Dowbrigade

William Safire looks at new dictionaries and slang, specifically
the first complete revision of Merriman Webster’s Collegiate in a
decade, released this week, which includes such new entries as Frankenfood and barista , ”a person who makes and serves coffee (as espresso) to
the public.”

from the Sunday NYTimes Magazine "On Language" column

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — By the time they died in a 1999
plane crash, John F. Kennedy Jr., and his wife, Carolyn Bessette, were
living
a life of separate beds and violence, and Bessette was struggling with
a drug problem, according to a new book by Kennedy family biographer Edward
Klein excerpted in Vanity Fair on Monday .

According to friends, Kennedy worried that Carolyn was cheating on him
with old flame, Michael Bergin, a "Baywatch" actor and former
model of Calvin Klein underwear.

Another sad story of sex, drugs and violence in America’s Royal Family

T-Mobile drives a nail into the Sidekick’s coffin

Thank goodness I am too cheap to run out and buy all the things I
absolutely HAVE TO HAVE! This saves me from mistakes like the T-Mobile
Sidekick, a combo cellphone, PDA, wireless web browser and game player.
Turns out if
you ever decide to leave the T-Mobile family, they can remotely incapacitate
your phone, crash all your software and games, and ERASE ALL THE DATA
IN THE PDA! Plus it can’t play mp3′s. Next contestant, please.

Exposé through Boing-Boing

God is All-powerful and Omnipresent, and knows all that is knowable.
God had a good 3,000 year run as the ultimate authority, repository of
knowledge, dispenser of advice and receipient of pleas, supplications
and searches for knowledge and wisdom. Today, Google is all of that,
and more…. From the NY Times

Some
of you (like me) may have missed Thomas
Pynchon’s rather remarkable introduction to the new edition of George
Orwell’s 1984, as published in the Guardian (now
off their site but I found it in Lex-Nex).  This relates to
a previous posting "William
Gibson on Orwell".  To
complete the circle, here is the New
York Times review of Gibson’s new novel "Pattern Recognition", with multiple references to Pynchon.

Speaking at a public symposium, a member of Parliament, Seiichi Ota,
recently made light of reports of gang rapes at a Tokyo university. "Boys
who commit group rape are in good shape," Mr. Ota said. "I
think they are rather normal. Whoops, I shouldn’t have said that."

From a NY
Times report by Howard French that rampant sex abuse by teachers
goes unreported and unpunished in Japan.

Tattoos are not against the law in South Korea, but they
were a foolproof way of avoiding the draft.  Until the government
started arresting young men for ”willfully tampering with their bodies
to avoid military duty”. In old Korea, authorities tattooed ”Thief”
or ”Stealer of Government Money” on criminals’ foreheads. Go figure.

By Sang Hun Choe, Associated Press, 6/29/2003

The controversial science of mother-infant bonding gets a new look

A nice review of "Attachment Theory", once discreditied, newly rediscovered,
which basically holds that "children who develop strong bonds with their
parents are
likely to
form similar bonds with peers, partners, and eventually their own children".

by Joshua Kendal in Boston Globe

I hated Krispy Kreme donuts long before I ever tried one.
I hated the whole concept of donuts after converting in my 40′s to a
"healthier lifestyle". I especially hated Krispy Kreme donuts for their
Tarheel origins
and media-fueled expansionism. Stuck in the mammoth traffic jam caused
by the opening of their first Massachusetts store smack dab in the middle
of my route to work, I really hated Krispy Kreme. But my engine was overheating,
the little red oil light was flashing insistently, so I pulled into the
lot…

This unlucky man, Jody Lee Taylor, won $4.3 million dollars
in the Virginia Lottery. Unfortunately, "He had a weakness for drink and
drugs, they say." Now he’s lost his wife and his job, and he’s in the Henry
County Jail, "charged with trying to kill a police officer after sheriff’s
deputies dragged him — naked — from his pickup truck."

from the Washington Post