The Death of Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan put me in mind of this explanation of Timothy Leary's Eight Circuit model of the brain using the characters from Gilligan's Island. Feed your head.

The Baltimore City Paper printed my letter, along with a response from Brian Morton where he defends his old boss Barry McCaffrey as a kinder, gentler sort of prohibitionist. (I originally posted the letter here.)

Well, we can see where George W. gets it from. The Nation reports:

Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.

"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them," Mrs. Bush told American Public Media's "Marketplace" program...

Pity Jason Striegel. He got his AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) account added to a list of sex chat bots...and can't convince IM'ers that he's really human. Read "How I Failed the Turing Test".

The Turing Test, for those not familiar with it, is a test of artificial intelligence proposed by Alan Turing, in which a computer program tries to act like a human in conversation. Turing envisioned using teletypes to hide the machine, but the 'net does the job even better.

It's been said that those who love sausages or the law should never see either being made. As a vegan and an anarchist (a Zenarchist on a good day), I think that lovers of either should be forced to become intimately familiar with their origins, in order to cure those unhealthy loves. Rolling Stone takes us to the floor of the slaughterhouse of justice in Four Amendments & a Funeral: A month inside the house of horrors that is Congress. Depressing but necessary reading.

Newsweek (via MSNBC) has a visit to the set of Superman Returns:

At a dinner at studio chief Alan Horn's house last summer, Singer pitched his vision for "Superman": the Man of Steel has vanished for five years, then returns to Earth to find that the world is a different place and that his love Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has a 4-year-old son and a fiance (James Marsden). It's unclear which man is the boy's father, and Lois doesn't exactly give Superman a hero's welcome. She writes a story in the Daily Planet that includes the line "The world doesn't need a savior. And neither do I."

For those who came in late: for years now, tech and media companies have been trying to use copyright and patent law to restrict your freedom to share information, or modify or explore the devices you buy, or generally do anything that might decrease their profit margin. The two latest examples:

I came across this suprisingly objective, perhaps even positive, article on polyamory from the Baltimore Sun. (Pointless registration required - try BugMeNot.com.) Very nice to see.

According to VoteNoWar.org, Cuba is offering to send 1,100 doctors with over 26 tons of medical supplies to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. has not even acknowledged the offer.

Looks like continuing the last battle of the Cold War takes precedence over saving American lives.

You can petition Congress and the White House to accept this offer of aid here.