the zeitgeist report

New Yorkers will now be able to use their driver's licenses to gain free access from their home to thousands of subscription-charging newspapers, magazines, extensive reference works and cutting-edge research.

The State Library's New York Online Virtual Electronic Library -- also known as NOVEL -- provides access to the largest state library system in the nation.

And now, it's all available to New Yorkers from their home computers just by using the identification number on their driver's license or state ID card.

// posted by Tom @ 9:07 PM 0 comments

President Bush and fellow Republicans approach the fall midterm elections facing one political problem above all others: responding to rising public anxiety about Iraq.

The new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll charts the toll that Iraq has taken on the Bush presidency. The survey shows the president's approval rating falling to 37%, a low for Mr. Bush, with disapproval highest for his handling of the war. His party's advantage on handling Iraq has narrowed amid public pessimism about the conflict, helping Democrats open a double-digit edge in voter preferences for controlling Congress.

// posted by Tom @ 1:34 PM 0 comments

People may like to think that they're descended from some ancient group while other people are not. But human ancestry doesn't work that way, since we all share the same ancestors just a few millenniums ago. As that idea becomes more widely accepted, arguments over who's descended from Jesus won't result in lawsuits. And maybe, just maybe, people will have one less reason to feel animosity toward other branches of the human family.

// posted by Tom @ 1:01 PM 0 comments

Many readers may be saying, "Peter who?" -- but The New York Times, explaining how his views trickle down through media and academia to the general populace, noted that "No other living philosopher has had this kind of influence." The New England Journal of Medicine said he has had "more success in effecting changes in acceptable behavior" than any philosopher since Bertrand Russell. The New Yorker called him the "most influential" philosopher alive.

Don't expect Singer to be quoted heavily on the issue that roiled the Nov. 2 election, same-sex marriage. That for him is intellectual child's play, already logically decided, and it's time to move on to polyamory. While politicians debate the definition of marriage between two people, Singer argues that any kind of "fully consensual" sexual behavior involving two people or 200 is ethically fine.

For example, when I asked him recently about necrophilia (what if two people make an agreement that whoever lives longest can have sexual relations with the corpse of the person who dies first?), he said, "There's no moral problem with that." Concerning bestiality -- should people have sex with animals, seen as willing participants? -- he responded, "I would ask, 'What's holding you back from a more fulfilling relationship?' (but) it's not wrong inherently in a moral sense."

// posted by Tom @ 11:42 AM 0 comments

Cho, 32, is one of the Washington area's new young food entrepreneurs. A tireless promoter, he hosts a popular coffee podcast and is known as a champion of "specialty roast coffee" -- the industry term for high-quality beans grown on small estates, roasted in small lots and brewed with care. Cho will help anyone -- including potential competitors -- interested in roasting, brewing or selling, in his words, coffee "that's better than customers ever imagined it could be."

// posted by Tom @ 10:26 AM 0 comments

"The detainees are suffering from the bitterness of despair, the detention humiliation and the vanquish of slavery and suppression," Dossari wrote, according to a translation. "I hope you will always remember that you met and sat with a 'human being' called 'Jumah' who suffered too much and was abused in his belief, self, dignity and also in his humanity. He was imprisoned, tortured and deprived from his homeland, his family and his young daughter who is in the most need of him for four years . . . with no reason or crime committed."

// posted by Tom @ 10:21 AM 0 comments

Tristan Tzara staged utterly anarchic plays whose bawdiness, obscenity, and sheer cacophony outraged respectable audiences, as if to salve the chaos of war with a chaos that didn't hurt. Such antics raise an essential question about Dada. Was it an antidote to the modern madness, or a culturally destructive symptom of it?

Life is seen in a simultaneous confusion of noises, colours and spiritual rhythms which in Dadaist art are immediately captured by the sensational shouts and fevers of its bold everyday psyche and in all its brutal reality. This is the dividing line between Dadaism and all other artistic trends and especially Futurism which fools have very recently interpreted as a new version of Impressionism.

// posted by Tom @ 9:54 PM 0 comments

In March of last year, Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, promised that Ave Maria , the planned community he is developing near Naples, Fla., would be a Roman Catholic haven in secular America. "We're going to control all the commercial real estate, so there's not going to be any pornography sold in this town," he said. "We're controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives." Monaghan backed down a bit this month, saying that birth control will be permitted, though not sold to students at the town's Catholic college . But his history of donations to conservative Catholic organizations suggests that he's spending his $250 million to seed a town of 20,000 that is, if not quite a theocracy, then as close to it as he can manage.

// posted by Tom @ 9:38 PM 0 comments

Funnyman and 'King Kong' star JACK BLACK has eloped with his girlfriend, 34-year-old musician TANYA HADEN , according to People .

"They love each other very much. We're thrilled," says the bride's father, jazz bassist CHARLIE HADEN . The 36-year-old Black and Haden first met at Crossroads, a private high school in Santa Monica, and only recently started dating.

// posted by Tom @ 8:19 PM 0 comments

Rather, Hayes said the show's parody of religion is part of what he saw as a "growing insensitivity toward personal spiritual beliefs" in the media generally, including the recent controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

The singer, who became the first black composer to win an Oscar for best song with his theme to the film "Shaft," said he formally asked to be released from his contract with "South Park," on the Comedy Central cable channel.

But series co-creator Matt Stone said the veteran recording artist was upset the show had recently lampooned the Church of Scientology, of which Hayes is an outspoken follower.

"In ten years and over 150 episodes of 'South Park,' Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslim, Mormons or Jews," Stone said in a statement issued by the Comedy Central network. "He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show."

// posted by Tom @ 3:19 PM 0 comments

In their experiments, the researchers first cut into a brain structure that conveys signals for vision, causing the small lab animals to be blinded in one eye. They then injected a clear fluid containing chains of amino acids into the damaged area. Once in the environment of the brain, these chains, called peptides, bind to one another, assembling into nano-scale fibers that bridge the gap left by the damage. The mesh of fibers prevents scar tissue from forming and may also encourage cell growth (the researchers are still investigating the mechanisms involved).

As a result, nerve cells restored severed connections, allowing 75 percent of the animals to see well enough to detect and turn toward food. The treatment restored around 30,000 nerve connections, compared with 25-30 connections made possible in other experimental treatments, Ellis-Behnke says.

Because the treatment overcomes key obstacles to the healing of nerve tissue in stroke and traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, the researchers, as well as other experts in the field, believe it could prove to be an effective treatment for these types of nervous system damage.

// posted by Tom @ 3:01 PM 0 comments

Brown: Have you heard from the President or anyone from the White House about this?

Pierce: No, I'm kind of surprised that they haven't. Normally you know-the stuff- hot button issues kinda hits the forefront you know-maybe get a call or something, but um.. I haven't heard from them...

// posted by Tom @ 6:53 PM 0 comments

Slobodan Milosevic, the deposed Yugoslav leader who had spent the last four years on trial accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in nearly a decade of Balkan wars, died Saturday in his prison cell near The Hague, according to the U.N. international war crimes tribunal.

A guard found Milosevic "lifeless on his bed in his cell," according to a statement issued by the tribunal. The statement said that Dutch police and a Dutch coroner had been summoned and that an autopsy and a full inquiry had been ordered. Court officials said there was no evidence that Milosevic, who suffered from high blood pressure and chronic heart problems, had committed suicide.

// posted by Tom @ 11:15 AM 0 comments

The channel's out-of-stepness has led to some good things: Lifetime has managed, against the odds, to distinguish itself with openly philanthropic and activist projects, and it has even become a noteworthy lobbying force on urgent women's issues like sex slavery and domestic abuse. But those good deeds seem to have compromised its credibility with guilty-pleasure programming, which is what "Cheerleader Nation," a reality series in the vérité mode, ought by rights to be.

Nope — there's no guilt here, and only a little pleasure. Don't look for beauty, catfights or even short skirts. (On tomorrow night's episode, at least, the girls mostly wear gym shorts.) Instead, "Cheerleader Nation" is a set of stylized encounters between mothers and daughters. Rarely has a reality show — even "The Simple Life" — had dialogue that seems both so scripted and so mundane. The girls, already under pressure to perform as athletes, seem doubly pressured to shine as reality stars, and there is something moving and even a little sad in their willingness to divine and advance the plot of "Cheerleader Nation." When, amid their exertions on behalf of this feminist channel, did these girls do any schoolwork?

ust as college basketball moves to center stage for March Madness, college cheerleaders have had their wings clipped by new safety rules that ban their tall pyramids and highflying stunts at the national tournament games — to the dismay of the cheerleaders who say they're trained and ready to show their spirit safely.

// posted by Tom @ 10:35 AM 0 comments

ONE recent week, the video blog Rocketboom drew an average of 200,000 people a day to watch its short daily news reports on technology, the arts and other topics.

"The Abrams Report" on MSNBC, meanwhile, drew 215,000 viewers to its weekday hourlong show about legal issues.

Does this anecdote — that an unpopular cable news show and a wildly popular Web site draw similarly sized audiences — prove that the Internet is upending the economics of the television business? It does for Prince Campbell, a former media executive who runs the Chartreuse (BETA) blog.

Mr. Campbell wields superlatives in a particularly bloggish manner at chartreuse.wordpress.com . "Broadcast television is dead," he declares. "Just like the Internet killed the music industry, it's about to do the same thing to broadcast TV."

American Idol is not Television.

American Idol is MySpace under the guise of a TV show.

// posted by Tom @ 10:23 AM 0 comments

Osama bin Laden 's niece, an aspiring singer who posed for a sexy photo shoot in a men's magazine last year, has signed up for a reality television show about her life and her as yet unfulfilled "quest for stardom."

Wafah Dufour Bin Ladin, whose mother was married to the al Qaeda leader's half brother, was born in California but lived in Saudi Arabia from the age of three to 10.

"I understand that when people hear my last name, they have preconceived notions, but I was born an American and I love my country," Dufour said in a statement from ReganMedia announcing the deal to develop a reality TV series.

// posted by Tom @ 10:05 AM 0 comments

n the last six months, major media companies have received much attention for starting to move their own programming online, whether downloads for video iPods or streaming programs that can be watched over high-speed Internet connections.

Perhaps more interesting — and, arguably, more important — are the thousands of producers whose programming would never make it into prime time but who have very dedicated small audiences. It's a phenomenon that could be called slivercasting.

// posted by Tom @ 9:47 AM 0 comments

Turning to literature in essays on Kafka, Dostoyevsky and Updike, Wallace employs a largely moral vocabulary to dismiss such older American novelists as Norman Mailer and Philip Roth as "Great Male Narcissists." For him, Updike is "both chronicler and voice of probably the single most self-absorbed generation since Louis XIV." In contrast, he is all praise for Dostoyevsky, largely because the Russian writer's "concern was always what it is to be a human being — that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal."

Indeed, reading Dostoyevsky revives Wallace's old complaint that American writers face an unparalleled difficulty in trying to create a literature informed by ethical values and principles. In an earlier essay titled "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction," Wallace claimed that television in its more sophisticated phase had appropriated the "rebellious irony" of the first postmodern writers (Pynchon, Barthelme, Gaddis, Barth), thereby pre-empting and defusing the "critical negation" that was the literary and moral responsibility of his generation of writers. More than a decade later, Wallace remains convinced that "many of the novelists of our own place and time look so thematically shallow and lightweight, so morally impoverished, in comparison to Gogol or Dostoyevsky."

// posted by Tom @ 9:35 AM 0 comments