The Null Device

The authors of a book titled Evolutionary Psychiatry believe that mental disorders are the manifestations of adaptive strategies which, in another context, were once useful.

The theory advanced by Stevens and Price is that people with a schizoid personality ... are suited to taking on the role of charismatic leader, and such leaders, they argue, would have been advantageous in early hunter-gatherer societies because they would facilitate the splitting up of groups which were tending to grow larger than the optimum size (about 50 individuals).

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A Sydney psychologist and criminal profiler is running seminars on spotting workplace psychopaths. According to John Clarke, signs of psychopathic behaviour include "a narcissistic personality, a grandiose sense of self, liars, cheaters, smooth talkers, bored workers, changing jobs quickly and believing they should be higher up in the company", and employers should identify and monitor suspicious employees.

"These people have the same psychological make-up as killers such as Martin Bryant and Ted Bundy. Their only difference is that they have the ability to hide their psychopathic tendencies behind the front of a respectable, white-collar job."

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Surveys reveal that Britons are increasingly embarrassed of eccentric cultural events, such as gurning and morris dancing, being promoted to international tourists.

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I was thinking of buying the new B[if]tek album, 2020. However, as it's owned by Sony, the same company that declared war on the Internet recently, I will not do so. If Sony get their way (and with billions of dollars worth of lawyers and lobbyists at their disposal, they stand a good chance), peer-to-peer file sharing will be filtered at ISPs' routers, and the result will be an Orwellian nightmare that makes Echelon look quaint. It's likely that the ultimate effect will be to formalise the reduction of the Internet to a one-way broadcast medium, cleansing it of anything that's not consistent with it being a means of consuming corporate content without the pesky overheads of due process. Pity, because the B[if]tek album looks interesting; however, I'm not giving a cent to the crushing of the Internet. And you shouldn't either.

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