Reading the Sunday Papers

Since Sept. 11, NEST has been doing much more. Besides the helicopter patrols, teams have been driving around urban areas in vans known as ”Hot Spot Mobile Labs,” armed with instruments that detect alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron radiation. Other teams are equipped with backpacks that hold smaller detectors.

The underlying question, of course, is whether it’s possible, or even desirable, to shape a culture that doesn’t offend anyone ˜ or, in the words of New York’s education department guidelines, “to guarantee that all people are depicted in accord with their dignity.” Can a culture nourish if it doesn’t have room to agitate, irritate and unsettle?

One of rock’s most astute conceptualists since the 1960’s, he has toyed with the possibilities of his star persona, turned concerts into theater and fashion spectacles, and periodically recharged his songs with punk, electronics and dance rhythms. Now he has emerged as one of rock’s smartest entrepreneurs.

Isn’t golf a job requirement for any corporate executive with serious career ambitions? Isn’t not having a golf handicap a business handicap?

The result is that Brightmail has detected a 600 percent increase in spam. In April 2001, the network counted a little under 700,000 spam “attacks,” in which hundreds of versions of a message are sent to e-mail accounts around the world in one shot. This past April, Brightmail counted 4.3 million such attacks.