Increased weediness may sound like a description of the blogosphere, but the term actually refers to one of thirteen categories of the risks of genetic engineering identified by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Divided into "Potential Harms to Health" and "Potential Environmental Risks," this fact sheet catalogs the known risks and points out the limits of our imaginations, alluding to the unknowable nature of "what might go wrong."

Why don't individual scientists recognize their personal accountability in this mess? Do genetic engineers believe that they fully understand all the ramifications of their actions in the areas of physiology, nutrition, microbiology, toxicology, and ecology? Don't they feel dishonest gambling with everyone else's chips?

{ 10:37 AM }

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Let's talk about death. Besides natural causes, what else causes death? Accidents, suicide, homicide, acts of war, and the practice of medicine.

"The human cost of medical errors is high. Based on the findings of one major study, medical errors kill some 44,000 people in U.S. hospitals each year. Another study puts the number much higher, at 98,000. Even using the lower estimate, more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer, or AIDS." -- Institute of Medicine, 2000

At the lower estimate, medicine is the 8th leading cause of death in the US. But wait, there's more. These figures do not include people who pick up infections from hospitalization:

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 2 million people annually acquire infections while hospitalized and 90,000 people die from those infections."

I know what you're thinking... But what about me? Find out the odds of your own death.

{ 4:16 PM }

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Under conservative rule, the life you take might be your own. A study published in Nature states that a nation's suicide rate increases under right-wing governments.

I guess if citizens do away with themselves, a government can avoid writing any substantive health care legislation. Read all about it here.

{ 5:34 PM }

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Remember 1998, back when the infamous names Lewinsky and Starr kept all the headlines to themselves? In March of that year, a certain George H. W. Bush (with Brent Scowcroft) wrote these words of his own encounters with Iraq:

Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish.

In four short years, Bush's supposed fears for the consequences of unilateralism and desire for international cooperation have been eclipsed by his own son's administration. Or is Bush dynasty rhetoric just a slow motion game of three-card monte? Let's move around what we're saying, and you have to guess where the meaning is.

You can read more in The Memory Hole.

{ 9:49 AM }

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Let us now praise persistent excellence. The links in the right column represent varying degrees of indispensability, so from time to time I will call your attention to individual sites of note.

One site that consistently amazes me in its eclecticism and thoughtfulness is Plep, a hand-picked consolidation of links from around the world, covering everything from Asian religions and roadside Americana to museums of zoology. If you enjoy the sometimes obscure but always fascinating -- go!

{ 9:25 AM }

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Skimble is the only site that comes up when you search for "Enronistan" and "secular humanism" on Google.

And that makes us feel a little bit proud.

{ 12:41 PM }

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Someone finally figured out how to fulfill the promise of the Internet. It's not e-commerce. Not brand strategy. Not telepresence. Not Level 2 Nasdaq.

It's free education, delivered to your desktop courtesy of MIT, as told in this story from the BBC.

"There is no revenue objective, ever," says the Executive Director of the program. Is it me, or do the times we live in (i.e., war-based capitalism) make a pronouncement like that sound almost incomprehensibly alien and thrilling?

{ 11:41 AM }

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Who needs Photoshop with a president like this?



He must "read" his intelligence briefings upside-down too.

Postulate: readers are leaders. Corollary: non-readers are non-leaders. From BartCop via Eschaton.

{ 10:13 AM }

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