] Fantasy worlds created by virtual reality have been shown
] to provide a novel form of relief to patients suffering
] from intractable pain.

Virtual analgesia -- makes perfect sense! Maybe I'll bring my handheld to my next dentist appointment....

Real pain dulled in virtual worlds

] My name is Robert Woodhead, and back in the early days
] of the PC era (1981), I was one of the creators of the
] Wizardry series of computer-roleplaying games. I also
] created the Macintosh anti-virus tool "Virex." When not
] pretending to work on this website, I allegedly run
] AnimEigo, one of the first Japanese Animation companies.
] Recently, there have been unconfirmed reports that I've
] been subtitling cool Samurai Films as well. I live in
] Wilmington, NC, with my beautiful and brilliant wife
] Natsumi, and my two children, James and Alexander, where
] we pursue such hobbies as Combat Robotics and World
] Domination ("A fun, family activity"). To the right, you
] can see how I react in a crisis, such as when someone
] emails me asking why the site doesn't work when used in
] Japanese on the Lithuanian version of Netscape.

Heh, just ran across this site run by Robert Woodhead, an associate of mine from a few years back. Gawd, I loved playing "Wizardry". Robert was also brought in as a guest designer in my game GemStone. Very talented guy!

Robert Woodhead: selfpromotion.com

] In this "artful, informative, and delightful" book, Jared Diamond
] convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors
] shaped the modern world. A major advance in our
] understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel
] chronicles the way that the modern world came to be ...
]
] Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in
] Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of
] California's Gold Medal.

Jeremy writes:
and also, the author is Elonka's cousin!

Elonka writes:
Yup, I'm proud of Jared! His earlier book The Third Chimpanzee is a fascinating read too, if you get a chance. He goes over the near identical genetic makeup that humans and apes have, and then takes a really close look at the tiny 2% difference. The book analyzes how that miniscule amount could be responsible for all the obvious differences: Music, architecture, language, sexual behaviors, and on and on. Interesting stuff!

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

] Mitra Boolel, who is in charge of the company's
] sex-research team, explained that his findings showed
] that arousal and desire were experienced very differently
] by men and women. A woman's arousal is triggered by
] complex combinations of emotional, intellectual and
] relationship-based factors, while a man's is a simple
] physical response.

Duh! And they had to spend how much money to figure this out?

Viagra flops for brainy women

Decius wrote:
] When they arrest BL, they won't tell everyone that they've
] arrested BL, because BL knows things that they want to know,
] and they don't want BL's associates to react to the idea that
] they have the information that BL has. They could delay making
] an announcement for quite some time if they feel like they can
] collect useful intelligence. So rest assured, when you hear
] that BL has been captured, it happened a long time ago. It
] might have happened already. There is really no way to know
] unless the guy puts out a recent video...

Then Rattle wrote:
Saddam's capture felt pretty stock. The PR handling of Bin Laden's capture should rival that of Janet Jackson's tit and all of the primaries. I'm sure there is a upper-double-digit size team of people working somewhere in Virginia, pondering the best 10 of 40 different approaches to handling the situation. I hope they have some good ideas.

Then I (Elonka) wrote:

I don't think there's any way that they'd be able to keep bin Laden's capture secret. At least for any period of time. There are too many other people that would be notified when it happens. Word would have to go up the chain from the soldiers to the commanders to Washington to Bush and several of his advisors. Word would also be going out through the tribe or wherever BL's been hiding. *They* would know he was gone, and they'd be talking as well.

It's too big of a secret -- I don't believe it could be kept for more than a few days, max.

RE: US denies Iranian report of Bin Lauden capture

] WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The informant who helped lead the
] U.S. military to ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's two
] sons has been paid most of a $30 million reward for the
] tip-off, the State Department said on Saturday.

I was curious about this, as to when the reward was going to be paid. I hear that the informant was also allowed to relocate to the U.S., along with his family.

And now that winter is mostly over, and it's easier to get in and out of the mountains around the Pakistan/Afgani border, I look forward to Osama's capture, too!

U.S. Pays Informant Reward for Saddam's Sons

] PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - (KRT) - Thugs robbed motorists at
] gunpoint and thousands of looters plundered warehouses
] Friday as anarchy roiled Haiti's capital.
 
] At least a dozen bodies were seen on the streets, some shot
] in the head execution-style. Armed Aristide loyalists hijacked
] cars and stripped motorists of valuables. Looters descended on
] the gritty port, fighting with one another and carrying away
] food and appliances.

(sigh) I feel awful for those folks. What a nightmare.

Chaos in Haiti

And may your next year be a happy one! :)

Happy Birthday Nanochick!

The academic paper writtten by Orkut & co., analyzing the Orkut.com precursor, Club Nexus.

] by Lada A. Adamic, Orkut Buyukkokten, and Eytan Adar
]
] We present an analysis of Club Nexus, an online community
] at Stanford University. Through the Nexus site we were
] able to study a reflection of the real world community
] structure within the student body. We observed and
] measured social network phenomena such as the small world
] effect, clustering, and the strength of weak ties. Using
] the rich profile data provided by the users we were able
] to deduce the attributes contributing to the formation of
] friendships, and to determine how the similarity of users
] decays as the distance between them in the network
] increases. In addition, we found correlations between
] users' personalities and their other attributes, as well
] as interesting correspondences between how users perceive
] themselves and how they are perceived by others.

Academic paper: A social network caught in the Web

] THEY SAY IT'S ALL ABOUT who you know. But for Orkut
] Buyukkokten and Tyler Ziemann, it's actually about
] who you don't know. As a doctoral student in
] computer science, Buyukkokten noticed that his fellow
] graduate students had a hard time meeting people with
] similar interests. In November 2001, he came up with the
] idea of an online social networking forum.
]
] Buyukkokten, PhD, recruited Ziemann, a
] political science major, to manage the creative and
] business aspects of the project. Together they created
] Club Nexus, a free service exclusively for Stanford
] students.
]
] Club Nexus users introduce themselves by filling out
] profiles that can contain anything and everything from
] which dorm they live in to their sexual habits. They then
] link themselves to students they already know, and voilà!

Evidently an earlier version of the orkut service was "Club Nexus" for Stanford Alumni students...

Stanford Magazine: Orkut's Origins