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Chip Brown in the New York Times Magazine:

Before Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi opened the Yale course catalog last summer, his education had been painfully unacademic; his reading list mixed the Koran and Persian poets with the grimmest primers of poverty and war. He was the sixth of seven children, born in 1978 in the Arghandab River valley village of Kohak, where his parents were born. They were Pashtuns — the dominant ethnic group of southern Afghanistan and parts of western Pakistan. For centuries the Arghandab valley had been the breadbasket of Afghanistan, famous for its grapes and pomegranates as well as for the fierce Pashtun clans that bloodied the armies of Alexander the Great and a litany of subsequent invaders. Rahmatullah arrived the year before the Soviet invasion, the most savage conflict of all. Many of the mud-brick homes and orchards of the family’s village were obliterated by napalm; the whole region was salted with small, beguilingly shaped "bat mines" designed to blow the hands off children. Two of Rahmatullah’s sisters were pulled alive from bomb rubble; an aunt was not so lucky, another of the estimated 1.5 million people killed during the 10-year Soviet occupation.

More here.

Originally by Abbas Raza from 3quarksdaily on February 26, 2006, 1:15am

From the Washington Monthly (via Kottke.org):

With health care near the top of everybody’s issue list in this election year, we wanted to call attention to one of the issues the country should be thinking about: how U.S. health care stacks up against Canada’s universal single-payer system. We knew that Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell have both lived in Canada and developed strong feelings about socialized health care–pro and con. And, as we have long had the highest regard for their work, we thought it would be interesting to bring them together for a debate through which they could share their insights with each other and our readers. Because they both work for The New Yorker, we asked the permission of their editor, David Remnick, to undertake this project and he was kind enough to grant it. Robert Worth, one of our contributing editors, volunteered his services as moderator.

Adam Gopnik:

I have lived under three different medical regimes: Canada, the United States, and France. I have been seriously sick under all three regimes and had many family members with similar experiences.

My wife’s sister had a very, very premature baby born in Edmonton six years ago, the kind of baby who normally lives in about 20 percent of cases–and they had eight months of intensive care. I mean really intensive care. And the baby ended up living. It was a pound and a half at birth, the smallest baby that survived in western Canada in that year. The one thing they never thought about, the one thing they never considered, the one thing they never had to pay a moment’s attention to was: How much will this cost? When does our insurance run out? It simply was not in the agonizing equation of worry and concern that they had to face. That seems to me, in itself, the most powerful argument you can make for socialized medicine, to put it in the bluntest possible terms.

Malcolm Gladwell:

It’s interesting, because my own personal experience… We’ll start with the anecdote. When I was 16, I was working 12-hour shifts as a dishwasher. I was biking home one night in the dark and something happened and I ran off the road and I basically impaled my eye on a stick. I was unconscious for several hours, came to, biked home. When I woke up the next morning, my right eye had essentially… The pupil had come out of the socket. A huge swelling. I went to the doctor. The doctor examined me and sent me home. The swelling didn’t go down…

More here.

Originally by Abbas Raza from 3quarksdaily on February 26, 2006, 1:00am

Cory Doctorow:
A CBS undercover reporting team went into 38 police stations in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in Florida, asking for a set of forms they could use to complain about inappropriate police behavior. In all but three of the stations, the police refused to give them forms. Some of the cops threatened them (on hidden camera, no less) — one of them even touched his gun.

officer: Where do you live? Where do you live? You have to tell me where you live, what your name is, or anything like that.

tester: For a complaint? I mean, like, if I have –

officer: Are you on medications?

tester: Why would you ask me something like that?

officer: Because you’re not answering any of my questions.

tester: Am I on medications?

officer: I asked you. It’s a free country. I can ask you that.

tester: Okay, you’re right.

officer: So you’re not going to tell me who you are, you’re not going to tell me what the problem is.You’re not going to identify yourself.

tester: All I asked you was, like, how do I contact –

officer: You said you have a complaint. You say my officers are acting in an inappropriate manner.

officer: So leave now. Leave now. Leave now.

ao_/”>Why, That’s Delightful!)

Update: Alex sez, “The Lauderhill cop who was shown intimidating an individual looking to file a police complaint on hidden camera took the news station to court to stop the story from airing.”

Update 2: Lee sez, “The Police Complaint Center exists to help citizens file complaints against officers and departments — an important service, as police officers are supposed to be serving the public.”

Originally by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing on February 25, 2006, 2:45pm

Another favorite old actor has shuffled off the mortal coil. I will always remember Darren McGavin best as The Old Man, Ralphie Parker’s father, in the best Christmas movie ever made (so says I!), but he had a long and active career in films and television.

Sigh. I hope there is lots and lots of turkey in heaven, and that the Bumpuses’ dogs are nowhere to be found.

Originally by John Smallberries from MetaFilter on February 25, 2006, 11:07pm

The Century Of The Self. It’s a documentary, and the four parts are available at archive.org [2][3][4] — with a higher quality bittorrent option [via mindhacks]. The program is about the use of psychoanalytical techniques to manipulate and control the "bewildered herd", "engineering consent" in a world fraught with "irrational impulses" [more inside].

Originally by gsb from MetaFilter on February 26, 2006, 2:43am

Do you know that chemical corrosion affects about 3% of the world’s gross domestic product? But this impact is not exclusively negative. European researchers have studied the nanoworld of corrosion and found that “chemical attack of metal surfaces may result into surface nano-structures with very interesting technological applications.” They also observe for the first time corrosion of a gold-copper alloy at the atomic level. Their discoveries could be applied to other alloys used in corrosive environments or to a better understanding of the formation of porous metals.

Originally from Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends on February 13, 2006, 1:33pm

It seems that there is not a single day without a new threat about our food and our health: mad cow disease, genetically modified crops, and now avian flu. Would we feel safer if we knew for sure the geographic location of the products we eat? This is the goal of the EU-funded GeoTraceAgri project which aims to track food products from the farms to our tables. After successfully creating a reference system and the computer infrastructure necessary to ensure the geographical traceability of food products, about 80 % of Europe is covered. And a complete coverage could soon be achieved by using a geoportal such as Google Earth.

Originally from Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends on February 12, 2006, 12:25pm

Post Ranch Inn at Big Sur comes complete with astronomer and telescope

We usually avoid posts about yurts, domes and the like, reminding us as they do of our days at the commune. This is different: an off-grid 16 yurt resort in, as Henry Miller described it in 1957, “a region where one is always conscious of weather, of space, of grandeur and of eloquent silence.”

Originally by lloyd from Treehugger on February 24, 2006, 2:34pm