard into one of the most subterranean aspects of the Nazi era – a series of erotic home movies known as the Sachsenwald films, shot secretly in 1941. Officially, pornography was forbidden under the Nazis; in reality, however, the films were not only screened privately for the amusement of senior Nazi figures, but were also traded in north Africa for insect repellent and other commodities” The death pit | Janina Struk http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1131825,00.html “Finally, whether the scene was photographed at Sniatyn, Bochnia, Sniadowo, Lodz or Drohobycz – towns hundreds of miles apart, or in Latvia or the Soviet Union or somewhere else, and whether it was taken in 1939, 1941, 1943 or 1944, we do not know. So what does it tell us? In a sense, it says everything. That the Germans and their collaborators took photographs of their crimes to keep as mementoes and trophies. That brave resisters smuggled such images out of their occupied countries to provide evidence of Nazi atrocities. That the Holocaust has at times been promoted, at other times suppressed, as a central story of the second world war. That the death pit image has been made to serve the propaganda purposes variously of the Nazis, the resistance and the Warsaw pact. That curators, documentary makers and publishers have been remarkably promiscuous and cavalier in their appropriation of it as evidence for whatever story they intend. But in another sense, it tells us nothing. We have no certain knowledge of the perpetrators and the victims. Of the lives of the old man with the shoe and the young boy with the hat whose last moments we presume to witness, we will never know anything ” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 17 February 2004 @ 1:30 PM
04w07:4 Happy Valentine's Day Posted February 14th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 4 (Happy Valentine’s Day) ——————————————————————— This is your brain in love | Carlene Bauer http://www.sophists.org/article146.html “So here are the basic characteristics: You lose a sense of self, your edges become porous — this person almost invades, but it’s a very pleasant invasion. Then there are mood swings — real giddiness and ecstasy when things are going well, but if you don’t hear from him via e-mail or phone, there’s despair. But the main characteristic for me is obsessively thinking about the person. When I was interviewing people to put into the fMRI machine, the first thing I asked them was how long they’d been in love, because I wanted them really crazy — I wanted them in the beginning stages, because these machines are expensive, they’re time-consuming for everybody. So they had to be absolutely nuts…” I get a kick out of you | The Economist http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2424049 “[…] Understanding the neurochemical pathways that regulate social attachments may help to deal with defects in people’s ability to form relationships. All relationships, […] rely on an ability to create and maintain social ties. Defects can be disabling, and become apparent as disorders such as autism and schizophrenia—and, indeed, as the serious depression that can result from rejection in love. […] For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. ‘It is fascinating to reflect’, the pair conclude, ‘that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex.’ […] Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. ” Good Vibrations | Judith Warner http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17404-2004Feb5.html An article about Love and Hope, reviewing the work of Helen Fischer, described in the articles above, and Jerome Groopman’s The Anatomy of Hope : ” ‘There is an authentic biology of hope,’ Groopman writes. ‘Researchers are learning that a change in mind-set has the power to alter neurochemistry. Belief and expectation — the key elements of hope — can block pain by releasing the brain’s endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine. In some cases, hope can also have important effects on fundamental physiological processes like respiration, circulation, and motor function. During the course of an illness, then, hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction in which each link makes improvement more likely. It changes us profoundly in spirit and in body.’ NOTE: This article requires registration. Use login: ‘ajreader@artsjournal.com’ password: ‘access’ (courtesy of http://www.artsjournal.com)” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Saturday 14 February 2004 @ 3:42 PM
04w07:3 Text Messaging Posted February 13th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 3 (text messaging) ——————————————————————— ‘Yo, can u plz help me write English? | Steve Friess http://www.stevefriess.com/archive/usatoday/internetlingo.htm “Carl Sharp knew there was a problem when he spotted his 15-year-old son’s summer job application: ‘i want 2 b a counselor because i love 2 work with kids. ‘That night, the father in Phoenix removed the AOL Instant Messenger program from the family computer and informed both his children they were no longer to chat with friends online. […] Writer David Samson of Beverly Hills, Calif., notices the same problem. Teenage fans of his humor books e-mail him and show little regard for formality. He cites one note: ‘yo mr dave can u plz write me a funny speech about any animal cause i need it for school.’ ‘They seem to avoid every rule I was ever taught about how to get a response from anybody, especially an adult,’ says Samson, 51 … ” MSN Spoken Here | Charles Foran http://www.walrusmagazine.com/article.pl?sid=04/01/13/1755252&tid=1 “Two qualities of text messaging make it unique. First, where most street argots are particular to a society, this one is fast becoming universal. Its ‘street,’ so to speak, is a vast one — the World Wide Web. Second, for all its resemblances to oral speech, text messaging isn’t spoken. It is written and, even then, hardly in the traditional sense. It exists solely on the computer or cell-phone screen, and is meant to be as ephemeral as an unrecorded, real-time conversation. ” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Friday 13 February 2004 @ 5:34 PM
04w07:2 Homosexuality Posted February 10th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 2 (homosexuality) ——————————————————————— A Love That Dared To Speak Its Name | John Loughery http://tinyurl.com/3bdjm “Graham Robb, who teaches at Oxford and has written three excellent biographies of 19th century French writers (Balzac, Hugo, Rimbaud), obviously thinks there is. Strangers is the interesting but sometimes quirky result of his broad quest for traces of ‘homosexual love’ in the years spanning Napoleon’s rise to Queen Victoria’s death. Not surprisingly, this readable book, mercifully unburdened by academic jargon, is bound to be instructive for anyone with a serious interest in 19th century European society” Nuances of gay identities reflected in new language | Rona Marech http://tinyurl.com/35ub3 “With the universe of gender and sexual identities expanding, a gay youth culture emerging, acceptance of gays rising and label loyalty falling, the gay lexicon has exploded with scores of new words and blended phrases that delineate every conceivable stop on the identity spectrum — at least for this week” Universities heed the call for genderless washrooms | Caroline Alphonso http://tinyurl.com/3hbyk “Under a new initiative to provide equitable services, student unions of at least two Canadian universities — Concordia and Simon Fraser — are in talks with their administrations about where to build special washrooms this fall for the transgender population on campus. And at McGill University, a gender-neutral washroom is being designed for the first floor of the student centre. […] …student unions say they have felt increased pressure from transgender students to build specific gender-neutral washrooms on university grounds. Being transgender is defined as having personal characteristics that go beyond traditional gender boundaries and sexual norms. Some transgender people may have undergone surgery to become a member of the opposite sex. ” Love That Dare Not Squeak Its Name | Dinitia Smith http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/arts/07GAY.html?pagewanted=print&position “Among birds, for instance, studies show that 10 to 15 percent of female western gulls in some populations in the wild are homosexual. […] Among mammals, male and female bottlenose dolphins frequently engage in homosexual activity, both in captivity and in the wild. Homosexuality is particularly common among young male dolphin calves. […] Male and female rhesus macaques, a type of monkey, also exhibit homosexuality in captivity and in the wild.” (Note: May require a free one-time registration, which is worth the hassle since you won’t have to do it again – Tim) The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard | C.W. Moeliker http://www.nmr.nl/deins815.htm “On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass fa�ade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an �Attempted Rape Flight� that resulted in the first described case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard.” (Winner of the 2003 Ig Nobel Award for Biology). Long urls made short using TinyUrl (www.tinyurl.com) —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 10 February 2004 @ 1:21 PM
04w07:1 Private Parts Posted February 9th, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 7 number 1 (private parts) ——————————————————————— Privacy and Deviance | HP Laboratories http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/deviance/index.html “Privacy is a central issue of concern in the information age. Because of the ease with which data about individuals can be obtained, aggregated and dispersed, information technology can broadcast an individual’s secrets to unintended recipients who in turn can use it in ways that the individual no longer controls […] Our conjecture and motivation is that people are willing to reveal information whenever they feel that they are somewhat typical or positively atypical compared to the social group […] In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted experiments that revealed the true value that people place on their private data. Specifically, we tested whether deviation from the mean is the dominant factor in dictating how a person values a piece of information. We find with great significance (in excess of 95% statistical confidence) that the further a private piece of information deviates negatively from the mean, the greater the price demanded for that information. Furthermore, we find that small deviations in a socially positive direction are associated with a lower demanded price.” Experiment: To Become a Photographer of Female Nudes | Grant Stoddard http://www.nerve.com/regulars/ididitforscience/nudephotography/index.asp?page=1 ” ‘Look, if you ask nicely, it’s amazing what people will do. Be up front, confident and respectful and see what happens. ‘ ‘But you have a ready-made harem!’ ‘But you have an accent,’ he reasoned. ‘ You’re miles ahead of the game.'” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 09 February 2004 @ 4:06 PM
04w06:2 Dogs vs. Cats Posted February 3rd, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 6 number 2 (dogs vs. cats) ——————————————————————— A Potpourri of Pooches | Peter Tyson http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/dogs/potpourri.html “Dogs are diverse largely because of artificial rather than natural selection, because of us rather than nature. But just how much of their variety can be laid at our feet versus Mother Nature’s remains unclear. Charles Darwin suggested that one reason dogs are so variable is that they must have arisen not just from wolves but from other canids like jackals and coyotes as well. But recent genetic studies conducted by evolutionary biologist Robert Wayne and colleagues at the University of California at Los Angeles revealed that the mitochondrial DNA of dogs and wolves is very similar, while that of jackals and coyotes is distinctly different. Astounding as it seems, all 400 or so recognized breeds today descend directly from the wolf. ” Infected rats make easy cat snacks | Matt McGrath http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/850556.stm “A parasitic infection in some rats alters their natural behaviour and makes them easy prey for cats, research shows[…] ‘None of the other parasites I’ve ever looked at have had any of these effects upon behaviour,’she said. The parasite is also widespread in human brains, but does not cause a problem unless the immune system is compromised. (Article date: 25 July 2000) Dangerrrr: cats could alter your personality | Jonathan Leake http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-826557,00.html “They may look like lovable pets but Britain’s estimated 9m domestic cats are being blamed by scientists for infecting up to half the population with a parasite that can alter people’s personalities […] Infected men, suggests one new study, tend to become more aggressive, scruffy, antisocial and are less attractive. Women, on the other hand, appear to exhibit the ‘sex kitten’ effect, becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun-loving and possibly more promiscuous.” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 03 February 2004 @ 2:46 PM
