My Thoughts Exactly

Gulf War Syndrome and Sarin: Jake Carelli was right

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The plot of my thriller Acts of the Apostles concerns a search to find the cause of the mysterious Gulf War Syndrome reported by so many veterans of the first US war with Iraq.

At the time I was writing the book, from 1995 to 1999, there was no generally-accepted explanation for the syndrome, nor even a universal acceptance that the phenomenon was, quote, “real”, unquote. One of the leading theories of the day was that the culprit was Sarin nerve gas released when the Navy bombed the Iraqi munitions dump at Khamisiyah, and then later when EOD, “explosive ordnance disposal” units of the United States Army further blew up what the Navy missed. Jake Carelli, the Gulf War Vet in Acts who has Gulf War Syndrome, says (page 242), “I know where Gulf War Syndrome comes from”:


“[. . .] It was my job to go into bunkers looking for documents. I saw that Iraqi stuff. They had beaucoup chemical-biological weapons, big time. The Iraqis probably never shot any at us. But EOD just went in there and blew all that stuff up. The sky was black, and it wasn’t just from the oil fires.”

There was ample evidence that the Defense Department believed that that was the cause and was covering it up. Indeed, the evidence of a coverup of the bombing of Khamisiyah figures into the plot of Acts of the Apostles (see pages 165, 166, 231, and 242 in the free PDF of my novel, which you can easily find on this site or by clicking here (warning: large PDF)).

In my book I made up another–outlandish, science-fictiony– explanation for the Syndrome, even though I had a hunch that Carelli (whose character was inspired by a soldier I interviewed when researching the book whose remarks about the bunkers are essentially quoted verbatim by Carelli) was right.

Well, it gives me no pleasure to report that Carelli, indeed, was right. This article by Kelly Kennedy of the Army Times, reprinted in the Seattle Times on May 26, 2007, states,

[. . .] researchers say they have no doubts they have found the root of the problem: sarin gas. [. . .]

Research released in early May showed that 13 soldiers exposed to small amounts of sarin gas in the 1991 Gulf War had 5 percent less white brain matter — connective tissue — than soldiers who had not been exposed. A complementary report showed that 140 soldiers who were exposed had the fine motor skills of someone 20 years older, what researchers called a “direct correlation” to exposure.

The research was the work of Roberta White, chairwoman of the Department of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health.

PLEASE follow me after the jump to read more about this important development.

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Here's blooking at you, Harold!

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According to this post in the Sydney Morning Herald, books derived from blogs–inevitably given the doubly-condensed appelation “blooks”– are the hippest thing in publishingdome:

blooks – books based on blogs or websites – are beginning to reap returns for publishers. From the moment the adventures of Belle de Jour, the diary of a London call girl, jumped off the computer screen and onto the page, publishers saw the potential in dishing up our favourite on-screen pleasures in book format.

I know that our own Harold “Tales of the Sausage Factory” Feld has been toying with the idea of slapping printouts of his Wetmachine posts between two covers & selling the resultant, umm, blook, at a decent markup. Perhaps this article will inspire him to actually do it. But here’s my little bit of publishing advice, Harold: since “sex sells’, even in the blook world,

whether it’s the slightly grubby thrill of Girl With a One Track Mind (the ”diary of a sex fiend“) or a dip into Frank Warren’s PostSecret (a collection of anonymous postcards on which people reveal a secret), readers seem happy to buy them

be sure to give your blook a title that hints at something having to do with sex and secrets. Might I suggest, ”My Big Sausage, Just For You, Baby!”?

Greg Rose and the evolution of a wet machine

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Sometime right soon, Dr. Gregory Rose, he of the brilliant fisking of the spectrum auction scam, will be making his inaugural post at his new Wetmachine blog Econoklastic. So may I be the first to welcome him: Welcome, Greg! Welcome to Wetmachine! I have no idea what he’ll write about, but his background leads me to expect good things. Greg describes himself thusly:

I’ve been an academic economist for more than 20 years. My
dissertation was on developing mathematical techniques for aggregating
affective variables in utility functions. I left OSU Tulsa to come to
DC in 2004 to set up a consulting company. I’ve been doing consulting
for the public interest community on telecoms ever since. And I’m a
very unconventional economist: I’m probably the only socialist member
of the Public Choice Society.

Adding another name to the Wetmachine masthead seems as good an occasion as any to launch into some meditative malarky I’ve been cogitating on for some while about where Wetmachine came from, has been, and is tending. Especially since the one-two combination punch of Harold Feld and Greg Rose should pretty much establish Wetmachine as a premiere telecommunication/first amendment/innaleckshul property policy wonk “destination shopping” blog. Which is kind of cool, especially since it’s nothing like what I set out to create when I launched Wetmachine seven years ago. At that time I was mostly trying to pimp my books (still am), and I also was pretty irritated by the technological utopianism of blogs like Slashdot and Boing Boing & I wanted to do something in the same basic zip code as those blogs but much more curmudgeonly and technoskeptical. Sort of a blend of Slashdot and Boing Boing on a bad acid trip by way of the Unabomber Manifesto was what I had in mind. I also imagined that that the now-atrophied Bonehead Computer Museum would evolve into the central attraction of the site. Guess I missed that guess. I had no idea when I invited Harold Feld to blog with me that I was snagging a world-class policy expert with a major talent for snark, nor did I know that Howard Stearns would emerge up to his eyeballs in Croquet at the head of the Web 3.0 movement. Much to my astonishment, and with little help from me, Wetmachine has become of blog of substance (by some definition of “substance”.) Who woulda thunk it? Any of y’all as may be interested in some more of my navel-gazing, feel free to follow me below the fold.

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Jack Welch, Karl Rove, media cartels, and the subversion of democracy

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By way of Smirking Chimp I come across this fascinating (and utterly depressing) account of how Karl Rove “reached out” to (Saint) Jack Welch, A.K.A “the buzz saw”, Chairman of General Electric, the parent company of NBC, and how together they put in place the right wing noise machine that masquerades as our nation’s electronic news media.

Meet the Whore: Tim Russert carries Cheney's water once again

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The most amusing thing about the trial of Scooter Libby was Libby’s conviction. The second-most amusing thing was the revelation that so-called Vice President Dick Cheney likes to go on Tim Russert’s infotainment show Meet the Press because he can “control the message.” And the third most entertaining thing about the trial was Russert’s admission under oath that he only reports what the government gives him permission to report.

Sheesh, what a whore. No wonder his corporate masters at General Electric love him so! He’s the perfect marionette!

Anyway, so this week it was revealed that the White House has been flagrantly violating the Presidential Records act for five years or so, encouraging its employees (that is, our, your and my employees) to use email accounts provided by the Republican Party and other front groups. Also, the White House revealed that up to five million email messages that were on the actual proper White House servers have been quote lost unquote.

Wetmachine being a site for geeks, I won’t bother to go into the umpteen reasons why this claim can safely be dismissed as bullshit.

Below the fold: more ranting about the most pathetic bubblehead ever to rise to prominence from Buffalo, New York, and some song lyrics from the glory days of Motown that you’ll really enjoy.

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More good news from the Precog Engineering Team

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Via my friend Mike who sent me a link to Kurzwell AI, this story in the Guardian about research at the Max Plank Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. A new brain scan enables the reading of thoughts and intentions; can predict what a person will say or do next. Some goody-two-shoes expressed concern (see below)–but fear not! Such retrograde badthink bioluddites will be squashed like bugs as the glorious Singularity/Technopoly arises!

Because brains differ so much, the scientists need a good idea of what a person’s brain activity looks like when they are thinking something to be able to spot it in a scan, but researchers are already devising ways of deducing what patterns are associated with different thoughts.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University, said the rapid advances in neuroscience had forced scientists in the field to set up their own neuroethics society late last year to consider the ramifications of their research.

“Do we want to become a ‘Minority Report’ society where we’re preventing crimes that might not happen?,” she asked. “For some of these techniques, it’s just a matter of time. It is just another new technology that society has to come to terms with and use for the good, but we should discuss and debate it now because what we don’t want is for it to leak into use in court willy nilly without people having thought about the consequences.

”A lot of neuroscientists in the field are very cautious and say we can’t talk about reading individuals’ minds, and right now that is very true, but we’re moving ahead so rapidly, it’s not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someone’s making up a story, or whether someone intended to do a crime with a certain degree of certainty.“

Professor Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and director of the Medical Research Council, said: ”We shouldn’t go overboard about the power of these techniques at the moment, but what you can be absolutely sure of is that these will continue to roll out and we will have more and more ability to probe people’s intentions, minds, background thoughts, hopes and emotions.

Monty Meekman, a spokesman for the Overmind entity known by its acronym ORSON (Obedient Remote Servo-Organic Network), was reportedly pleased. A presss release from his office contained the single word, “Excellent!”