a comment I made in about_poetry

Poetry is written and read to enlarge the reader's world. I agree with Stephen Dunn when he says in Walking Light, "Poetry should offer us something we can believe about ourselves and the world, or it should offer us something that will provoke or suggest contemplation about ourselves and the world."

I wouldn't necessarily say that poetry imitates life. It certainly draws from it, as its material is reality. I would say that many successful poems try to recreate the motion of life. It is the motion that gives poetry its energy.

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F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers

In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity. But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed.

The office, which also made headlines in June in an opinion - since disavowed - that authorized the use of torture against terrorism suspects in some circumstances, said any First Amendment impact posed by the F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional.

The opinion said: "Given the limited nature of such public monitoring, any possible 'chilling' effect caused by the bulletins would be quite minimal and substantially outweighed by the public interest in maintaining safety and order during large-scale demonstrations."

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Vietnamese Sue Over Agent Orange

News.

Bush, Kerry Set for Three Debates

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I so enjoyed the Szechwan beef that netmouse and I made from scratch that I ordered some for lunch today. Seriously, it's been on my mind ever since. Today's version isn't quite as good, but it has long slivers of ginger, and that makes it very nice.

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Hungry world 'must eat less meat'

World water supplies will not be enough for our descendants to enjoy the sort of diet the West eats now, experts say.

The World Water Week in Stockholm will be told the growth in demand for meat and dairy products is unsustainable.

Animals need much more water than grain to produce the same amount of food, and ending malnutrition and feeding even more mouths will take still more water.

Scientists say the world will have to change its consumption patterns to have any realistic hope of feeding itself.

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'Cannabis' brain tumour drug hope

An ingredient in marijuana may be useful for treating brain cancers, say Spanish researchers from Madrid.

Chemicals called cannabinoids could starve tumours to death by halting the growth of blood vessels that feed it, the Complutense University team hope.

By studying mice, the team has shown for the first time how these chemicals block vessel growth.

Their study, published in Cancer Research, also shows the treatment appears to work in humans.

[...] The researchers first gave mice cancer resembling the human form of brain cancer they wanted to study.

They then treated the mice with cannabinoid and examined the genes of the mice.

The activity of genes associated with blood vessel growth in tumours through the production of a substance called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was reduced.

Cannabinoids appeared to stifle VEGF production by increasing the activity of a substance that controls cell death, called ceramide.

Lead researcher Dr Guzmán said: "As far as we know, this is the first report showing that ceramide depresses VEGF pathway by interfering with VEGF production."

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Disturbing news about vote suppression.