Phawker

Rupert Murdoch’s bid for The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. has won enough support from the company’s controlling shareholders to ensure its acceptance, the newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Journal said, quoting unnamed people familiar with the situation, that Bancroft family members representing 32 percent of the company’s vote had agreed to the deal. A family spokesman declined to comment.

NPR: Reportedly His First Plan For Manipulating The Journalism Of His New Toy Is To Dial Back The Rightward Tilt Of The Editorial Page So That It At Least Confirms With The Dictates Of Observable Reality. Just Kidding.

EXPLAINER: Rupert Murdoch Purchases Wall Street Journal For Dummies (after the jump)

(more…)

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FRESH AIR

Paul Rudd, who co-starred in Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin, produced and stars in the new independent film The Ten — a series of irreverent vignettes that reinterpret the Ten Commandments for a modern audience. Rudd [pictured with Sharon Pinkenson at the opening night of the Philadelphia Film Festival] also stars in the upcoming movie I Could Never Be Your Woman, with Michelle Pfeiffer. His other films include Clueless, Anchorman and The Cider House Rules, and he’s been seen on TV’s Friends and Reno 911!

RADIO TIMES

Hour 1
According to Pulitzer-prize winning reporter TIM WEINER, the CIA’s history is one of catastrophic failure starting with its work behind the Iron Curtain to its current efforts in Iraq. Weiner’s new book is “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.” Weiner has been covering the CIA for over twenty years.

Hour 2
(Rebroadcast tonight at 11)
Immigration debate update. In the first half, now that federal legislation to overhaul the immigration system failed to pass Congress, we’ll hear about why the bi-partisan plan imploded, and where smaller immigration battles that are still playing out across the nation Our guest is MICHELLE MITTELSTADT the Congressional correspondent for the Houston Chronicle, Then in the second half the immediate impact of last week’s federal court ruling against the Hazelton immigration ordinance with the two attorneys who argued the case WITOLD WALCZAK, from the ACLU and KRIS KOBACH who represented the City of Hazelton.

THE WORLD CAFE
Former Jayhawk, Mark Olson, joins David Dye on the World Café to play some tunes and discuss his latest release, The Salvation Blues. With stripped-down songwriting and production, there is a distinct beauty and honesty in each song. This album is earning praise for its refreshing and simple country-rock sound.

JOHNNY R.: Waiting For The Sun

Why in the Hell is there no video for The Jayhawks’ “Waiting For The Sun” on YouTube? What kind of fuckery is this? And how in the Hell can this kid only be 8 years old?

BY M. EMANUEL It’s been a wet-firecracker of a summer for hip-hop. Gone are the days when summer was the season to expect a heavy rotation of full-lengths from your favorite MCs — things have changed. Record sales are in the toilet, digital downloads are either destroying or saving the industry (depends on who you ask and what day you ask them) and cautious record labels are releasing albums at a snail’s pace, and only after they are assured that there is enough radio-friendly material to justify the six-figure palm-greasing required to make them hits. In the midst of this uncertain and often inhospitable commercial landscape, in the dog day afternoon of our discontent, Common delivers a summery blast of sultry, soul-powered nostalgia with the release his seventh album (in stores today) Finding Forever.

With the exception of TI’s, TI vs. TIP, there haven’t been too many buzz worthy hip-hop albums this summer. With releases by 50 Cent, UGK, Talib Kweli, and Common’s Chi-City brethren and collaborator Kanye West, scheduled for releases so late in the summer we might as well call it early fall, all eyes are on Common. With a bold, evocative title like Finding Forever, Common seems to know exactly what’s expected from his current release and he more than delivers.

Following the release of 2005’s Be, considered by many to his definitive work to date and the album that resurrected his career after the disappointing Electric Circus, Common has made sure to stay in the public eye. In a time where our rap heroes are expected to be omnipresent, Common made sure to ride the positive acclaim of Be with a classy parade of guest appearances and career-expanding moves. Delving into film (Smoking Aces and the forthcoming and highly-anticipated American Gangster), taking up an array of worthy causes (Bono’s Red and the Knowing is Beautiful HIV awareness campaign), peddling Gap as well as Soji, his own high-end line of headwear.

He even made time to reprazent on Oprah as the lone rap artist at her townhall-style Don Imus vs. nappy hair debate (luckily she picked Common and didn’t get Cam’ron…Oprah is not Bill O’ Reilly, and that could have been real ugly) and co-star in radio friendly collaborations with Joss Stone and Will.I. Am. All told, in the last two years Common has diversified his creative portfolio in intriguing and productive ways all the while remaining relevant to the often-fickle hip-hop audience. Common has focused his energies with laser-guided precision on the ambitious Finding Forever, a more-than-worthy follow-up to Be, and another step in the higher evolution of the rapper once known as Common Sense.

NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO

On Forever, Common sets the controls for the heart of The Zone. Long regarded as an exceptionally deft and prescient lyricist, Common’s collaboration with Kanye West (who produced a lion’s share of this album as well as the aforementioned Be) provides a mesmerizing sonic backdrop for his ever-soulful flow. The album starts with a woozy instrumental intro, which tickles the cochlea and cleanses the aural palate for the main course in what soon proves to be a sumptuous banquet of song. While astute listeners may be expecting another fiery intro like the one that opened Be, the fact is that Common is in a different place with Finding Forever.

The opening vocal track, “Start the Show” follows the mellow instrumental intro and gets the album under way in grand fashion with a towering string section soaring above the lo-fi boom- bap production. The track features Kanye delivering an intentionally distorted vocal hook that sounds as if he was calling in from and iPhone at the bottom of the sea. “Start the Show” also exemplifies Common’s ability to critique the current state of hip-hop with thinly-veiled disses that don’t require him to name names, a tactic employed by so many of today’s artists who rely on phony beefs to create hype instead of letting clever word play do the work. Instead, Common opts for the subtle approach: “With 12 monkeys on the stage it’s hard to see who’s a gorilla/you was better as a drug dealer.” Ouch. Message: The drug-dealer-turned-rapper mantra is played, yo.

The current single, “The People,” with its big-ups to Kanye and his place amongst the immortal beat-makers (”my daughter found Nemo/I found the new Primo), pays tribute to the trials and tribulations of the people that actually buy these albums — the common man. Instead of focusing on the strobe-flashed un-reality show of celebrity, he focuses on the everyday folks and the titanic struggles that they face just to get by. Wonderfully complemented by the souful sex jam stylings of Dwele on the chorus (one of the most-under appreciated neo-soul singers out), “The People” gives Common the platform to vent on Grammy snubs (”they tried to India Arie me”) without sounding bitter and drop some political science without without sounding preachy when he proclaims “My raps ignite the people like Obama.” Another standout is the Lily Allen-assisted “Driving Me Wild” with its “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” drumbeat and percussive piano plink — curiously, Common elected to self-censors the word “ho” from the song, even in the explicit version. Oprah will be so pleased. Common also displays his knack for ripping analogies from current headlines (”Driving herself crazy like the astronaut lady” and “Like OK Go on the treadmills.”) and cut-and-pasting them into his flow without ever showing the torn edges.

Finding Forever also reunites Common with the “old” Premo on “The Game,” fully equipped with the requisite DJ Premiere scratches on the hook. Common really shines over Premiere’s production, bringing back some of the chemistry that was apparent on Like Water For Chocolate when these two first worked their magic. On “The Game,” Common delivers a flow that fits the beat so perfectly that at times it’s hard to hear where the track ends and the lyrics begin.

My only complaint is the brevity of the album. Weighing in at 11 tracks exclusive of the intro, the album winds down before the listener can get their fill. On the upside, Common shares very little mic time with other MCs (save for Kanye), which affords Common the wide open spaces he fills with his expansive, wide-screen wordplay. There is also some material that while solid, doesn’t quite live up to expectations such as the Tribe Called Quest-esque “I Want You.” While certainly not a bad track, it doesn’t quite reach the level of some of the other material on the album. Similarly, “Southside,” while chock-full of rewind inducing punch lines and slick lyrics from Kanye and Common, somehow fails to capture the chemistry of some of their early collabos — think “The Food,” “The Corner”, or “They Say.”

That being said, the album finishes strong with “So Far to Go,” a masterfully produced J Dilla track (RIP, bro) featuring everyone’s favorite vanishing act D’ Angelo (who we hope will return from hiatus one of these days) and the thought-provoking “Black Maybe” featuring Bilal, where Common treads lyrical terrain that most rappers fear to tread: black self-doubt. “Misunderstood,” with its incredible Nina Simone sample, brings the spiritual to the street without sounding preachy and serves as a fitting finale. The last word goes to his father, Lonnie Lynn (a semi-regular fixture on Common’s albums), who makes the wisdom of age sound like a benediction on “Forever Begins.” GRADE: A

*

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The easiest word to describe M. Emanuel is “complex.” At least as it relates to tastes and interest, he offers a varied palate for that which inspires thought or emotion. Typically framed against the backdrop of hip-hop culture, but with a sharp awareness of what preceded the culture and what is now influenced by it, he’s intrigued by the intersection of commerce and art. It’s a rather natural position and balance of contrast that one would expect from a former college radio DJ turned corporate attorney who collects sneakers on the side and still writes rhymes from time to time. While we can’t expect to hear a full- length anytime soon, you can expect unique and hopefully enlightening insight from someone who, while navigating the world of corporate politics, has always kept his ear to the pavement. Hailing from Virginia, but now firmly entrenched in the 215, M. Emanuel focuses his daily grind in the areas of intellectual property and entertainment law. His many interests include music, film, the arts, fashion, sports, and travel, holding hands on the beach, shots of Patron, and making it rain.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR In 1978, the FDA established a labeling system for sun block that measures how well the product protects the skin from the ultraviolet B rays of the sun. This is the Skin Protection Factor, or SPF rating. UVB rays cause sun burn, skin wrinkling and cancer. The FDA said they’d get right back to us and establish a rating system for the other deadly rays, ultraviolet A, which penetrate the skin even deeper and also cause cancer and skin aging. Twenty-nine years later, we are still waiting. Yes, shocking but true, the SPF rating only tells half the story, meaning the general public has no way to judge how well their sun block is really protecting them. I’m fair-skinned and green-eyed, so it really pisses me off that the rating system — which might give us a fighting chance of protecting ourselves from skin cancer — was never finished. Especially in these troubled times, because even if our President has chosen not to believe, I know global warming and the degradation of the ozone layer is real.

To really protect yourself, you can’t just go by the SPF: You have to look at the ingredient list as well. This is stupid and frustrating, but do it anyway. The chemical ingredients to look for are: avobenzone, Mexoryl SX, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. Check your brand for them. If not found, ditch your sun block, no matter how much you paid for it, and buy a new brand, one with the above ingredients.

The FDA has also allowed manufacturers to make untrue claims about sun block products. “All Day Protection” and “Water Proof” are bogus, false claims. They simply are not true for any sun block — you must apply all sun-blocking products every two hours and immediately after anything but the shortest of swims. Are you a big sweaty hunk? Right, apply sun block often.

Fortunately for us there is the Environmental Working Group (EWG), who have done the first-ever analysis of sun blocks, analyzing and rating 785 sun block products. Of the sun blocks with a SPF rating of 15 and over, 84 percent fail to adequately protect us from the sun’s harmful rays or contain chemicals or chemical combinations that may be harmful to our health. Some of these chemicals penetrate our skin and present considerable health concerns. Other products contain chemicals that actually break down in the sunlight, offering no protection at all!

At the top of the list of best sun blocks is UV Natural Sport SPF 30+ closely followed by Badger SPF 30. Both followed by 26 other products deemed to be the safest.

There are 37 products labeled ‘the worst’ sun blocks and the list is scary because it contains some of the most popular name brand products, things that always seemed safe to us like Coppertone Sport Sunblock Lotion (SPF 15); Nivea for Men Daily Protective Lotion (SPF 15); Banana Boat Suntanicals Sunscreen Lotion; Neutrogena Healthy Skin Face Lotion (SPF 15); Walgreens Sunscreen Lotion; Gillette Complete Skin Care, Facial Moisturizer (SPF 15); Avon beComing BRIGHTER DAYS moisturizers (SPF 15) and on and on.

These products fail because ingredients or combinations of ingredients have been linked to cancer, allergies, enhanced and dangerous skin absorption, and reproductive, developmental and organ toxicity PLUS they don’t even really protect you from the sun’s harmful rays!

Check the EWG’s list to see how your sun block is measuring up or to find the safest brands. The list was determined with two rating systems: One tells you how well the actual product protects you from the sun’s harmful rays. The second tells you how dangerous the chemicals in the sun block are for your body or the environment. The numbers are then tallied up and reported in an easy to read list at:

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/special/sunscreens/summary.php

If you click on this link, I’d really like you to consider clicking on the EWG’s “Donate Now” button. This list is a life saver and no one but the Environmental Working Group is doing this type of investigative work for us and doing it as well. Throw them some cash.

Sources and for more information:

You can go to a web site provided by the EPA (they’re doing at least this). Plug in your zip code and check the UV rating each day in your hood. ‘3’ or higher you’re in the danger zone, stay in the shade, lather up with the sun block. Right now Philly is at ‘very high,’ or 9 out of 11:

http://www.epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html

There are shirts and hats that are made of a breathable fabric that actually blocks the sun. I wear my Solar Veil over-shirt when I’m in the sun for a long time, in the car, or for shorts bursts in the sun when I don’t feel like applying sun block. These clothing products really work!

Solar Veil

The Skin Cancer Foundation

New York Times

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, nor have we ever had such vast and effective machinery for disseminating that knowledge — and yet, for all intents and purposes, we live in hi-tech Dark Age with the vast majority of the global population essentially ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that’s a whole six-part mini-series in and of itself, but the short answer is that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation is dependent on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to maintain it. The global warming argument is a classic example. When scientific fact did not favor Big Oil, they hired their own scientists to to conduct and publish studies that contradicted the peer-reviewed facts about the environmental impact of carbon-based emissions. As a result, whenever the latest global warming news is relayed to the public, it always comes with the caveat that “some dispute these findings.” There was time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad these debates, but that’s long since become a luxury most papers can no longer afford — better to hire another gossip columnist and give the people what they want. To fill this crucial gap, Phawker began publishing the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of Big Tea Party. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight — scattered across the vast, cold reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and longstanding employment as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.

EDITOR’S NOTE: So, it turns out Mr. Terror Dentist /Wilco’s Pet has got himself a woman these days. Saints be praised. And not just any woman, but a cultural anthropologist who, get this, just got back from India after 16 months spent studying the everyday lives of policemen in Uttar Pradesh. Apparently pecking out lengthy observational dispatches on the biomechanics of ethnicity and identity politics is their idea of fun during a romantic getaway to Rhode Island, which is where my letter found Anand. Her name is Beatrice Jauregui and she makes a lot of good points, and many that back up Dan “Free Speech Is Fine Until Somebody Gets Hurt” Buskirk‘s perspective on all this. I still like her, though.

Dear Phawker,

Although I cannot, in the final analysis, agree with Nita Rao‘s trumped-up charges of the Phawker cartoon being a “repellant racist illustration” and “a cheap, bigoted joke of]… satirized…ethnicity,” I can see her point. The key part of her witty–if snarky and gratuitously-pop-culture-referencing–critique is the part where she says that the book’s “plotline is only incidentally narrated by an Indian-American narrator.” The unfortunate thing about the illustration (which I can guarantee many Indian Americans, and even Indians in India would find offensive) is that it can be seen as essentializing–that’s fancy academic parlance for something like “pigeonholing”–the author and her “kind” as, at the end of the day, little more than a bunch of traditional, mystical, religious, superstitious savages… one of whom, in this case, just happens to be participating in, and writing about, one part of the world of American law, gavel and scales at the ready.

Put another way, in a nutshell, people such as Nita bristle at the idea of being understood as having no identity or personality outside of western stereotypes of Indians (or Indian descendants). Our “terror dentist” friend, Anand, makes this point when he says, “I can attest that there’s an ignorance in our [American] society which believes that all
Indians ‘wear diapers, have eight arms and worship cows.’” It’s the same reason a lot of South Asians find the depictions of Apu on “The Simpsons” offensive; although the counter-argument generally goes that he is SUPPOSED to be an ironic caricature. Still, many people don’t find it very funny. Why, they may ask, do Indians always have to be speaking in funny accents, or sitting yogi style on lotus leaves (albeit in a Hillary-style pantsuit) with tridents in their hands (even if cleverly converted into a set of scales of justice)? Even many of the more cosmopolitan people from India would find such things offensive–not least, the hundreds of millions of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Indian nationals of other non-Hindu persuasions.

*

“The world still thinks we [Indians] are nothing but a bunch of sadhus [Hindu holy men] and snake charmers,” a well-traveled man from New Delhi once said to me. “We are not—we are much more interesting and important than that,” he continued. It’s tricky–people cannot often articulate what they mean when they instinctively react to something like this as “racist”. But, I could tell you as soon as I saw the cartoon–and even more so when I read the article about Chambermaid, and saw how little the cartoon seemed to relate to the content of the book–that Phawker would receive letters like this.

The question is, why does the author’s ethnicity matter at all, in an interview promoting her book on clerking in the U.S. justice system? Though I have not read it, the book’s plot seems to have little to do with, or make much mention of, the fact that the narrator, and the author on whom she is clearly based, are of Indian “seed”. The only part where
that’s even hinted at in the interview with the author, is when it is said that the “insufferable tyrant” the narrator clerks for could not, or would not, properly pronounce her name. So then, why “incorporate [her ethnicity] into the illustration”? Why highlight the fact that she’s of Indian descent at all, when the book is by an American author, who is writing about an American institution, probably for a primarily American audience? Why not make the cartoon an illustration of a particularly amusing part of the book? Moreover, was the author herself consulted about this cartoon? What is her response?

The editor’s rebuttal is intelligent, explanatory, and well-crafted. And let the record show that I basically agree with him (especially on the “answering a sling shot with an atom bomb” bit), and appreciate the time he took to offer a detailed analysis of the motivations and meanings of the decision to commission the cartoon. That said, I have one more question–a mental exercise, really–for him, from an American anthropologist who’s just returned from 15 months of field study in northern India:

How would he feel about seeing a cartoon in an Indian newspaper (coupled with an article about, say, an American Fulbright student’s scientific research on the environmental and social damages being caused by the Indian government’s dam construction policies), of a smiling white American man, donning a cowboy hat and boots, wearing a red, white and blue “I {heart} Bush” t-shirt, sitting on a mountain of greenbacks–a bunch of which are also filling and spilling out of his pockets–and holding a gun in one hand, a land surveyor scope in the other, with which he conducts his study of a dam project? N.B. the illustration is NOT intended to lampoon the student or Americans per se, and the author/cartoonist are, in fact, lukewarm on, but also slightly pro-Bush (“he’s fucked up Iraq, hasn’t he… but that U.S.-India nuclear deal will sure solve a lot of our problems!”) and are also anti-dam construction (because it disrupts certain local ecologies and displaces thousands of people from their homes when water is re-routed to flood their villages).

Just some food for thought. And admittedly, my example does not account for the sardonic/parodic character of Phawker as a publication in a certain media [sub-?]genre. In a word, it’s rather complicated. Thus, I am a bit surprised to see [again, in the editor's response] a virtually diametric juxtaposition of Rush Limbaugh and the “PC police” as the only two categories of persons that might be able to duke it out over problems like this. In a sense, this is just as over-simplifying as the original accusation of all being “utterly undone” by a “cheap bigoted joke” of a cartoon. After a bit of reading, I’ve come to greatly appreciate Phawker’s mission and aspirations to complexify, and offer a “sane alternative” to, the often feckless, mindless, and sometimes heartless media coverage and editorializing available today. Indeed, let’s have a debate that accounts for and appreciates the multifarious (multi-armed?) perspectives of all readers.

Bea Jauregui
OLD CITY

Bea is an American anthropologist writing her dissertation on the everyday lives of police officers in Uttar Pradesh; though of Anglo descent, some might consider her of Indian ascent.

A group of House Democrats will introduce a resolution calling on the Judiciary Committee to begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) will sponsor the measure. It will be dropped in the hopper tomorrow. Here’s the text of resolution…
RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.
1 Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall
2 investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the
3 House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales,
4 Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes
5 and misdemeanors. [via MSNBC]

RELATED: This Would Be Funnier If It Weren’t So True

The five years he spent in Philly (he lived in Society Hill) were among his happiest. He was hired to report for the 6 p.m. news, but management sensed star quality and also had him co-anchor the noon news with local star Marciarose Shestack, known professionally by her first name alone. They became the nation’s first “Eyewitness News” team.

They had more chemistry than DuPont. And MR, as friends call her, became a forever friend. MR hadn’t been in touch with Tom Terrific for several months, but told me his spirits seemed good then, as he battled leukemia.

We talked yesterday about Snyder’s time here, and about some of his passions – model trains, martinis, golf and practical jokes. (He worked here before newspapers figured out that TV anchors were stars in their own galaxy, so romantic lives largely went unreported.)

“He could engage anyone he was talking with about anything – and he knew something about it,” she said. “You felt comfortable in his hands. You might not have felt comfortable about where it was going to go,” she said, laughing hard, “but you felt comfortable in his hands.”

BYKO: They SO Did It
PREVIOUSLY: There Are No Combovers In Heaven

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Maine on Monday, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. He will remain in a hospital in Maine overnight.

Doctors called Monday’s incident “a benign idiopathic seizure,” Arberg said. The White House described the January 1993 episode as an “isolated, idiosyncratic seizure.” Both descriptions indicate that doctors could not determine the seizure’s cause or link it to another medical condition. For example, doctors would have quickly ruled out simple explanations such as dehydration or low blood sugar.

Roberts, who was named to the court in 2005, has led the Supreme Court to a more conservative stance, along with Justice Samuel Alito, who won confirmation in early 2006. Conservative causes have won twice as often as they lost on the Roberts-led court. The 2006-07 term brought limits on abortion rights, restrictions on school integration programs and greater freedom for political advertising.

Medical opinions differed on just what Roberts’ seizures mean. Someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy, said Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a neurologist at Washington Hospital Center, who is not involved in the Roberts’ case.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Shazam!
PROTIP: In most cases, the proper emergency response to a generalized tonic-clonic epileptic seizure is simply to prevent the patient from self-injury by moving him or her away from sharp edges, placing something soft beneath the head, and carefully rolling the person into the recovery position to avoid asphyxiation. In some cases the person may seem to start snoring loudly following a seizure, before coming to. This merely indicates that the person is beginning to breathe properly and does not mean he or she is suffocating. Should the person regurgitate, the material should be allowed to drip out the side of the person’s mouth by itself. If a seizure lasts longer than 5 minutes, or if the seizures begin coming in ‘waves’ one after the other – then Emergency Medical Services should be contacted immediately. Prolonged seizures may develop into status epilepticus, a dangerous condition requiring hospitalization and emergency treatment. Objects should never be placed in a person’s mouth by anybody – including paramedics – during a seizure as this could result in serious injury to either party. Despite common folklore, it is not possible for a person to swallow their own tongue during a seizure.

HISTORY & STIGMA: The word epilepsy is derived from the Greek epilepsia, which in turn can be broken in to epi- (upon) and lepsis (to take hold of, or seizure) In the past, epilepsy was associated with religious experiences and even demonic possession. In ancient times, epilepsy was known as the “Sacred Disease” because people thought that epileptic seizures were a form of attack by demons, or that the visions experienced by persons with epilepsy were sent by the gods. However, in many cultures, persons with epilepsy have been stigmatized, shunned, or even imprisoned; in the Salpêtrière, the birthplace of modern neurology, Jean-Martin Charcot found people with epilepsy side-by-side with the mentally retarded, those with chronic syphilis, and the criminally insane. In Tanzania to this day, as with other parts of Africa, epilepsy is associated with possession by evil spirits, witchcraft, or poisoning and is believed by many to be contagious.^[23] In ancient Rome, epilepsy was known as the Morbus Comitialis (‘disease of the assembly hall’) and was seen as a curse from the gods. Stigma continues to this day, in both the public and private spheres, but polls suggest it is generally decreasing with time, at least in the developed world; Hippocrates remarked that epilepsy would cease to be considered divine the day it was understood. ^{[via WIKIPEDIA]}

EDITOR’S NOTE: In the wake of Eva Liao‘s protracted radio silence since reporting live and direct from Bonnaroo, Phawker has been inundated with questions about her whereabouts — although something tells me these might be coming from the 347 horny bastards that searched the site for “Bonnaroo Tits”. And no, she didn’t go back to rehab. She went someplace even better: Taiwan, the land from whence her parents came. Eva will be providing semi-regular reports from her trip to the Pacific Rim (Ha, I said rim), which god willing, will include a side trip to the People’s Republic Of China.

FRESH AIR

Gonzo journalist Frank Owen, author of Clubland: The Fabulous Rise and Murderous Fall of Club Culture, has turned his attention to the history of the drug methamphetamine — and he went on a four-day meth binge as part of his reporting. The book is titled No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth. Forbes magazine writer Robyn Meredith talks about the economic realities behind her new book: The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us. Previously, Meredith wrote for The New York Times and USA Today. Actress Liv Ullman, longtime muse of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, talks about working with the legendary director, who died today at the age of 89. Bergman made more than 50 films, including The Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers, and Fanny and Alexander.

RADIO TIMES

Hour 1

U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceed the total number of combat troops, according to figures released by the U.S. Department of States and Defense. That number includes roughly 21,000 Americans, 43,000 foreign contractors and about 118,000 Iraqis. We talk with DEBORAH AVANT about the implication of this growing reliance on private contractors.

Hour 2

Scandal and controversy has invaded almost every professional sport in recent weeks. Steroids in cycling, NFL super-star Michael Vick facing federal felony charges, an NBA ref cheating and Barry Bonds about to break Hank Aaron’s home run record amidst charges of steroid use. We’ve invited Penn ethicist ART CAPLAN and Inquirer sports writer BOB FORD to help us make sense of it all.

THE WORLD CAFE
David Dye welcomes rock legend Sir Paul McCartney to the World Café to talk about his new album, Memory Almost Full. The record is classic McCartney with its soulful ballads and infectious melodies. Some unexpected elements, such as his mandolin work and new-wave rhythms, are a fresh addition to his timeless sound.

TED LYONS & HIS CUBS: Tumse Hai Dil Ko